Rrrring!

I have a busy day behind me, another ahead. And I've been wasting time (Oh, I am soooo good at procrastination!) looking at spider photos on BugGuide, instead of setting alarms and packing the cell phone for the morning.

Speaking of phones, here are a pair from days gone by:

In Arnt Arntzen's shop.

In the downstairs hallway of the Big Green House. (Where Ruth Scheuing works.)

And now, to set three alarms to make sure I don't sleep through, and off to bed.

'night, all!
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Bugs in the alley

Post # 4 about the 2008 Eastside Culture Crawl. Previous posts: Crawling at the Wilder Snail, Sweeping nudes and other mix-ups, and Scrambled Birds.



Nadia Baker is a biologist by day and an artist by night. She creates prints, mainly in black and white, with the occasional touch of red or blue; ears, maybe, or antennae.

She is intrigued by the forgotten machines of urban life; those awkward-looking electrical transformers atop old power poles, the tangles of pipes and apparatus hidden in the weeds alongside buildings. They "call to me," she says.

And she transforms the transformers. She brings them to life, discovers those ears, some eyes and mouths (and arms, too) , gives them personality. (Click here to see a pair of transformers in love.)

Laurie took this photo, an aquatint hanging on the wall of her display in a back-alley garage:

The afore-mentioned tangle of pipes. Better copy (Nadia's) here.

I was smitten by the prints inspired by her daytime incarnation: the biologist.

Phyllium siccifolium, etching

Yes, she labelled it with its Latin name. I looked it up, later. I found it on Wikipedia. In German, which I couldn't read. From other links, I learned that it is a Phasmid or a leaf insect, also called Linnaeus' Leaf Bug, and is found in West Malaysia. And that it is often sold as a pet. It eats blackberry and salmonberry leaves. Luckily, they need a warm climate, or an escaped female could devastate our coastal shrubbery.

Brahmaea wallichi, aquatint

This one is the larva of a moth, the Owl Moth, which can be found from Japan to Africa. I couldn't find a photo of the larvae. That face looks contrived; such a surprised, worried expression! Does Nadia indulge in "imaginative interpretation" with her invertebrates, too? (Maybe not, or if she does, I'm prone to the same habit.)
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Scrambled birds

Post # 3 about the 2008 Eastside Culture Crawl. Previous posts: Crawling at the Wilder Snail, and Sweeping nudes and other mix-ups.


A few Crawly birds for your consideration:

The crow is an appropriate place to start; it is, perhaps, the signature bird of Strathcona. Look any direction for a minute or two in the daytime, and you'll see one. And often, it is doing something like this:

"Stealing Time", by Sandra Bilawich

Of course, most of the crows work on something a bit more organic than old clocks.

Sandra Bilawich combines stone, metal, and wood in imaginative sculptures. Most, like this crow, are made with reclaimed materials. Many, again like the crow, pull objects out of their customary contexts.

Her Crawl display filled her living room and kitchen. I loved the coffee table and candlestick:

Recycled boards, rusty metal "teeth", rock. Insulator and gears.

Not all is rustic, though. The display included polished sculptures in luscious marbles:

"Camouflage", Vancouver Island marble

But I promised you birds. The small sculpture on the coffee table is a loon, in Italian marble.

And here's a cuckoo clock, in the kitchen:

Reclaimed metal parts, beach stone, with barnacles (click for full size)

Sandra writes,

"The creation of the cuckoo clocks began as a joke. Friends would come to visit and express frustration at never knowing the time. So I built something based on the old barber's clock where the face and movement are backwards and must be looked at through a mirror."

A bird needs a bird bath. We took this photo in Sandra's garden last summer:



Her website is Elemental Designs. Beautiful work!

On with the Crawl.

Passing the schoolyard, I heard the sounds of children at play. The squeak of swing chains, of bent bicycle wheels, the dying groans of battered skateboards (I've seen the remains, decently interred in a garden across the street). But it was Saturday, and the playground was empty. Ghosts?

No. Starlings. Hiding in the evergreens on the corner and spooking the passersby.


A few came out for air and perched on the bare branches. Mystery solved. (I didn't believe in ghosts of skateboards, anyhow.)

Around the corner, we stopped in Kathleen Barrett's house to see her work. More on that later, but since we're looking at birds, can you identify this one?

Collage of found objects. With bird skull.

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Sweeping nudes and other mix-ups

Walking the Culture Crawl this year, I noticed a common way of seeing the world, expressed differently in each artist's work. Many take an object or a scene, possibly something simple and commonplace, and superimpose it on another, seemingly entirely unrelated. But through their careful blending or contrasting, an idea emerges, a relationship, an insight into the nature of things, an understanding that sneaks up on you and persuades without words.

Imagine, if you will, a bicyclist with a GPS unit on the handlebars. Now a field of flowers. Now a cosy shawl. Put them together.

Or a leaf. A dried, dead leaf, stripped down to the veins. Imagine a loom, threaded with vibrant colours. Now add a bit of history; Charles Babbage inventing a "Difference Engine".

Ruth Scheuing has done this. She creates awesome fabrics on her loom, finishes them on a computer-driven sewing machine. Let her tell you about one of her designs:

These lines were captured as tracks with a hand-held GPS. They represent simple daily activities, driving to work, shopping, visiting friends, walking around the neighborhood or riding a bike around the park. Some ordinary trips create interesting lines, while some beautiful journeys create tracks lacking visual interest. The emerging patterns anchor my memory and trace narratives with simple lines. With the absence, in most cases, of specific representational imagery, the simple line creates a memory track, The imagery used then represents more imaginary spaces, equally real representations of places and ideas, facilitated by the Internet and other tools of mediation.

... As in my earlier work I am still interested in the reconstruction of nature and a blurring of lines between global perspectives and domestic spaces and the use of tools or technologies within the traditions of the hand-made.

Here is a sampler of her GPS tracks:

Our photo, with reflections of the setting; more layering.

What struck me first, entering her studio, were a series of hangings, tea-towel-sized linens, in grey and charcoal, each one depicting a geological structure or event; a dust storm in the Gobi Desert, a satellite map, an island, and so on. The "stuff" of our lives, as pervasive as washing dishes, but unnoticed unless it bothers us. Like the dishes do when we don't have a dishwasher.

(That's me; my take on the towels when I saw them. It ties in with her interest in "a blurring of lines between global perspectives and domestic spaces.")

Ruth was inspired by a quote from Ada Lovelace, one of Babbage's "programmers",

"The analytical engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves."

and looks for the relationship between patterns in "nature" and in our "designed nature" (as if it were not part of the whole). Here is the leaf and the Difference Engine:



Compare it to an old print of Babbage's Engine:

From "Charles Babbage ..."

Laurie liked this wall hanging:

Leaves in vases, sweeping nudes, and flowers.

Ruth's sewing machine, in a sunny tower window.

Ruth's website has many more of her designs, and explanations for each new focus; it's well worth examining.
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Crawling at the Wilder Snail

Hawks and Keefer. For us, this is the jump-off point of our Culture Crawl explorations. For one thing, it's a "can't miss" location, at the corner of MacLean Park, and more or less the centre of Strathcona proper, and just off the fold on the map.

Paneficio Studios, with a full house of artists, sits katycorner from the Wilder Snail, a newish grocery and coffee shop. (The name comes from this gigantic snail, ...



... that hangs from the ceiling, along with enormous red paper globes. From outside, after dark -- early in these November days --, they warm the entire street.)

The Wilder Snail, after dark.

Same building, during the Crawl.

Laurie has been experimenting with scenes reflected in car windows, which stretches and twists them in unexpected ways. Here's another, of the same corner, looking northeast:

Crowds of Crawlers.

Mid-afternoon, both days, from our table in the Snail, we watched the action on the street:

Crawlers entering the front door of the Paneficio. Valerie Arntzen and Sharon Petty are here.

Bicycle in MacLean Park

At the corner of the park, a handy bench.

Dog, highlighted by the afternoon sun, watches his owner intently.

The Crawl has grown; this year, over 300 artists participated. They were housed in at least 52 buildings, some as individuals, some occupying studios in large buildings, such as the Parker Street Studios, with 90 artists' studios open for the weekend. We couldn't possibly have seen them all, even in the two days we had. We did manage to visit some 30 or so, and talked with many of the artists.

These studios are usually not open to the public; some of them are live-in studios, others are work sites only. Exhibitions and sales take place in other venues, staffed by salespeople. So this weekend is a unique opportunity to drop in and visit with the artists.

Many of the displays are temporary set-ups, tables in garages, small apartments with the living quarters carefully disguised (but not entirely) by curtains or even stapled-on brown paper. My granddaughter borrowed her aunt's house for the occasion; the upstairs was blocked off with a chair and masking tape sealed the office door. (By the way, in this, her first Crawl, she sold 3 large pieces, totalling over $3000. Congratulations, Auj!)

Auj, in the middle, with two friends, and two of her paintings.

You can see a larger sampling of her work here. (They're not all nudes.) (Update: link now dead.)

She's only 22. We're very proud of her.

Next: talking with some of the artists. Starting, I think, with Ruth Scheuing.
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Brief interruption

I have been tagged for the six random things meme. By PZ, who cheated; he never got around to step 5. (Let each person know they have been tagged, and leave a comment on their blog.) I had to find out all by myself.

When you are raising an army of cephalopods, you can afford to do that, I guess.

'nuff grumbling. The rules are:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

So that's 1 and 2 taken care of. Now, the six random things.

1. I love driving, even in the city. Especially at night. Nights after a rain are the best, when the air is clear and all the lights are sparkly. Or on the highway, when the moon plays hide-and-seek behind the evergreens.
2. I have a Mexican straw hat that has hung on my wall (in many houses, and three countries) since 1959.
3. Long ago, back in the early 1980s, I swore I would never, ever, have anything to do with computers. (I'm a lousy typist; how was I supposed to handle programming on a keyboard? And I like books. On paper. That I can throw in my bag and carry with me, slip little scraps of notepaper into, even write in the margins of.) Then I house-sat where they had a tape-driven Commodore, with games for little kids, and was hooked for life.
4. I make lists. Like this one. But not shopping lists; I always lose them, anyhow.
5. I have a live spider in a plastic container in the living room. Not for the first time. I usually have some sort of multi-legged "pet" around.
6. Yay, the sixth already! I am a fairly decent Mexican cook. But I can't eat beans and tortillas any more. (I cheat, sometimes.)

Rule # 4: Tag 6 people.

PZ sort of cheated with this one, too; he just grabbed the last 6 commenters on his blog. Way to discourage your minions!

Let's see ... who's on my Google Reader? How about these:

1. Clare, at The House and other Arctic Musings,
2. Pablo, at Roundrock Journal,
3. Shawn, at Prairie Preacher,
4. Bug Girl, at Bug Girl's Blog,
5. Christopher, at Catalogue of Organisms (you've been working too hard, Christopher; time for a bit of silliness),
6. and Nina, at Nature Remains.
   

Rule 5: Notify these bloggers. Will do, in the morning.
Rule 6: Notify PZ. Ditto.

There! Now I can get back to the Crawl photos. 'bout time.
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And now, half frozen, too.

It was another beautiful day in Strathcona and the streets were full of Crawlers. But out of direct sunshine, it was cold. November cold.

However, like most of the rest of the Crawlers, we kept going, and going, and going, not wanting to miss anything. We Crawled until dark, until our teeth were chattering and our fingers stiff. And then we Crawled back to the car, on the opposite corner of the map.

Heading back at dusk across MacLean Park.

This, in a corner of one of the studios, was a welcome sight:


Too bad we couldn't carry it with us.

I'm putting our photos and notes in order; we've got art, scenery, reflections, silliness, and a dog or two. Starting tomorrow.
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Amazed, astounded, inspired. And exhausted ...

... and, if the weather permits, we're going back tomorrow!


For now, one sample photo:

Ruth Sheuing's loom.

More about that, later. Now, I've got some sleeping to do.
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Time for the Culture Crawl again!

In a few hours, we will be heading into Vancouver to join the annual Eastside Culture Crawl.

Last year's sign, outside every participating studio.

From the Crawl website:

The Eastside Culture Crawl is an annual 3-day November event that involves artists who live in Vancouver's Eastside in an area bounded by Main St., 1st Ave., Commercial Drive, and the Waterfront. Painters, jewelers, sculptors, furniture makers, musicians, weavers, potters, writers, printmakers, photographers, glassblowers; from emerging artists to those of international fame... these are just a sampling of the exciting talents featured during this unique chance to meet local artists in their studios.

Purchase something that strikes your fancy, commission something to be uniquely yours, or just browse through the studios and meet the artists, learning about their specific works of art, materials and tools, approaches and techniques. This is a once a year opportunity to meet many diversely talented artists and view their creations in the studios where they work. Be part of this exciting event, which brings people from all over the Lower Mainland, and share in the imaginations that enrich our neighbourhood and lives.

And this year, we know where we will be starting; at my granddaughter's very first showing. Yay, Auj!

From there, we will follow our noses, and our cameras. No telling what we'll find! First report, tomorrow.
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Kelp

Head:



Tail:



Well, if you ignore the stipe and the holdfast, anyhow.

Here's a more-or-less whole one, as it washed up on the beach at Boundary Bay:


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Dog in a Creek

... at Crescent Beach, yesterday. His owner was tossing stones in the water for him to scramble for.

Every muscle tensed, watching.

Next!

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On a sun-dried log

Not all mushrooms need damp and dark; these were on a pair of logs well above the high-water mark at Boundary Bay beach.

Log #1: growing out of the side of the log.

Common Split Gills?

They look like the Common Split Gill mushrooms in my guide (Audubon). But the write-up says their range is "Maine to Tennessee, west to North Dakota." Which is contradicted two sentences further on, with "The Common Split Gill is found throughout the world..." Confusing.

The biggest is about an inch across.

The underside, showing the split gills.

On log # 2: growing at the cut end.

Oddly-shaped mushrooms, pinched at the centre. A couple of similar ones in the guide are called Saddle-Shaped.

These are a bit more conventional.

Slime or mushroom?

Looking like blobs of Silly Putty oozing out of the pores.

And dribbling down the log face.

Many of the other pores were outlined in this white stuff:

Hebrew script?

My guide doesn't acknowledge the existence of anything quite this weird.
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Very bad photos of good birds

We weren't birding, this Saturday; we had other things to do. We voted in our local elections, then headed for a bi-annual pottery sale in Tsawwassen. Afterward, we would have lunch in Beach Grove, and then, weather permitting, go for a short walk. All very organized.

The voting went quickly. But the procedure was different than usual; they gave us pages to fill out by connecting arrows, using their pens, not ours. And those pages were fed into a machine that swallowed them and left the worker with the folder only. She said it had counted our votes already. I'm not so sure I trust these contraptions.

On to the pottery sale!

Except that we got side-tracked. On the far side of a plowed field, we saw a small flock of white birds. We turned off and parked on the farm road.

Trumpeter Swans

Too far away for good photos; why don't they come this way?


Oh. They've got a windfall: plowed-up carrots. Do swans eat carrots? It seems that they do.

They honked constantly. It sounded like a 5-year-old's birthday party, with all the kids at once blowing those silly plastic horns.

On to the pottery sale!

With a slow-down to check out an eagle's nest by the highway. No eagle there now. (There was when we were heading home.) Slow-down to look at a blue heron in the ditch, another for a flock of starlings that rose in a sudden cloud when we passed. Slowdown for Laurie to get these ducks in an artificial pond. (Two years ago, it was a bare puddle; then there were weeds, now grasses. Ducks are a new development.)

The car is moving. Not the ducks.

There were no birds at the pottery sale. Not even pottery birds.

It was late, and the weather was beautiful, so we stopped at Tim Horton's for soup, bought a couple of bags of bird seed at Bosley's for my feathery family at home, and went on to the beach at Beach Grove. The tide was in, the birds were out. Way out.

Mixed rafts of waterfowl. Too far away to identify.

A pair of loons swam close to the shore at one point, teasing us by diving in unison, halving the chances we got at photographing them. (Laurie got a beautiful shot of two circles on the blue wavelets, circles where two loons* had been when he pressed the shutter.)


Caught them, just after they surfaced. Didn't wait to focus.

Later, in the distance, we heard them laughing.

On the chimney of one of the houses, a seagull posed. At least, until he saw a camera pointed in his direction. Then:

Mooning us.

Looks like he's standing on wingtips.

Back into Beach Grove for coffee and tea. On the way, this Downy teased us, hopping from the backside of one branch to the far side of the next.


Caught him, anyhow. Once, and blurred.

Time to head home. For us and these crows; they were part of a long stream (river, even) of crows going west, as usual at this time of the night. I've watched them many a time, tried to count occasionally; there must be several hundreds, maybe even thousands, wherever it is that they go home to in the evenings.


So much for not birding.

*I was wrong. They were mergansers, Seabrooke says. I should have looked more closely, rather than relying on the clue of the laughing loons.
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