Yaletown Afternoon

Since it is absolutely pouring rain today I am very pleased that yesterday we were able to take advantage of a classic summer day to do a gallery and garden tour in Yaletown. My first stop on the journey was the downtown library where, in the best Vancouver tradition, someone was filming a surreal movie scene. Extras dressed in over the top costumes circa 1940 were milling about vintage cars against a contemporary backdrop of neon sushi signs and gawkers in t-shirts and shorts. I gawked a bit myself, then went in the library to check out some books on Darwin. I need a bit of a break for bees, so I've been doing some research on moths. Darwin writes about them too of course, and he even predicted that the orchid bees would become extinct because orchids were so good at self-pollinating. Did this come true? The implications are fascinating. He cultivated many orchids in his garden and green house at Down House in Kent where he did much of his writing and research in later life. I checked out a biography of Darwin called Darwin's Garden: Down House and The Origin of Species by Michael Boulter.

Next, I went to the Artstarts Gallery to see the exhibition where some of the art created by the students I worked with at Graham Bruce Elementary. I'm happy to see there are photos of the process so you can get an idea of the interdisciplinary nature of the residency. I zig-zagged down the hill to the CAG and enjoyed the work in Sentimental Journey. So many of the contemporary pieces in Vancouver galleries have become dry and antiseptic; it was refreshing to see some work using found objects, and a warm, humorous and at times poignant aesthetic. My favorite piece was by Gareth Moore: The Road Through the Forest by Lyman A. William. It was almost like an epitaph in a vitrine. I like the elements of theatrics--costumes and props that help you construct the fiction of a hobo's life.

My final gallery destination was the Numen Gallery in Yaletown where Diana Burgoyne and Robin Ripley are showing Interface/Interfacing:Kinetic and Sound Installation. The gallery is tiny, but in spite of its size it is packed with an incredible amount of art work. I was surprised to see how many artists had pieces on display. Robin and Diana's collaboration took my breath away. I pushed the switch, as guided by a sign on the wall, and slowly a needle hanging from a thread began its way on a vaguely triangular course. The wheels at the corners of the triangles are bobbins and a pattern of thimbles spreads out in the back ground, making the wall into a three dimensional map. Once the needle passes over brass-coloured disc, it activates a sound, perhaps that of an old sewing machine. The needle's journey is delicate and sensuous. One begins to invest concern in it's fate. Will it become tangled? Will it make it around the entire circuit? I immediately related it to the processes in our aging bodies--how our involuntary body functions become affected by outside forces beyond our control. Maybe I related to it this way because the wires in Burgoyne's sonic elements look so much like veins and neurons and because the thimbles heighten my sense of touch.

The rest of the show is Robin's work made using sewing notions. It is delicate, sensitive and obsessive. (Wow, there are a lot of knots!) My friends had joined me at this point and we were all drawn to the white buttons spilling out of a tiny box--bony, bubbly and almost frozen in mid-action. The other piece we were drawn to was the one with all the knots which hung like a gothic version of a weaver bird's nest. I'm really glad we got to see the show and it's on until September 5--highly recommended. The curator was very approachable and friendly.


Right in the heart of Yaletown is a group of community plots surrounded by skyscrapers where two of my friends who are chefs have garden plots. I had seen photos of their plots online and I asked for a guided tour. You should see the tomatoes! Little ones, big ones, ripe, green, dainty, pendulous, they've got it all. The trick is picking them before the birds get them. The plots are stuffed full of flourishing herbs, edible flowers and even some vegetables besides tomatoes.






Check out these potatoes growing in bicycle tires in Chef K's garden. What a great idea! She says that as soon as she saw the call go out for community gardeners for these plots she got on the list and spread the word. Chef K. is a tireless volunteer. She does a food-sharing program and if she sees someone who looks like they are hungry and "shopping in the garden" she'll try to give them something from her plot because some of the gardeners here might not be exactly well off either. She makes syrup out of the lemon balm growing in her plot, and like Chef C, has incredibly creative uses for everything that she grows.

Beer cans allow the water to penetrate the soil.



Some people just want to grow flowers. And that's good too, especially amidst concrete and glass.

Garden touring is thirsty work, so we head to the Sexy Scientist's pad for cocktails with the kitties. The cocktails are smooth and refreshing and before you know it we are laughing it up and sharing stories and offering opinions as the sun sets over False Creek. I headed off to Bella Pizza for a couple of slices, wandered aimlessly in Urban Fair for a few minutes and caught that cute new C23 bus which I love so much. I looked out the window to see if there are any falling stars, but not last night. The ones I could see were all fixed up there pretty tightly.

The World's Smallest Valentine

Are you in love? Are you looking for love? Are you heart-broken? You must tell the bees. Why not write them a tiny letter or even a tiny valentine and send it care of artist Lea Redmond, Postmaster of the World's Smallest Postal Service based in California. Her web site has photos of the artist at works in cool shops and cafés, and her other work is very interesting. There is a lovely photo on The Letter Writer's Alliance Blog. You can even buy tiny valentines on Redmond's site. Since Redmond's site is called Leafcutter Designs, why not write a letter to a Leafcutter bee and tuck it under a rock in your garden? Did you know that can purchase domesticated leaf cutter bees in Canada?

The Bee's Underbelly and The Dark Side of the Hive

Aganetha Dyck: Collaborations at the Burnaby Art Gallery

I highly recommend that you make a special trip out to Deer lake Park to see Aganetha Dyck's work at the Burnaby Art Gallery. I attended her artist talk today, which was truly inspiring. I first fell for Aganetha's work many years ago when she did an artist talk in Regina at a CARFAC conference. Here was an artist I could relate to: a sculptor who shrunk sweaters and canned buttons in mason jars. Her work with bees was enchanting. I was lucky enough to work with Aganetha at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. She was showing a work called The Extended Wedding Party and I was asked to work with her to create a performance inspired by the work. With the help of Raymon Montalbetti and some fine performers, we created a piece called Cleaning the Hive.

Aganetha's son Richard is a media artist. When she saw the scans he did of a horse's mane it reminded her of a landscape. She asked Richard if he could scan her bees. The photos in the Collaborations show are the result of these scans. It was a tricky process, working on a warm day, carefully edging the scanner into the hives without squashing any bees. The result was photos that show a side of bees that we rarely see: their bellies. Young female worker bees create wax flakes with glands in their undercarriage. Because the bees are moving while they are scanned, their bodies appear stretched, sometimes into lines and squiggles that represent their movements. One gets a feeling of the oppressive atmosphere inside the darkness of the hive. Some of the photos have so much depth, they remind me of lenticular images. The bees leave traces of wax on the surface of the scanning bed, and Aganetha says the scanner gets so mucked up she is tempted to put it in the washing machine.

Other works on the first floor of the show include drawings and pieces of fabric that are left in the hive for the bees to work on. The fabric and paper are pinned in the hive with miniature clothespins. The hive box is above the queen excluder and above the comb filled with honey because the artist does not want larvae or honey in the work. If the comb does fill with honey, she leaves the object outside to be robbed by the bees in front of the hive or she takes it home and lets the wasps rob the honey in her back yard. Once the bees have worked the fabric, Aganetha embroiders into the patterns they have left behind.

The work upstairs includes signs made of metal with words made from backlit honeycomb. Aganetha said she wanted to name and acknowledge all her collaborators and the people and bees involved in the process of creating the work. On the facing wall, there is a beautiful poem by Di Brandt, printed in braille as well as French and English text. Aganetha's husband and studio assistant made a series of boards that each contain a part of the poem in braille that were put into the hives. Some of the pieces contain fragments of drawings by the artist. Aganetha invited members of the CNIB to read the pieces with their fingers and they laughed at the text because the dots that bees lay down to begin a comb are the same size as braille dots and they made the text nonsensical.

The works in this show are lush, whimsical, mysterious, and beautifully crafted. Once again I urge you to see the show, but I warn you--you may become hooked on honeybees!

From the gallery website:
"Free Family Sunday Program: February 22, 1:00 - 3:30pm, (Every half hour). Join us for a free hands-on studio activity for the whole family. This interactive experience will combine the current Aganetha Dyck exhibition with your participation in drawing bees and honeycombs. No registration is required."

Burnaby Art Gallery
6344 Deer Lake Ave., Burnaby.
Info Line: 604. 604-297-4422.
www.burnabyartgallery.ca
Tuesday – Friday 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.,
Saturday & Sunday 12 – 5 p.m.
Closed Mondays. FREE ADMISSION

Vancouver Songlines

Nikamon Ohci Askiy
(Songs Because of the Land)

Cheryl l'Hirondelle is one of my favourite artists. She is a singer and a media artist currently based in Vancouver. (Lucky for us!) Her mother is from the Cree nation and the Cree world view informs her work. Yesterday I went to the launch of her CD and DVD at the Celebration Hall in Mountainview Cemetery. We were treated to a walk-through the web site projected on a screen, and Cheryl and her band sang the songs on the CD. It started out as a grey spring day, but the sun came out as Cheryl began to talk to us. She was introduced by Glenn Alteen, who curated the project. The director of the Push festival also gave his round of thanks before Cheryl got on stage and gave her thanks to all the people involved, explaining that the value of gratitude was very important to her. Cease Wyss performed the opening song on behalf of the Skwxumesh Nation. Cease explained that the graveyard was one special place of peace in the heart of the city where people of all cultures come to honour the ancestors. Special guests included the "Jury from Surrey," a group of about seven elementary school students who were attending the show in order to give their feedback on the event within the context of the rest of the Push Festival.

Cheryl's project has a performance component and an interactive web component. For her performance, Cheryl walked and sang her way around an area of Vancouver. She wanted to sing to homeless people, to give them something for free, the gift of her voice. Through the project she was also able to give them some much-needed money. She also wanted to create songlines, mapping the city with her voice. As Cheryl sang her way around Vancouver she recorded some of her conversations and the ambient sounds. You can access these sounds through the website and even add your own found sounds. The songs she sang were created in the process of walking through her old neighbourhood, near Kits beach. She walked and sang into her cell phone so she would remember the songs. She drew inspiration from the land and from Hildegarde Westecamp's sound walks around Vancouver.

One of my favorite songs is The Great Giveway. It brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. If you go to Cheryl's Myspace page you can hear the song, which is about letting go of everything you don't need in order to find peace and healing. When Cheryl sings, it is straight from the heart with great depth of emotion. It takes a brave soul to make oneself so vulnerable. During the event we were all given a free copy of the CD and DVD. Thank you Cheryl!

Cheryl's Bio from Myspace:
"Cheryl L' Hirondelle is one unique and much sought after multi-disciplinary artist and musician from this land now known as Canada. A mixed-blood (Metis/Cree-non status/treaty, French, German, Polish) originally from Alberta, her creative practice investigates the junction of a Cree worldview in contemporary time and space with projects that spans a wide array of disciplines including: music, performance art, storytelling, spoken word, theatre, audio art, installation, public art and new media."

Currently 6 degrees Celsius and cloudy.

Urban Knitting

Now that we're in the awkward period between New Year's and Valentine's Day, stores either jump the gun and go for the candy hearts, or they let the sale signs linger.

The artist collective called Instant Coffee has launched an commissioned art series on Main Street called A Bright Future. I was excited to hear they were putting a therapeutic light in the bus shelter at Main and 20th, but it has never been on when I've passed by.

Still waiting....
You promised...!

I did however get to ride on the bus covered with the photograph of colorful afghans. It looks beautiful and brings a wistful smile to people getting on the bus, but somehow we wish it was a real bus cozy and not just a photo of one.

I love projects where people actually knit and crochet onto urban objects. The photos on the this web site are very heart-warming. Billing urban knitting as the world's least offensive graffiti is very clever. I also like the spirit of the Satva Connection:

"Living in Tel Aviv for so many years, the city has become an important part of our lives. It makes us happy when it blossoms with parties, with beautiful people, with life, and it makes us sad to see its buildings falling apart, the dirt on the streets, and the walls peeling off on every corner.

We, the people of Savta Connection, wish to give something back to the city we love, and the way we see it, there is no better way than Urban Knitting."

I found a couple of videos on a group of guerilla knitters called Knitta on YouTube. This is a five minute video about urban knitting, plus a bonus on some art cars. This video on the same group is even better, and it is in French, with some English dialogue.

Foggy Art

They showed up one day last fall, or was it early winter? Two mysterious "vehicles" parked on either side of Ontario in a residential area. Whenever I walked by them, a question mark popped up like a cartoon in my brain. "WTF?" My first thought was that it was something to do with the movie industry, which often transports large props that make Vancouver a truly surreal city at times. When the cops had a major take down in our neighborhood a couple of months ago. I couldn't help shaking the feeling it was all just a movie shoot.

I thought maybe it was somebody's holiday vehicles, being stored for the winter. The first time I was moved by curiosity to touch one I could swear I thought the covering was soft. "Next time I'll lift it, I thought." When I touched it a second time I was shocked to discover it the draped cover was molded metal. I rapped it with my knuckled and it rang with a hollow "ping." Now I was truly perplexed. "What the hell is it?", the neighbors asked each other. Shrugs all around. I forgot about them once they were covered in snow and then I saw the article in the Georgia Straight. The jig was up. It's a piece of art by Marko Simcic called Park.

So now they sit, through sun and rain and fog, like two adopted undemanding pets. They smugly claim coveted parking spaces. They don't pollute. They don't advertise. They aren't licensed to kill. They are grey. They are benign. They are art.

Currently five degrees Celsius with fog. Well, that's what the website says. The sun is shining full on at our house.

Insulation

At this time of the year I worry that the bees will get too cold in their hives. My beekeeping mentor once said he was "knitting little sweaters for his bees." That's a good image. It reminds me of the sweet poignant artwork called The Boarders (Le Repos des pensionnaires) by Annette Messager in which she knitted sweaters for dead birds.

The wind has risen today and turned the melting snow into grey honeycombed pockets of ice. Are you warm enough? Are you insulated?

Temperature is currently 5 degrees C, wind warning for Vancouver with winds gusting up to 35km/hr.