Holiday '08

I went some places over the holidays! I took some photos!

The Canadian Museum of Nature, where I was awed by dinosaurs as a child, is undergoing massive renovations. Part of it is still open, and I revisited the giant skeletons, above. Also, my mom curated a nifty show there -- paintings by Barbara Gamble, juxtaposed with century-old plant specimens collected & pressed by Catharine Parr Traill (sister of Susanna Moodie).

Mom, Rene and I went to Montreal for the weekend, where we visited Rene's sister & went to the Canadian Centre for Architecture. There's a fantastic show on until April 19 called Actions: What You Can Do With the City. It's an encyclopedically thorough collection of urban interventions -- performance art, guerrilla gardening, parkour, anything you can think of in that vein -- from cities around the world.

Then we went to Rene's little house in Cornwall, which is stuffed with an eclectic collection of outsider (and insider) art and toys.



The next day, we toured a semi-derelict cotton mill, part of a complex where Rene dreams of creating a private museum, which would be like his house, but larger & open to the public.



Full photoset here.

England, part 6: Looking at London from the Tate Modern; Aren't birds brilliant!

I followed up the Tate Britain with a visit to the Tate Modern the next day. I loved the eclectic collection; I was particularly mesmerized by the room of portraits by mid-20th-century West African photographer Seydou Keïta, and by a room in which all four walls, from floor to 20-foot ceiling, were covered with original Soviet propaganda posters. And the Tate's worth visiting for the building alone, a former power station with a vast Turbine Hall at its centre and a 99-metre-tall chimney, from which you get the spectacular city view in the photo above.

The Thames Festival was on, and the riverfront was crowded with people. Directly in front of the gallery, a bandstand and outdoor dance floor had been set up, and a beginners' tango lesson was in progress. I snapped some photos from the chimney with my zoom lens.



In front of the gallery, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds had set up a booth & were explaining to people that a pair of peregrine falcons had built a nest way, way up in the chimney. There were binoculars at the booth through which you could look at the nest, though both of the falcons were off hunting when I was there. This was one of a series of RSPB events called "Aren't Birds Brilliant!" You really have to say that out loud with a British accent.

I walked to the British Museum after that; I've been before, and I got there only 30 minutes before it closed this time, but I love the British Museum and it was good to spend a little while poking about in the Enlightenment Gallery. There was a big exhibition on about the Emperor Hadrian, and it was "Roman Life" day at the museum; people dressed as centurions were wandering around having their photos taken with tourists.



Photoset here.

Next: getting lost on Hampstead Heath.

England, part 5: London! Portobello Road, and the first Tate

I took a coach into London on Thursday, did some laundry in my hostel that night, and set out Friday morning. This was my third time in London; I seem to wind up there about once every ten years. I've seen the big tourist draws before: Tower Bridge, St. Paul's, Buckingham Palace. This time, I headed first for Portobello Road. Looked at lovely piles of ephemera and junk; bought a china phrenology head! I am going to put it in my office next term & scare my students with it. Here is what it looks like now, ensconced on my bookshelf at home:



I'd seen ads in the Tube for a big Francis Bacon exhibition that had just opened in the Tate Britain, so I went there next. The permanent collection closed earlier, so I looked at that first. I was standing in the big central hall when a guy in running shorts went tearing past me at top speed, vanishing around a corner at the end. I thought, "Well, that was odd," then when it happened again 30 seconds later I thought, "Aha! Art." I asked a nearby guard about it, and he explained that indeed, the sprinters were part of Martin Creed's Work No. 850. I stood for a few minutes & watch them sprint through at regular intervals. It was pretty great: a nice conceptual counterpoint to all the gorgeous yet static Turners and Rossettis in the galleries.

After that I wandered through the Bacon exhibit. Large canvases of screaming eyeless popes and mashed chimpanzees. This being only the second night, and a Friday, the exhibition was well-attended. There were a few tourists in windbreakers, walking through silently, having run out of things to talk to talk about with their travelling companions; a lot of giddy boys in tight t-shirts, flinging their arms around each other; middle-aged men unremarkably holding hands.

The electricity went out for several minutes. Only the last of the daylight, filtering through the skylights, illuminated the gallery. The handful of tourists were all "What's happening? What's going on?" but the Londoners seemed to take it in stride, like they're used to things fucking up randomly on a regular basis. Soon enough the lights came back on.

All my England pics, including more from Portobello Road, here.

Next: The view from the Tate Modern.

Now growing in the Sculpture Garden

Katie Bethune-Leamen puts the finishing touches on "Mushroom Studio," a 20-foot structure that will be on display in the Sculpture Garden on King East for a year. Bethune-Leamen will regularly be found inside the sculpture, working on new sculptures.

It was Doors Open this weekend, but most of the walking around I did was unrelated. I saw some frisky baby goats at Riverdale Farm -- I highly recommend dropping by soon, while they are still tiny -- and the new statue of Al Purdy in Queen's Park. More photos.

The part of Buffalo with people in it

I was in Buffalo again on Saturday with Jamie, Alison and Hilary. We didn't get to poke around inside Buffalo Central Terminal like we did last time, but we did see a fantastic exhibition by Jennifer Steinkamp at the Albright-Knox Gallery -- huge dim pillared rooms awash with gorgeously coloured, precisely rendered video projections. Many of the pieces use multiple projectors, so that odd things happen to your shadow as you move around the space. Go, if you get the chance.

Also, this time we saw a fair number of actual Buffalonians. They were out enjoying the sunshine in the Elmwood neighbourhood, which, as I'd been told, turned out to be a pleasant place to walk around, full of nifty shops like the vintage clothing place pictured above.

We also went back to that massive Wegman's we visited last time, because we cannot get enough of the strange exotic American groceries. This time we found -- on sale -- butter lambs, a Polish Catholic Easter tradition, apparently, manufactured every spring for nearly 50 years by the Malczewski family of Buffalo. Here is a photo of a lamb made of butter:



Click here for more photos from the supermarket and an enormous mall we also explored.

Ranjit visits

I've known Ranjit via Flickr, mainly, since 2005, but he lives in Brooklyn and I'd never met him. Last weekend, he was in town, helping Jessica Thompson present her FreeStyle Sound Kit workshop. I went to the workshop on Saturday & then we explored Toronto a bit on Sunday.

At the workshop I learned how to use a soldering iron and make a basic sound circuit; I got to play with a glue gun and mess around with sound samples. My finished soundkit didn't really work -- it was supposed to be triggered by stepping on a contact mic, but wasn't, and it seemed to go off randomly sometimes for no reason -- but I still had fun.



On Sunday, Ranjit, his cousin Alex whom he hadn't seen since Alex was eight, Hilary, and I had brunch at Aunties and Uncles, then wandered through Kensington Market, where I tried to explain the cultural significance of the statue of Al Waxman: "Imagine if there was, I don't know, a statue of Archie Bunker from All In the Family... Trust me, this is probably the most Canadian thing you will see all day."

The one thing Ranjit really wanted to do while he was here was visit Active Surplus, which, oddly enough, I'd never been to in all the years I've lived here. I think I thought it only sold electronics stuff, or something. Wrong! It sells everything: hats and mitts, a dozen kinds of rope, a Visible Man, glass vessels of every description, ribbon, many objects I could not identify at all, and a wide range of odd clever gadgets I never realized I needed. (I wound up buying a pair of sound-cancelling earphones for my iPod, which work great on the subway.) We had a great time poking around. Here, the selection of electrical components transforms Ranjit into a blur of excitement:



The store is worth visiting for the signage on the bins alone; here's one of my favourites:



More pictures from the workshop here, and lots more pictures from Active Surplus here, including more fun signs.

It takes a steady hand

A couple of things I learned at the launch of new books by Stef Lenk and Shannon Gerard at the Gladstone last night: "Operation" is a surprisingly engrossing spectator sport when you play on a gameboard the size of a large door. Also, Stef Lenk is the unidentified woman with the awesome tattoo I saw at Scream. Another Toronto mystery solved!

Staring therapy

I was walking through Kensington Market with Alison and Torquil last Saturday when we happened upon a gazebo in the middle of Nassau Street, containing the above tableau: a woman was holding up a succession of small, random objects, and a man was staring intently at each of them through a decorated cardboard tube. A sign said STARING THERAPY. In the adjacent front yard, a yard sale seemed to be taking place -- mostly CDs and records -- and lots of people were hanging out. I spotted Seth Scriver, and asked him what was going on. It turned out to be a fundraising sale for Staring Therapy, a group show by Toronto artists in a Philadelphia gallery: they need money primarily to cover shipping. "There's also a Value Village in the basement," Seth noted, and lo, there was:



I went down and poked around and talked to the guy who had set the whole thing up, who I'm guessing was Sandy Plotnikoff, though I forgot to ask his name. He told me that in the fall, he will be teaching a thrift shop course at U of Guelph. It'll be a visual arts studio course, with studios set up in 3 shops around the town.

I got a nice embroidered jacket and a piece of vintage print fabric for a grand total of $5, then caught up with Alison and Torquil, who had moved on to the patio at Ronnie's, across the street. "That was seriously the Most Hipster Thing Ever," I said.

If you want to help out an artistic cause, pick up some great vintage clothes & indie music cheap, and experience the concentrated hipsterness for yourself, they'll be doing it again this Sunday, July 29th. Nassau St. across from Ronnie's, near I Deal Coffee.

Draw on the walls at the Koffler Gallery!

So, as I mentioned in the last post, I visited the Koffler Gallery last weekend. It's pretty far out of the way, but it is transit-accessible, and the current shows are worth checking out. "My Square Foot" is a "collaborative drawing installation," a lot like a comics jam. Four artists have begun drawing on the walls; visitors are encouraged to contribute. I particularly liked Jon Sasaki's contribution. He's painted a wide stripe of blackboard paint around one of the rooms, and plotted out the stars on it in glow-in-the-dark paint; you're invited to connect the dots in new ways, and invent your own constellations. That's mine above. I don't think those are actually the Pleiades, and I realized afterwards that a Pleiadosaur ought to have flippers rather than legs, but you get the idea.

If you go, go outside & have a look at Simon Frank's installation Imprint also. Frank poured sawdust on the early spring grass in the shape of trees, leaving shadowy tree-ghosts when the sawdust was swept away a few weeks later.



Square Foot runs till July 15, and Imprint to September 9, so you have plenty of time.

Escape from the Blob

These pictures of people emerging from a giant inflated burlap blob were taken yesterday at the "Activate the Park" event in Butterfield Park, the little parkette next to/underneath OCAD. OCAD's first-year Interaction Design students are obviously having way too much fun.

Another highlight was the human foosball table, which actually seemed to function really well as a game. Could be the next big thing! Look for it at your summer corporate picnics!