Queen's Lake 2, BHP.
2007

A serious lack of posts lately.
Too much day job/photography/house packing, not enough quiet time with the compy. Out of range for the next few days while we move house, but back online sometime around the 2nd. Drop by then.

Maybe Jesus was a shark.

Just back from two days in Vancouver, a city I barely recognize these days. The Cambie St. skytrain expansion, along with an ever expanding army of glass condominiums, have rendered obsolete my old memories of the downtown. There's even a massive condo going up on the site of the old Kingsway flea market, a spot I would have thought immune if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes (face plastered to the bus window, neck craned back to take in the ridiculously incongruous size, extremely prolonged "what...the...fuck?" escaping my lips.)
If you haven't been to Vancouver in a few years, take a trip to the corner of Cambie and Broadway and do a slow 360. Move over Fred Herzog, it's Ed Burtynsky time.

Highlights:

Rum & coke's, white russians, fried shrimp, barbeque chicken, california rolls, baked beans, naniamo bars, chocolate mouse and vanilla cheesecake at my friends Steve and Erica's wedding reception. Damn guys.

A coffee fueled visit to a local community garden with pal Chris Brayshaw - photography, careerism, anti-depressants, and the 'garden as microcosmic model of community,' all up for discussion.

Jennifer Mcmackon's excellent "Now and Next Minute," (above) at CSA.

An excellent photo by my friend Kyath Battie, currently roaming the wilds of Langford with my old Pentax K1000 (Purchased used in 1991 and still going strong!)

Went to see an exhibition of Mowry Baden's notebook drawings at Deluge Gallery yesterday. Mostly ballpoint-pen attempts at conveying physical movement, spatial relationships, kinetic objects. Clearly someone using drawing as an aid to sculptural practice, the lines impatient to get on with the real thing. The good ones had an infectious, unfinished energy because of this ( think Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" drawn in 30 seconds on a restaurant napkin.) The weaker, more labored, ones reminded me of Joe Johnston production sketches, minus the droids and x-wings.

I posted the above drawing for it's text, not it's drawing. I like the way Baden's poetic descriptions of visual phenomenon ( "A pale mold, spreading, fading.") are forced to share the page with his disgruntled musings on fulbright applicants. Ah, a life in the arts.

Collected moving boxes on the way home from the gallery. A dumpster here, a supermarket there. The apartment is currently in flux. Kitchen being slowly dismantled, bookshelves empty, art coming down, polyfill being squeezed into every available nail hole and crevice. Bits of wall and floor that haven't seen sun in 18 months now suddenly peeking out from under moved pictures and dragged bookshelves. Our residence coming down like an installation, the space doing a long exhale.

Overheard this morning while standing in line at the local bottle depot:

Man #1: That little chink is always trying to steal my cart. He gets it half loaded and then freaks out when I take it back. "MINE!" he sez! "MINE!"

Man #2: Oh yeah?

Man #1: Oh hell yeah. (In 'china man' voice) "Me want your country and your bottles too!"

Man #2: Bwahahahahaha

(at this point a tiny old asian man hurries past with a load of bottles.)

Man#2: (blocking his path for a second and pulling his eyes back into slits) "MINE!!!"

Old man dodges to the left and disappears out the back.

Laughter.

High fives.

JT considers early suicide via 1-2 bottle fight.

Old Joy

An extremely subtle, almost ambient, ode to the passing of a friendship. More importantly, a film that manages to speak about right now, this specific moment in history, without resorting to the predictable sturm und drang of Babel, or the straining affectation of Me and You and Everyone We Know.
It's an intensely quiet piece of work (the trailer probably exhausts half the dialogue of the entire film,) and movingly optimistic in it's respect for it's audience's intelligence. Like a cool glass of water after weeks of warm coca cola. It's also utterly non-partisan in it's treatment of it's two main characters, both of whom are alternatingly likable and pathetic, and both of whom I recognized all to well.
Go watch it.

A sneak preview of the new pad (with someone else's stuff in it,) found after two stressful weeks of apartment hunting. It's a corner suite on the second floor of an old house in Fairfield, and it's pretty damn nice. It's also $200 cheaper than our last place, for about the same amount of space, plus a back deck and a big backyard.

Selling point for V: personal garden plot and a giant unused greenhouse.
Selling point for JT: that big built-in bookshelf on the left there.

Ya'll come see us some time!
(and excuse the "poor man's Scott Mcfarland" photo-stitching)

Now and Next Minute

Jennifer McMackon

5 May 2007 -- 3 June 2007

Curated by Christopher Brayshaw

Please join us for an exhibition reception on Sunday, 13 May 2007,
11am-2pm

CSA Space
#5 - 2414 Main Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
V5T 3E2
www.csaspace

A slow loading, select chronology of Jennifer's work can be seen here. Questions, as usual, can be answered here.

You May Know Carrie From Her Vibrant Presence
Exhibition catalogue, 27 pages, Kristi Engle Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.

A surprise gift from the artist, via canada post. Thanks Carrie!

-courtesy James Affinito