I am really excited about being part of the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire in June. Watch this video by Ryan Varga, recently shot at the Maker Faire in Toronto.
I’ll be sharing more about this event as we get closer to the date, but for now check out my Meet Your Maker profile on the Vancouver Maker Faire blog.
Last week I attended the book launch of the “This Is East Van” community project at the Waldorf Hotel. I was really looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of this because it looked so wonderful from what I’d seen online. Also, there are a large number of people I know who have work in the book, and that’s just awesome.
The project was put together by Erin Sinclair and Jason Uglanica, two East Van locals who love their neighbourhood and wanted to organize a community project. They did a really fantastic job of selecting work to include and curating the flow of one photo to the next. The book beautifully captures what life it like in Vancouver’s eclectic east side.
You can purchase the book online through Cargoh.com.
Thanks to an interesting project by Josh Hite and Scott Billings I had the opportunity to visit the secret stairway under the Burrard Bridge last week. It’s been abandoned since the 1930s, and when I visited I could understand why. I imagine it would be a creepy place at night because it certainly was during the day.
The guy in this photo turned out to be an upstairs neighbour from my building who I never see. It was hilarious to run into him in such a random place. He and his girlfriend were helping out as actors during the filming.
The metal column going down the centre of the staircase was set temporarily for their project of filming the interior of the stairway in a helical movement. I didn’t see much of the filming because they were still setting up but I was really impressed by how much equipment they brought all the way to the bottom of the stairs. The only way in is from the top of the bridge because the city bricked up the bottom entrance ages ago.
There was plenty of ancient graffiti covering the stairs and walls, which indicates people have been able to sneak in there in the past. I wonder if the Department of Eternal Art is still around….?
The whole experience gave me a killer case of vertigo but it was an amazing opportunity to get into this space which is normally restricted from public access.
The most recent addition to the Vancouver Biennale are a series of installations, The Blue Trees by Konstantin Dimopoulos, placed around the lower mainland. Boris and I went to visit the Garden City Park location in Richmond on the weekend, and it was quite an adventure getting there by transit. Well worth the effort though because the seeing the Blue Trees in person is pretty spectacular.
For more information about Konstantin Dimopoulos’ Blue Trees visit the Vancouver Biennale web site.
I’ve had my iPhone 4 for a couple months now and I’m really enjoying having it around as a creative tool. I’ve used it to shoot a couple timelapse videos while I worked away on art, but I also use it every day to shoot all sorts of photos. Instagram is my favorite app for sharing these photos, and also my motivation for taking them most of the time. It’s a photo sharing app which connects you with other users, but also allows you to share your photos with external sites like twitter, flickr, and facebook. There are fifteen different filters to manipulate your photos, and they recently added an option of a tilt-shift effect.
This is a selection of the many photos I’ve shared through Instagram over the last few months. I generally strive for sharing interesting and beautiful things – sometimes art, often graffiti, and mostly nature. The app reminds me of the early days of Flickr when sharing photos with a community felt really exciting and inspiring.
Papers
Antiquarian Books
Late Winter Sunny Day
Big Lou’s Butcher Shop
Boris
Vintage Dress
Cherry Blossoms
If you’re on Instagram, come and find me. My username is simply Rachael Ashe. I’d love to share photos with you.
I haven’t yet announced this on my blog as I have elsewhere, but in two weeks I’ll be teaching a workshop at ChalkXChange about making altered books. This is only a three and half hour workshop, and it’s on a weekend too. I’ll be sharing some of the techniques I use to create my book work, and hopefully send everyone off with a finished piece by the end of the session.
If you’re interested in taking the class registration is available online through Eventbrite. There’s a more detailed description on the sign up page and also in the workshop section of my web site.
Altered Book Workshop at Chalk Xchange
Saturday, February 19th, 2011
1pm to 4:30pm
593 East Georgia Street (at Princess Street)
Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z8
AMP Studio, featuring Valerie Arntzen, is having a sale of assemblage work and photography. She’ll be selling older work at very reasonable prices, so drop by this Saturday Feb 5, between noon to 5pm, and you may get yourself a deal on artwork.
AMP Studio
800 Keefer Street
Vancouver, BC
604-817-9130 for more info
Val will be hosting this as an ongoing event on the first Saturday of the month, from February until June. So if you can’t make it this weekend, there are more opportunities coming up.
How excited am I after a visit to the Beaty Biodiversity Museum yesterday…? SO VERY EXCITED! I could move in and live there forever, except I’m sure that’s not allowed, or very comfortable. I’ll just have to content myself with a yearly membership and frequent visits.
Our adventure to the museum happened on a spur of the moment Sunday afternoon. I was looking at photos of bones and things I’d taken at the ROM three years ago, when Boris suddenly remembered he’d recently bought an admission ticket for the Beaty through Groupon. It opened over the summer and I’d been wanting to visit, so off we went on the long journey to the other side of town.
The first thing you see upon entering the Beaty Biodiversity Museum is the awe-inspiring Blue Whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling in the main atrium. I’m sure the sight of it causes many a traffic jam by the front door as people stop to stare. I continued staring from every angle as I spiralled my way down the ramp to the bottom level where the rest of the collection is located. Standing underneath the whale made me feel very small and I couldn’t help but imagine it crashing down on top of me. (Curses to my over-active imagination).
All but a small fraction of objects are tucked away in a vast underground storage facility that houses the over two million pieces in the museum’s collection. It’s the storage that doubles as display and walking through the endless rows of tall cabinets reveals windows of skulls, taxidermied animals and birds, aquatic life in jars, fossils, preserved flora, insects, and everything else to do with the study of biodiversity.
As a child I was always drawn to the animal displays in museums, but as an adult I can’t help pondering the staggering amount of dead animals taken for the sake of research and how this contributes to the depletion of species. It’s a bit morbid to realize how many dead things are in one place, even if I do happen to have a fascination with dead things.
Boris and I started out following a tour of people lead by an interpreter but quickly got side-tracked by one wow-inducing thing after another. There was really no end to the captivating objects and creatures to look at.
This crocodile still looks ready to eat passerby – and with a smile I might add – even though all that remains is its skin. It was HUGE.
The windows into the storage units are sporadically placed throughout every row, and there is a variety of ways things are displayed. Some are set up to show objects at their best advantage, while others (like these) are pure organized storage views. I was amused to see even museums use shoeboxes to stash things away.
The Beaty Museum is a welcome addition to Vancouver’s cultural repertoire, and goes on my list of recommendations to locals and visitors alike. For me it can finally be a stand in for the ROM, a place I would visit frequently when I lived in Toronto and miss having access to. It’s funny how looking at photos taken at one led to the exciting discovery of the other.
Please visit flickr to view the full set of photos from my exploration of the museum.
A few weeks ago Boris and I attended Echo Chamber at the Cultch and saw two terrific bands perform – Wee Boy Pretty and Maria in the Shower. They each put on an amazing live performance, probably the best I’ve seen all year. I bought CDs of both bands and have been playing them almost non-stop since.
One of my favorite moments during the Culture Crawl was turning around and finding the lead singer and guitar player from Wee Boy Pretty standing in my living room. I did a bit of fangirl gushing and told them how much I’d been enjoying their music. They were just as enthusiastic about my work as I am about theirs which thrilled me to no end. Check out the video below to get an idea of how good they are live.
This week I’ve spent every day onsite at the PNE working on my installation for the Container Art show. I wasn’t expecting to be there so much but I had a few technical difficulties with the hanging on Monday and then I’ve been back a few times to tweak different things. Everything else I needed to do has gone by the wayside this week because nothing is more important than getting this show exactly right before the PNE opens.
It’s been a great experience so far and the staff at the PNE have been supportive and helpful. I’ve met some of the other artists also showing at Container Art and it’s wonderful to see the different types of work and how each person has chosen to make use of their shipping container gallery space. I don’t have photos yet of anyone else’s work because everyone is still in the process of installing.
This is what the Container Art Gallery space looks like from the outside, to give you an idea of what to look for. It’s big and hard to miss. There will be video projections and light displays on the outside during the evening hours of the PNE. On the inside there will be art, including paintings, altered books, and wild installations I’m not sure how to describe. You’ll just have to go and see it for yourselves.
In my container the twenty-five encyclopedias float along the side and back walls, and the multitude of paper flowers I was working on last week hang from the ceiling. The final touch was to add a few arrangements of driftwood, pine cones, sticks, rocks and wildflowers along the bottom wall and corners. These were a last minute addition I decided was needed because the space along the lower part of the walls looked stark and empty.
The work will be on display for the two week run of the PNE and access to the Container Art show is included with the price of admission. Check it out if you get the chance and please do social share about the show on twitter, facebook, flickr, etc.
