I had the opportunity to create lines live and it was so much fun.
I used a few prints from my Vogue portfolio and placed vellum over top. I created the lines on the vellum.
We posted the footage to Instagram and made it an NFT, you can find it here
Special thanks to CocoNFT and OVHCloud for providing me with such an incredible opportunity.
It’s that time of year again and I am hoping to make this an annual event.
Please come by if you are in the neighbourhood on April 2, 1-3 pm, at Jim Deva Plaza at Davie and Bute.
This is my third neighbourhood small grant and I would love to see you there. Special thanks and a big shout out to Gordon Neighbourhood House for continuing the opportunity for Neighbourhood Small Grants.
So come on by, grab a piece of chalk and draw on the pavement with me.
While you are at it say Hi to a new friend.
It has been an incredible year in many ways and now we are spending holidays in a familiar uncomfortable way.
Joan Didion passed away today at the age of 87. My favourite writer and inspiration. She got up every day, late, got a coke from the fridge and started writing. Every day began like that, no matter what. She lost her daughter and her husband and somehow found it in herself to go on. To keep moving forward. How do we find that kind of hope now? We find it in each other. We need each other. So the next time you see your neighbour say Hi. Make eye contact and greet them some way, you will be surprised at how this will change your everyday interactions.
This week I had a rare Tuesday evening off so I took my 79-year-old artist friend to the Vancouver Art Gallery to pay what you can night. Yoko Ono’s Imagine exhibition was on and I wanted to go, I also wanted to see if I could inspire him in some way. Joe has been a dear friend to me for the past several years. It is him in that image looking closely at the circled piece on the wall that simply says Hi.
I met Joe at a coffee shop when I first moved back to Vancouver in 2015, Delanys. I was sitting with my camera in my lap catching images of passerby’s. He struck up a conversation and we became fast friends riding our bicycles all over town and collecting things from the lanes. I often find things for him and drop them off to him. He is amazed at my gift of finding things, frankly sometimes so am I. One time we found a whole carrot cake, split it and both ate it within a few days.
The pandemic has changed Joe, it has changed all of us. I am doing what I can to show him the life he knew before the world changed. This exhibition was one way I could do that.
I have never experienced such a beautiful, well-constructed interactive art exhibition. The intention of it is simple. Imagine Peace. Yoko’s whole life has been dedicated to peace and this exhibition moved me.
See it, I hope it does the same for you.
I wish you a very Merry Christmas and I can’t wait to see you again soon, in person.
Things are hot and smokey here in Vancouver and I am having a bit of trouble settling in and focusing by sitting in front of my computer now.
I had to think a lot about what to post this week, I am knee-deep in marketing, sorting out my journey and making plans for my next moves, thinking through the need for the next moves and the desires behind them.
Alongside this time of processing plans and feelings, I am working on my virtual artist residency. Drawing, projecting images and drawing so I can practice with spray paint, using water-soluble paint in a refillable pen on vellum over top my large format printed vogue images. A trip to Layout Art Supply to pick up more supplies, spray paint, smaller refillable markers, different types of markers, more water-soluble paint in the colour of purple, some extra nibs for the refillable pen and some extra caps for the spray paint so I can experiment with different types of ways the paint can come out of the can. I am capturing my process during these days of the residency in my Instagram stories, mostly with timelapse videos if you want to come along and see the process unfold. I also created some long-form IGTV videos with specific goals of my process.
I filled out my final application for an artist residency in Montreal this week too. The application needs to be juried and accepted and I will not know for another 10 days so I will have to sit tight and exercise patience.
I think it is worth filling you in on my photographic process at this point because it also drives the rest of my art practice of continuous line drawings. The lines, shapes and the connection created in each image gave me the want to draw the lines to symbolize the process and how we need to connect, now more than ever.
We know each other by our lines, wrote William Blake after The Book of Ruth. He was referring specifically to the bounding lines that keep everything together, the lines that bind us, without them there is chaos. Chaos is unmanageable for anyone, the lines, the connections we have in our lives keep us grounded and keep chaos at bay. With this in mind, my process of planning and executing a shoot can be traced with a line.
I am inspired by an idea and reach out to the agency I work with to select a model to work with and book them. I then find the clothing I want to use during the shoot and print out inspiration images to use during the shoot as inspiration for the model and myself. I use them as a guide to keeping the original idea in mind during the entire process. I also use them as a guide for posing so the model has a reference.
I make JPGS from the shoot after a quick edit in Lightroom and send them to the modelling agency so they can make selects. I also make my own selects and add them to a submission cue. I always work ahead and plan my days by working ahead, planning for me is key.
Then I decide if I want to draw the lines in digital form using procreate and my iPad or if I want to make a print and project the image so I can draw it big or if I want to just use a smaller print and make a drawing with a 4x6. All of these decisions are based back on the original inspiration of the editorial I decided to create.
Turns out sitting down to tell you about my process became a much longer blog post than I intended and I’m glad. Sharing the process with you will also give you a window into where I am moving next with my art practice and my photography.
Each of these series of steps is long and takes a lot of energy. For a long time, I thought I just had to take photos and that was that, it is only now over a decade into this journey do I know and realize that the process is so much more than gaining recognition. The connection for me is the key and in that key is the line I am using to be so grateful for what I do and for me to engage with you.
Thank you for reading this far, I appreciate your support and am so grateful to have you along on my journey.
The images in this post are a recent editorial I created, some expired polaroids and images used in my formal artist residency application.
Are you ready?
Are you free September 6th and will you be in Vancouver for the afternoon?
We will be at Bute Street Plaza, at Davie and Bute on the North Side of Davie celebrating being together again with a temporary community engaged mural.
Come grab a piece of chalk and draw yourself into a scene with your neighbour.
Meet someone new, say Hi, connect and celebrate having some fun and flexing a creative muscle you might not have used since you were a kid. I can’t wait.
Special thanks to the West End BIA and Neighbourhood Small Grants for providing me the resources and venue to create this celebration.
I picked up the chalk today, I have 130 pieces of chalk waiting for you. You can have the piece you use to go and draw on pavement somewhere else too. Or pass it on to a neighbour so they can celebrate too.
Yes, I am. I turned 50 on July 5th and you know what I love my birthday.
This year made me love it even more because the celebrations are stretching into the month and the outpouring of love has me feeling so grateful that when I am opening my eyes in the morning I speak gratitude before anything else. Try it, it will change everything and bring so much more to you to be grateful for.
I have a friend who I have been paddling with for over a year now, we met during the pandemic and started to paddle our kayaks together. Now we both have paddleboards and continue our adventures outside of English Bay.
Knowing that I love my birthday we planned an adventure. the location was a surprise and all I had to do was drive. So drive I did, and the reveal was incredible. As we passed Cultus lake she was wondering if I knew where we were going but because my geography is so terrible I didn’t so I said no. Then 30 minutes later we were in our camping spot, exploring and inflating our boards to get out on the lake. The glacier water is beautiful emerald green and perfect for a dip on a really hot day.
The second day found us hiking to Linden Lake, the journey up the mountain was arduous but getting to the top and taking another dip in the icy glacier water was worth it.
We have paddled in Stave Lake, Pitt Meadows and now Chilliwack Lake. Another bonus of this fabulous friend is she loves to plan menus and prepare the food, so her gift was an entire spread over 3 days including individual cakes for each of us to share on the big day. Complete with champaign too. Remember my gratitude, it goes above and beyond what I can express here. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I brought my film camera and 3 rolls of the new Kodak Colour Plus film I picked up from Beau Photo.
To everyone who made this birthday so damn special, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am over the moon with gratitude and so excited for this decade. Age is to be welcomed and celebrated ladies, not hidden or fibbed about.
So the next time you see me feel free to give me a hug. I am double vaccinated and welcome a big squeeze anytime.
