Just one thing, and I'll be quiet

Post #3 of Culture Crawl, 2009 series. (#1, #2)

I don't believe in artist's statements. Oh, I read them all, carefully. I think they're important, giving an insight into the background, values, and aims of the artists. But I don't believe them.

The thing is, the writer of the statement is trying to express in words what he has already said in his most powerful language; his artistic creations, the melding of his talent, his feeling, his skill, his determination. The written statement is a pale shadow only, a second-best.

It follows that anything I can say about someone else's work is a ghost of a reflection of a shadow. So here is a sampling of work we saw in this year's Crawl, with as few words of mine as possible:

Angel in a cage? Paneficio Studios

ALL SEEING, Valerie Arntzen. Wood box, found wood, fridge cores, spring, wood ball, acrylic rod, map. 

Sandra Bilawich. Vase, stone and barnacles

Arnt Arntzen, bowls

Arnt Arntzen, airplane wing bench

101 ladles.

I've been watching this room develop for some time. The artist wasn't in; Crawlers examined it from the outside.

101 ladles and a row of blue houses, three Crawlers, reflected

The only explanation. On the door.

Kathleen Barrett. Untitled. Root, box, stones.

Kathleen Barrett. Wire, iron ball, rusty pipes, root, board

Bamboo art. Rob Thomson

Crib board, bracelet, candle holders. Bamboo art, Rob Thomson

Chain and crystal lampshade. Artist unidentified.

Hard-hat table, clock. Noah Goodis, Ironside Metalworks.

Noah, with his chair storage solution.

Louise Francis-Smith. Wall of her reflected photos in the glass of another. Views of Strathcona, people of Chinatown.

'nuff said.

Shaggy, toothy, bubbly, blobby. And chaotic.

If it would only stop raining, we have been saying, we could go mushrooming.  Watershed Park is probably full of them. There's a yard-full of amanitas near the 29th Street Skytrain station, clumps of rotting Shaggy Manes along the street I take to the grocery store. We've got to go to the Watershed!  But it's raining all the time.

Except for Friday. The sun came out. And we skipped mushrooming in the wet woods and went to the beach instead.

We were in luck; we found a couple of rotting logs riddled with fungal growths, as weird as we could wish.

Great patches of these blobs of yellow jelly. The ones in full sun were an intense orange.

These pale yellow tongues were quite a bit smaller, and on the wetter parts of the logs.

Some kind of a crust fungus, somewhat like wet rot.

Another patch of the same. Bubbly center, with white fur borders.

Toothy stuff.

Different toothy stuff.

The weirdness continued, farther down the beach. We found this poor dead alien cast up on shore.

Not a Martian. (I think.)

These reminded me; I was going to post this 'shroom, a few weeks back, and forgot:

Big, chaotic mushroom. There was just the one, as far as I could tell.

If it stops raining, ever again, we'll go to the Watershed. If.

Sunny Friday

This afternoon on Crescent Beach:

And now it's raining again. I was hoping we'd had our quota for November already.

A Skywatch post.

The moths who came in from the cold

BC's Lower Mainlanders will mark this on their calendars; Thursday, November 26th, it stopped raining. The sun shone. Patches of blue sky showed up between the clouds.

How long has it been now? Weeks. A shuttle driver told me the good weather is supposed to last through the weekend. Incredible!

I was out all day, getting the car serviced, then waiting around for the end of rush hour to drive home. The warmth of the day had dissipated by the time I got here; there was a chill wind. On the wall by the front door,  a dozen or so moths were sheltering from the cold. I haven't seen moths outside in ages, so I went in and got a few pill bottles.

The moths were almost comatose; I could pick them off the wall like ripe fruit. A touch, and they fell into the bottles. I collected far more than I needed, three or four to a bottle, just because of the strangeness.

They went into the fridge until I was ready to photograph them. When I took them out, they weren't moving, so I removed the lids of the bottles. And they woke up all of a sudden, and exploded! out of there. I had moths on the desk, moths climbing the lamps, moths on my camera, in my hair, on my face ... There were moth feathers on the camera lens.

I gave up all ideas of careful photos, with the lighting just so, and snapped away, whenever one came into range. Here are a few of the results:

On my desk

On a lamp post and wires

Against the light of the second lamp

The antennae on this one remind me of mountain goat horns.

Perky expression

On a lamp base

And then they all flew around and away. I saw one on the curtain a few minutes ago, but now they've all gone undercover.

"Mythic and mundane"; the Eastside crows

Post #2 on the 2009 Culture Crawl.



The header of the Culture Crawl website features crows. Crows carrying a red-tipped paintbrush perch above the doors of Crawl artists.

A logical choice. Crows are the predominant birds of the Strathcona area. No house, no alley, no post, no green spot is long without its black-clad company.

Strathcona crows, beginning of November

Richard Tetrault, whose studio fills the central part of the Paneficio*, paints crows. He writes,

"Crows activate the urban environment with a presence that is both mythic and mundane. Omnipresent in my part of the city, the crow has a tenacity, adaptability and social quality that demand both respect and space. I have given them a special place in my work, in particular, as communicators and symbols of survivors of displacement and urbanization."

One of Richard Tetrault's many crows. This one is above a door in the very back of his studio.

He does woodcuts, linocuts, murals, and more, in strong, fluid strokes, vibrant colours. My favourites, after the crows (Go see some!), are the urban landscapes. One we saw on this visit is an old house, supported by and supporting flights of rickety wooden steps, almost ladder-like. Clearly Strathcona.

And here's a corner of his studio:

Creativity thrives on a diet of order scrambled with chaos.

The crow, up close, guarding a pile of sketches and books.

*I missed him, two years ago, writing about the Paneficio. I don't know why; I saw and appreciated his work then, too.

Doing the Crawl, 2009

This last weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the annual Eastside Culture Crawl was underway in Strathcona. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain the first two days, so we stayed home and did a much-abbreviated Crawl on Sunday. Still, we met new artists, old friends, a variety of dogs; we bought a few items and wished we could afford many more; we had a good meal at the Wilder Snail and coffee at my daughter's house after dusk. A great day!

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.

Where to start, where to start? On the street, of course; every jewel needs a setting. So, here's Strathcona on a grey November day:

At Koo's Corner, Hawks Avenue. Yellow leaves.

Keefer Street. Great flocks of Cedar Waxwings filled all the trees. This old magnolia is so covered with creamy buds for next spring's flowers that it looks snowy.

Cedar Waxwings in a tangle of bare branches

More waxwings

Sometimes, when a photo is too far away, too monotone, I play around with colour saturation and the sharpening tool. I liked this result.

Smiling squirrel

One rosebud, still planning to bloom

Berry bush. I have no idea what kind it is. I don't think it's native.

The fruits come in beautiful candy colours; cherry red, tangerine, lime green. They're about the size of a huckleberry.

And they're spotted.

Veggie garden along the walk to a front door

Trees like candles to light a dull day