Two of my metal prints are in a group show at Grace Vancouver Church. The opening is this evening, Friday February 15th, at 7pm. The multimedia art show is part of the 8th annual Arts in the City, Arts in the Sanctuary festival.
An invite can be dowloaded here.
Arts in the City
Grace Vancouver Church
1696 West 7th Avenue
Vancouver BC
I have one of my Holga photographs in an online show at the Photomedia Centre: Holga Show 2.0. I had work accepted in 2006 as well, and I actually prefer the selection and presentation of that show to the current one. None the less, please check it out.
The Holga Show is our second annual show of fine art photography produced from toy cameras with plastic lenses, such as the Holga. Thirty-seven images by thirty-three artists were selected for exhibition from the entries received from our open call. Best of show honors were awarded to Tread, James Arnold, Nicolas Bellion, and Kelsey Jarboe.
And now I need to take my Holga for a spin. It has been awhile since I’ve shot anything with it. I blame the rain. 😉
Big Sisters of BC Lower Mainland is looking for more people to take part in their mentorship program in 2008. I became involved with the organization last year, and thought I’d share my experiences.
With the dedication of our wonderful volunteers, we are currently providing 315 girls with the support of a caring mentor– thank you! But for 2008, Big Sisters of BC Lower Mainland is on a mission! We know that there are many more young girls who need a mentor in their lives, so we want to serve even more girls in 2008! In order to accomplish this, we need more women to volunteer with us AND more families and community workers to know about our programs so they can refer girls to us who could benefit from having a mentor.
In the spring of 2007 I was looking around for volunteer work and I decided to give Big Sisters a try. It was something I’d been considering for awhile, especially after hearing about it from a friend who’d been matched with a Big Brother (the boy version of Big Sisters) as a young boy and his good experiences within their relationship. I didn’t know much about the program at the time, other than it involved volunteering my time and working closely with a young girl I would be paired up with.
My first step was to attend one of the many Info Sessions Big Sisters hold regularly around the Lower Mainland, to learn more about the program and it’s requirements. Once I decided I was definitely interested I filled out an application package, attended an orientation session with other hopeful candidates, and then a one-on-one screening interview with a Big Sister councelor. It was a couple of months before Big Sisters got back to me about a potential match with a teenaged girl named Lauren. They put a lot of care and attention into finding just the right combination of people because they want the relationship to last.
In the beginning it felt very odd and awkward, to both Lauren and I, to hang out because essentially ours is an arranged relationship even though we are both willingly involved. It has taken time to get to know one another and become comfortable talking about ourselves, but it’s totally worth it. It was also tricky between both our schedules to come up with a regular day and time to get together, but seeing each other the same day every week has been key in helping the relationship grow. My “Little Sister” is a wonderful beautiful person, full of life and intelligence, is lots of fun to be around, and shares my love of photography.I feel lucky to know Lauren and she would not have come into my life any other way.
If you are interested in becoming a Big Sister yourself, please call Call 604.873.4525 ext. 300 or email info(at)bigsisters(dot)bc(dot)ca. Information about qualifications can be found here.
Two of my metal prints made their way to Los Angeles a few weeks back, and are on display as part of a group show called the Living Room at Metro Gallery. The lovely Jody Miller did me the kind favour of visiting the gallery to take a few installation shots on my behalf. The work looks wonderful.
“Living Room: Conscious Art and Design,” organized by guest curator Diana Barash, is an exhibition about artists and designers that are inspired to create artwork which reflects their sensitivity to the environment."
Living Room: Conscious art and design
Metro Gallery Contemporary Fine Art
November 17th 2007 to January 5th, 2008
1835 Hyperion Avenue, Los Angeles
Gallery hours: Wed – Sat 12 to 7pm
As an artist, I’ve found it very difficult to develop the skill of promoting and selling my work. I think this is something many artists struggle with and why so many of us never get anywhere. Sometimes it can be a lack of confidence (“why would anyone be interested in my stuff…?) but often it can be a dislike of self promotion. Somehow, somewhere, someone gave the art of putting yourself out there and promoting your work a bad name, but really its just in how you do it.
I’ve learned by making my work known, by putting it “out there”, I get to do more of it and the more places people can see my work the more it gets seen. And if all goes well when having a public exhibition and I sell my work, it helps me afford to make more of it.
And now here’s the part where I tell you the two places online where my work can be purchased:
rashe.etsy.com
rachaela.imagekind.com
I have just uploaded a fresh batch of small metal prints to etsy, featuring a selection of holga tree photos from my exhibition at Radha Yoga in October. And on Imagekind I have made some of my photoshop image manipulations available as prints. Please do check them out.
My first solo show in two years opens tomorrow evening at Radha Yoga and Eatery in Vancouver. It has been the biggest personal project I’ve ever worked on, one that allowed me to further explore a heat transfer printing process I’ve grown to love. I have been working on this show for the last six to eight months, slowly streamlining the imagery I wanted to use based around the idea of tree photos taken with a Holga camera, and figuring out the technical aspects of creating and displaying large scale metal prints. It was definitely a sort-things-out-as-I-go-along process, so in the end I’m glad I was able to reproduce the type of work I was envisioning in my head.
There are sixteen pieces in the show, three are diptychs, and the rest are single images divided and printed onto four metal panels. I chose to create these works in two and four panels due to limitations in the size of heat transfer paper and the heat press itself. Each panel has been individually hand-printed on aluminum and assembled into the finished product by me, in order to create a one-of-a-kind piece of art. Everything is mounted onto a wooden support frame on the back. These are definitely handmade pieces of art, down to the inconsistencies and imperfections that hopefully add and not subtract from each piece.
This show would not have been possible without the help of many of the lovely people I am lucky enough to call friends. Thank you to the following people: Nicole Dextras for the use of her studio and heatpress, and also for her invaluable support and feedback; Susie Gardner and Travis Smith for their very generous birthday present; Mandy Moore, Kaishin Chu, Ben Damm, Hendrik Kueck, Kathryn Ashe, and Monica Ashe for their friendship, love and support from both near and afar.
One of the gifts I was given for Christmas this past year was a one month unlimited pass to Semperviva yoga studio. I activated the pass in mid-February, purchased another one on-going when it expired and have been attending yoga class almost daily ever since. It was the kind of gift that kept on giving, and the exact kick-in-the-ass I needed to get back into the regular yoga practice I kept thinking about instead of doing. Semperviva is my yoga studio of choice for the excellent roster of teachers, and their great deal for an unlimited monthly pass ($80!). I was a regular visitor there when I first moved to Vancouver three years ago, but stopped attending after six months mostly due to lack of funds. Now I feel like I can’t afford not to go because I feel so much mentally and physically happier with regular yoga.
As part of my commitment to yoga I have decided to participate in Vancouver’s Yogathon on July 21st, at UBC’s Thunderbird Stadium. The yogathon requires participants to do as many sun salutation as possible in the 108 minute timeframe. The event is to raise funds for Camp Moomba, a place for children whose lives have been impacted with HIV/AIDS. I have a personal fundraising page setup and hope to donate $200 to the charity. Please sponsor me if you can.
On Friday, one of my photos from this same series was featured on the front page of Utata.org. The text was wonderfully written by Greg Fallis, and couldn’t be more perfect an accompanyment. It was a wonderful treat to end the week with.
I can’t remember if I have mentioned this already, but I have recently added more prints for sale in my etsy shop.
I’m hoping to upload more soon, once things settle down and I get the chance to scan my most recent holga photos.
A special thank you to Liz Shuman for blogging about my store on Abstract the Day earlier this week, and to Leslie Webster for the featured gallery of my work on Apartment Therapy: San Francisco today.
[Edit: I meant to add this to the entry earlier…]
There are two things you should check out this weekend if you live in the Vancouver area: Vancouver Moving Theatre’s production called “We’re all in this Together. The Shadows Project: Addiction and Recovery” ends on Sunday. The play is inspired by the ancient tradition of shadow theatre (see the photo on their website) using stories of the Downtown Eastside. It features a cast of thirty community actors performing as shadow-casters and musicians.
There is an open house at the Orphaned Wildlife Rehabilitation Society (O.W.L) this Saturday and Sunday. I learned about this organization, located in Delta, after reading Conversations with an Eagle by Brenda Cox. The book is her personal account of working closely with a Bald Eagle named Ichabod, during her years of volunteer work at O.W.L. The open house gives people the opportunity to see more of behind-the-scenes at the rehab centre than is normal. I would really love to go to this, but sadly can not make it this weekend.
I’ve been wanting to try out a few of the modifications that are possible with a holga. There are many out there, but the three I am most intrigued by are panoramas, macros, and shooting with 35mm. Last week through a contact of mine on flickr I discovered a simple variation on the “macro mod”, where I can use my close-up filters to get closer to my subject than the one meter minimum a holga normally allows. If you don’t have close-up filters, there is an article on Toycamera.com with three variations for macro modifications.
I’m really happy with the results from my first roll. Even though I chose flowers as my subject for the test I can see potential in using this technique for shooting portraits. It’s always frustrated me to keep my distance when photographing people with the holga, and now I can get much closer.
I have a gallery of the night shots taken this past winter up at Toycamera.com. Please check it out.