Ken Lum

Nice to hear artist and former Vancouver resident Ken Lum's voice on the radio the other day. Ken, who lives in Philadelphia, where he is Chair of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, was in town with his family recently for the launch of a new public art work in Burnaby -- The Retired Draft Horse and the Last Pulled Log    -- and a collection of his writings -- Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991-2018 (Concordia University Press: AGO, 2020). Last month the often art-suspicious Tyee ran a profile on him.

As with certain local artists whose work, whether intended or not, is ever present in our day to day lives (bus shelter ad boxes that bring to mind Jeff Wall, Value Village assemblages that do the same for Liz Magor), Ken's most enduring contribution to (evocation of) the Vancouver landscape might derive from his "Shopkeeper's Series", a group of works the artist began in the early 2000s that juxtapose small business signage with attached variable space. Often these spaces carry non-commercial, if not ostensibly contradictory, sentiments.

A couple weeks ago, while walking southeast on automotive Kingsway (a street Ken spent part of his childhood on), I noticed the sign at what was once home to Kingsway's first settler-built business (in the 1860s), the Gladstone Inn. Today it is Kingsway Brake & Muffler, where two of its employees (friends?), Om & Tho, have just returned from where we can only infer, or imagine. Yet regardless of where, I am sure Ken would agree that these two are appreciated -- and indeed missed! -- by those who have business there.