Rockin' the Log Lathe

Not a song I need to hear more than once, but a great video nonetheless.

The Black Lodge

Last night I was called to a meeting at the Black Lodge, a new restaurant at 630 Kingsway, not far from my home.

For the past two months I have driven past the restaurant's non-descript facade, noting the crowds out front, either smoking or waiting for a table. But on this night I went inside, where I found myself in what felt more like a log cabin outpost than a self-conscious montage of film, literary and visual art references.

As for the patrons, half were calm intelligent-looking het couples in their early-30s, the other half gender clusters, also in their early-30s.

Of the five woman seated at the northwest corner, each sported a distinct hairstyle and clothing preference that belied a deeper bond, as if ten years earlier they were members of the same rowing team.

Of the five men gathered at the corner opposite, while all shared the same preppy logger look (short hair, two-inch beard, cardigan, gingham shirt, skinny jeans and brogues), each tried to out-do the other at the individual level, as if in competition for Most Garrulous Restaurant Laugh.

I enjoyed my time at the Black Lodge. The food and booze is good and cheap. I look forward to going back.

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"Morning of Drunkenness"

O my good! O my beautiful! Atrocious fanfare where I won’t stumble! enchanted rack whereon I am stretched! Hurrah for the amazing work and the marvelous body, for the first time! It began amid the laughter of children, it will end with it. This poison will remain in all our veins even when, as the trumpets turn back, we’ll be restored to the old discord. O let us now, we who are so deserving of these torments! let us fervently gather up that superhuman promise made to our created body and soul: that promise, that madness! Elegance, knowledge, violence! They promised us to bury the tree of good and evil in the shade, to banish tyrannical honesties, so that we might bring forth our very pure love. It began with a certain disgust and ended—since we weren’t able to grasp this eternity all at once—in a panicked rout of perfumes.

Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins, horror in the faces and objects of today, may you be consecrated by the memory of that wake. It began in all loutishness, now it’s ending among angels of flame and ice.

 Little eve of drunkenness, holy! were it only for the mask with which you gratified us. We affirm you, method! We don’t forget that yesterday you glorified each one of our ages. We have faith in the poison. We know how to give our whole lives every day.

Behold the time of the Assassins.

(click here for translator's notes)

"Morning Morgantown" (1970)

"Ladies in their rainbow fashions/ coloured stop and go lights flashin'/ buildings echo the strangers passin'"

A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

The sun is lower now. When it curls around it will touch the north wall and whatever stands before it.

Against the sun is a stainless steel espresso pot. On the wall behind it, their drawing: a grain silo, a cool Prairie morn.

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Digital Pumpkin

Carved, computerized? Both? These are the times.

Sincere Pumpkin Patch

Under an expressionistic watercolour sky.

World's Smallest Pumpkin

Tomorrow at 1:44PM (PDT) the sun will pass the celestial equator, just as it does at the spring equinox.

This year I will do something to commemorate the sun's passing. Not sure what that will be yet, but in considering it, I will include the potential for doing it again next year.

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Monetized Credit Roll

As the title says, "BC First Nations School Kids Grad Dinner Party Entertainment."

Moose Factory Residential School

The settlement of Moose Factory.

News Magazine celebrates Education Week.

Five hundred miles north of Toronto!

…one of 69 residential schools.

They learn not only the games and traditions, such as the celebration of St Valentine's Day…

…the mastery of words…

...the ordinary Canadian curriculum.

They come to school in September, go home for holidays in June; instead of the isolation and neglect of the past, a free and equal chance for children in urban centres.

A service begins each day. The school is conducted by the Church of England, though it is maintained...by the Department of Indian Affairs.

For the oldest Canadians, a new future.

Truth and Reconciliation

At sunrise tomorrow a fire will be lit at the Sacred Fire Site on the Pacific National Exhibition grounds to mark the opening of the Canadian federal government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Vancouver.

For those interested in submitting art works to the Truth and Reconciliation's National Research Centre open call,  click here. For those who want to read the consent form first, click here. For those interested in the form's "Option A - Public Education Consent" segment (and my bold low-lights), see below:

OPTION A - PUBLIC EDUCATION CONSENT

By signing this consent, the Artist acknowledges that the TRC and NRC shall have the unfettered right to use the Artist's work, on its own or in combination with the works of others, and to use the Artist's name, face, voice, and other identifying information, on websites, in reports, in all forms of educational materials and media, in documentary films, television and radio commercials, in computer-based and all other forms of media now or hereafter known, for public education purposes and otherwise in furtherance of the mandates of the TRC and NRC.

The TRC and NRC may edit, translate, juxtapose and synchronize the Artist's work as necessary for such purposes. 

The TRC and NRC may make the artistic work available for use by third parties where the TRC or NRC is of the opinion that the third party will use the work for public information purposes in a dignified manner that respects the Artist, including through film, TV and other media. The TRC and NRC will take care to protect the integrity of the artistic work but will not be liable if the Artist is not satisfied with the way in which the TRC or NRC or third parties have rendered the work.

The Artist also understands that by signing this Consent, he/she will not have any legal rights or claims against those who use my identifying information, photographs or documents in the above manner. The TRC will ensure that any use of the Artist's work is appropriately credited in all instances that the Artist's work is used, unless the Artist advises that he/she does not wish such credit to be given.

The Artist may revoke this consent for purposes subsequent to the receipt of the revocation, by providing written instruction to the TRC or NRC.

By signing this Consent, the Artist grants and gifts to the TRC the right to use the Artist’s work for the PUBLIC EDUCATION PURPOSES described below.

By signing this consent, the Artist acknowledges that the TRC and NRC shall have the unfettered right to use the Artist’s work, on its own or in combination with the works of others, and to use the Artist’s name, face, voice, and other identifying information, on websites, in reports, in all forms of educational materials and media, in documentary films, television and radio commercials, in computer-based and all other forms of media now or hereafter known, for public education purposes and otherwise in furtherance of the mandates of the TRC and NRC.

The TRC and NRC may edit, translate, juxtapose and synchronize the Artist’s work as necessary for such purposes.

The TRC and NRC will take care to protect the integrity of the artistic work but will not be liable if the Artist is not satisfied with the way in which the TRC or NRC or third parties have rendered the work.

The Artist also understands that by signing this Consent, he/she will not have any legal rights or claims against those who use my identifying information, photographs or documents in the above manner.
The TRC will ensure that any use of the Artist’s work is appropriately credited in all instances that the Artist’s work is used, unless the Artist advises that he/she does not wish such credit to be given.

The Artist may revoke this consent for purposes subsequent to the receipt of the revocation, by providing written instruction to the TRC or NRC.

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"Death Cream" (2010)

Yaletown to Chinatown

Although not part of the SWARM 14 program, the Contemporary Art Gallery took advantage of the event's second night crowds to open its Mike Nelson exhibition.

A couple of months earlier I was hired to write a preview of this exhibition for a lifestyle magazine I sometimes contribute to, only to be told last week that they had to cut the piece due to spatial constraints (this usually means an advertising deal fell through).

Here is the unedited (but paid for) preview:

Mike Nelson

Contemporary Art Gallery

September 14-November 3, 2013

Among the highlights of the 2011 Venice Biennale was Mike Nelson's labyrinthian reorientation of the twee British pavilion, where the English artist restaged a site-specific exhibition he made for the 2003 Istanbul Biennale that included his art work, his photo-documentation and aspects of the building it was housed in.

For his CAG exhibition (his first solo show in Canada), the 46-year-old Nelson once again reaches back, this time to give us two newly-minted commissions: the first, co-produced with Toronto's Power Plant, is a series of sculptures derived from his 1997 science-fictive installation The Amnesiacs (a "20th century biker gang" comprised of fur trappers, pioneers and historic North American outlaws); the second, co-produced with Banff's Walter Phillips Gallery, is a lens-based project derived from family photos taken between 1957 and 1972 by renowned Canadian anthropologist Wilson Duff.

While the revisitation of past works, not to mention riffing on the production of others, is common practice among visual artists these past hundred years, what makes Nelson's installations especially relevant is his treatment of narrative. According to CAG curator Jenifer Papararo, "Mike manages to convey a narrative indirectly, without a linear structure. I like this aspect of his work. I love narrative, but I don't always want to have it unfold in front of me -- I want to create it too."

Papararo is referring to a more open-ended, dialogical art experience, one that was once supported and encouraged in the modern novel (at least since the 1922 publication of James Joyce's Ulysses ), but over the years has been taken up by visual artists, many of whom work in a variety of mediums and, like Nelson, draw on a "vast cultural reference range."

Two local artists Papararo brings up as exemplars of this tendency are Stan Douglas and Rodney Graham, both of whom "share a strong drive for investigating conventional forms of storytelling, namely through cinema, theatre and literature." Of those emerging, she sees similar strategies in the work of Gareth Moore and Kara Uzelman; how they employ "underlying narratives to guide the material presence of their works and installations, using fictions based on characters to build larger serial works."

But if a further case is to be made for bringing Nelson to town, Papararo mentions the artist's ongoing fascination with "North American masculine stereotypes," those who have, for whatever reason, chosen to lead a loose "nomadic" lifestyle. "And what better place to do that than in Vancouver, with its fresh history?" asks the curator, before adding, "I wonder if that pioneer spirit remains? Maybe Mike will help us find out."

                                                *        *        *

From the CAG I peddled to Artspeak. Unfortunately, like the Equinox the night before, the doors were closed.

But they were not closed at Gallery Gachet,

where I exchanged nods with the writer Cecily Nicholson.

From there to Cineworks Annex,

where I watched a film/digital moving picture projected from an enlarger onto a horizontal surface.

Then the new UNIT/PITT, which is massive.

After that I pedalled two blocks south to East Georgia, for curator Mo Sa'lemy's to-be-returned-to Encyclonospace Iranica at ACCESS,

and, finally, 221A, for Brady Cranfield and Jamie Hilder's Due to Injuries.

My SWARM stops complete, I returned to my bike for my ascent up Main, eventually to a refurbished church that, like its former self, excels in the production and consumption of spirits, of which I had more than a few.

Gropp's Gallery Collective

Among the many stops I made during the first night of SWARM 14 was the Gropp's Gallery Collective at 144 East 6th Avenue, for the launch of Gropp's Summer Special: Art Harvest Showdown.

Houses like this one (a defaced example of Victorian Italianate architecture from the late 1880s) are rare in a city that has consistently forsaken its past for the future. As for its interior, it is hard not to look at the kitchen and think of the 1960s.

One work that caught my eye is a collection of handmade knives by Jordan Turner (no relation). Not just the knives themselves, which are carefully crafted, but their arrangement and display.

Another notable work is an Italian-made seven-foot tall limestone sculpture that stands in the garden out front, what I am told is one of the largest examples of 3-D printing in North America. The name of the artist slips my mind, but once I find out, I will pass it on.

The Opening of SWARM 14

SWARM 14 kicks off today.

The most westerly venue is Malaspina Printmakers Gallery

which will host NET ETH: Going Out of the Darkness, "a group exhibition of over twenty contemporary and traditional First Nations artists, among them...Indian Residential School survivors and their descendants whose work is a powerful testimony to their personal healing process," according to curators Tarah Hogue and Rose Spahan.

The most easterly venue is Equinox Gallery

where the New Forms Festival is presenting Scenes from an Unsound Mind, an exhibition that makes no mention of the artists involved and begins with propositions by literary critic Leslie Fiedler, who "considers the basis for all Westerns as a) an excursion into the unknown and b) and encounter with the Other."

While these two galleries could not be further apart physically, it is their content that could potentially pave the road between them.

Western Front

The Western Front, which opened its doors in 1973, is among the oldest artist-run centres in the country. It too will be participating in SWARM 14.

Here is a recent interview with Western Front Executive Director, Caitlin Jones.

Here is what will be unveiled tomorrow.

SWARM 14

This Thursday marks the opening of SWARM, an annual event (now in its 14th year) that celebrates artist-run culture in Vancouver.

This will be the first SWARM since last October's Institutions by Artists "convention," where artist-run culture was not so much explored (through critical self-examination) as assumed, asserted and, despite a lack of scholarship on its centres, academicized by too many tenured professors.

The picture above is of GAM Gallery, a "collectively-run organization that is located within and fronts ACME Studios in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside."

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Arm & Hammer (1977)

I do not like the way onions are represented in this advertisement.

Crow Mo' Habilis

A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

I awoke this morning to the echo of hammers. It is common to wake up this way. Construction is everywhere. A house that was recently renovated for selling is now under demolition. Plans for its replacement await approval.

Between these echoes a crow complains. Something that happened years ago, when a raccoon climbed a tree and ate its egg. The crow remembers. Every time the racoon crosses the alley, the crow swoops down in silence.

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Some Parting Shots

First Beach (or Second or Third Beach).

Parking Lot.

Restaurant Staff Room.

The Old Courthouse Inn

Besides the Rodmay, the "Historic District" has another hotel, the Old Courthouse Inn, where I breakfasted at a cafe named after a native daughter from the nearby town of Cranberry. Edie Rae is in her 70s now. Her picture is everywhere.

The Old Courthouse was purchased a couple years ago by a couple from Alberta. These two have done a marvellous job restoring the hotel, enhancing what is best about the building, without losing sight of how we live today.

During my second visit to Edie's I spoke with one of the owners. He said the former mall just south of the hotel was recently purchased by a West Vancouver businessman, with the intention of turning it into a "Granville Island-style public market."

Below is a picture of the mall looking south from the Old Courthouse (note the inverted Jim Price Social Credit campaign sign in the upper window):

Here is a picture of the mall looking northwest, a block east of the Rodmay:

Here is a picture of the Powell River Open Air Market, a long-running community institution that features food and crafts, as well as music, archery and a miniature train ride for children:

Labour Day

"In its heyday, 2600 people worked at this pulp and paper mill, now owned by Catalyst. It's down to 400 now [as of May, 2012], but could soon be zero after creditors voted against the company's re-structring plan."

Some Powell River Garages

Above are six houses, each with a garage (or provision for one, in the case of the last house). All six are located a block north of the houses in yesterday's post; all except the fifth and sixth run north to south.

The first two garages were at some point turned into discrete domiciles; the second two, like the first two, were painted to match the houses above them (whether the fourth one is a domicile, I am not sure); the fifth garage is at least a patio; the sixth garage is a ruin.

My interest is in the first two garages. Were they modified to house the children of those who purchased the houses above them, adult children who did not leave Powell River but could not afford lodgings of their own? And after those who owned these houses passed away, were these modified garages rented to non-family members, a supplemental income for those laid off at the mill?

Something I noticed during my trip to Powell River was a lack of rental apartments. Where did the first generation of single millworkers live, those too young to afford a house? Did the mill supply worker housing? What kind of town was this?