Ask not why the giant doily
After a long and often painful labour, I’m happy to introduce…the twins! I’m not sure why I plumped up the two eight-foot-wide doilies, freshly completed today, for their first picture. It…
Thinking outside our little boxes
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who is aching to make a break from the indoors and take it all outside. Now that the weather is improving (well, theoretically at this writing) thoughts go to…
Read before playing
Everything’s coming up poodles. A few months ago I was trying to dog a persistent human-sized crocheted poodle toilet-paper-roll cover. Then it was the whole public art controversy surrounding…
Oh the laces you’ll go when you’re distracted
We are to understand that being distracted is bad, and being focused is good. Being focused will get the job done while being in the moment is not productive — productivity being the cornerstone…
Already missing what I’m not looking for
I’m addicted to Google Images and I’m not happy about it. For the last several decades, most of my ideas have come from markings on wood pulp, specifically newspapers. And even though it’s now…
Over-thinking will be the death of me
My biggest obstacle is over-thinking — not to be confused with big thinking. Over-thinking is my umbrella term for all the second-guessing, the predicting, the analyzing and the re-thinking that…
Art that has tongues wagging is working
A few weeks back, one of the local dailies ran a staff photo of a grumpy-looking woman wearing a hand-drawn sign around her neck that read: “Mount Pleasant needs a pool not a poodle on a pole.”…
The art of designing beyond the outdorky
I’m not a sports person. Elementary-school Sports Day was an annual hell . But the bike-decorating portion, now that was my kind of competition. Even today I get choked up when I catch a glimpse of…
Waiting to be inspired by hoardy pile of plastic
I’ve been left high and dry, marooned by a foul waste stream — a particular category of non-recycled stuff that ends up in Vancouver’s landfill. This category consists of many boxes of…
Big ideas behind chit-chat format
As much as I would like to believe I have enough focus to while away an evening at an art or design lecture, my attention span is… this keyboard is filthy. What was I saying? Our hyper-accelerated…
Power struggles embedded in newspaper photos
Venerable city newspaper reporter John Mackie has an eye for old things Vancouver . He was intrinsic in the broad-daylighting of Fred Herzog ’s mid-century images, and more recently he has given…
Out of analysis and into the mystic
I do so love a shit-disturber , whether it’s fearless Middle-East reporter/author Robert Fisk ripping apart mainstream media last Saturday night downtown or the venerable art critic Jan Verwoert at…
You can’t keep a good maker down
My mother might remember this: as a kid, I once declared that I could handle a stint in jail, because I would spend the time dressing up the place by making decorations out of any old bits and…
A creative solution to a hoardy habit
This would be the sequel to the New Year’s resolution post a couple of weeks back, in which I vowed to part ways with years of art projects from past classes and phases, and future artworks that…
Big crush in a small art town
It’s a quandary , going to a commercial-gallery show opening for the likes of Important Canadian Artist Attila Richard Lukacs . I’m a short person and this is a small art town, which means I end…
That’s not clutter; that’s future artwork. Maybe
My New Year’s resolution this year is D&D: Divest and Dance. The idea is that if I clear some space by divesting myself of my art stuff I’ll have more room to dance. Or maybe it was: I’ll be…
Creative collaboration takes physical feats to new heights
I got the gift of a visual feast for Christmas: a date to see some performance-art mastery by Cirque du Soleil. And it was no less a sensory experience than the first show I saw when Alegria debuted…
Painting like no one is watching
Painting feels a lot like grasping for words to me. There’s general comprehension there, thanks to some study, but I don’t have enough command of my own visual language to express myself with…
Seasonal spectacle lights up the senses
Art is in the everyday, even at the Van Dusen Gardens on another miserable rainy night last week. There’s no narrative in those hundreds of thousands of LED coloured lightbulbs strung through the…
That poodle is telling us something
At first I didn’t see what the fuss was about at the official artwork unveiling last weekend at Main and 18th. Unless the soggy mess of dirt and blue metal fencing in front of the new condo complex…
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