Mary Janeway

Mary Janeway (1949-2022) passed away earlier this year. Last Sunday her life mate Charles Rea held a remembrance at their home near Trout Lake.

In the top floor room that is Charlie's studio a picture wall featuring pics of Mary throughout her life. The picture up top includes a number of Mainstreeters -- the "art gang" whose core was formed from students of Charles Tupper High School, and the subject of an exhibition (Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982) Allison Collins and I curated for grunt gallery and Presentation House Gallery back in 2015.

Mary is at the far-left of the picture, as you are looking at it. Between her and the three people standing at the far-right are the Mainstreeters, sans Kenneth Fletcher.

I had never seen this picture before. Had I seen it, I'm sure Allison and I would have included it in our exhibition. As for the leopard spots, they were a motif deployed by Western Fronter Eric "Doctor Brute" Metcalfe, and the Mainstreeters were known for inhabiting those whose circles they ran in (and around). 

Another artist-run collective the Mainstreeters paid tribute to/burlesqued was Pumps. Among the videos we showed in our exhibition was a fashion show the Mainstreeters mounted after breaking into Pumps and dressing in the clothes of its members.

I was fortunate to know Mary over the past twenty-five years. Her art included jewelry (many of my friends wear her rings), gardens and a range of insights that have served me well in my own art over the years. A generous and curious person whose convictions, though firm at times, were less concluding walls than topic sentence bridges. I will miss her.

Plastic Amp

Yesterday, while shopping at Famous Foods, I bumped into Annastacia McDonald (fourth from the left; or middle, if you count the reflection), a member of an art gang that co-curator Allison Collins and I have spent the past year researching towards an exhibition this January. The name of this gang (to paraphrase Talking Heads) is Mainstreeters.

Although Annastacia has refused our request to take part in an on-camera interview, she is generous when it comes to informal, and indeed spontaneous, meetings. On this occasion, she told me about the origin of Plastic Amp, a project she was part of in the mid-1970s.

According to Annastacia, she, Mary Ready and Paul Wong were hitch-hiking to a party in North Vancouver (after having dropped acid at Robert's Creek) when they found themselves inside a drugstore. It was while floating through the aisles that they came upon a selection of small plastic toys; and near these toys, a supply of name-tag pins.

Moments later the three were in the parking lot, where they heated up the toys and affixed them to the pins. Once assembled, they pinned the toys to their garments and, upon entering the party, Syd Morozoff shrieked, "Oh my god where did you get those I want one!"

From that night on, whenever Annastacia, Mary or Paul went out, they brought with them their pins, which they would sell under the company name Plastic Amp. For the longest time Allison and I did not know what Plastic Amp stood for, until yesterday, when Annastacia told me that the "amp" part stands for their names -- Annastacia, Mary and Paul.