photos | los angeles + valencia

george bernard shaw | no brief candle

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

betty spackman | found wanting

Found Wanting exposes the bones of truth

There is never a feast without a sacrifice.

These photos are from Craig Spence's fine review of Betty Spackman's installation "Found Wanting," currently showing at the Penticton Art Gallery (until Nov 7), transferring to The Reach Gallery in Abbotsford in late January. Here's an excerpt from the Spence piece:

"Feasting without sacrificing is the very essence of consumerism, and Spackman makes that point with a powerful narrative, woven into this installation piece... We have replaced sacrifice – the act of honouring earth, spirit and the souls of the creatures we use – with mind numbing slogans and shopping aisle musac.

"Ultimately, though, these sleights of hand, which make us shop faster because we can skip the vital step of honouring, remembering, and perhaps demanding a little less of the animals that give up their lives that we may partake… ultimately these marketer’s ploys involve us in a lie that denies our spiritual connection to the things we eat.

"We are cut out of the life cycle, which ends in death and commences in rebirth.

"It’s not easy facing up to the truth when we have been so immersed in denial. It takes willpower to listen to the complete message offered up through the headsets at the Cantina, a homey kitchen 'filled with found objects from the culinary, the medical, the commercial and the domestic' realms.

"The smattering of jingles, down home recipes, popular music and reminiscences is underlain by a current of words that evoke thought in stark monotone: '…heat, beat, breast, chest, chill, chop, grind, bake, blemish…' The vocabulary of eating, like the scattered bones of the feast, is gathered together for us to witness. But, like heaps of bones, the words are given no structure aside from what we are prepared to lend them with our own thoughts and feelings.

"Meanwhile, the unavoidable pressure to move on urges us to stop listening. Our watches are the ultimate excuse for the dissected world we live in. We are reminded every second of every day that we do not have time to connect the complex dots on the dial. The stations of life as experienced in the 21st Century are witnessed in isolation, the butcher’s reality not connected to the vendor’s, or the consumer’s, or the victim’s."

Several months ago I took photos of Betty's studio, and of the work in progress. Kate Bradford has created a video documenting the installation, and the exhibition catalog features notes by Karen Mulder.

Hardy Boys | GET

ORIGINAL SERIES

9   The Great Airport Mystery 1930 

14 The Hidden Harbor Mystery 1935 

17 The Secret Warning 1938 

18 The Twisted Claw 1939 

21 The Clue of the Broken Blade 1942  (have in blue)

26 The Phantom Freighter 1947 

27 The Secret of Skull Mountain 1948 

29 The Secret of the Lost Tunnel 1950 

30 The Wailing Siren Mystery 1951 

31 The Secret of Wildcat Swamp 1952 

32 The Crisscross Shadow 1953  (have in blue)

35 The Clue in the Embers 1955  (have in blue)

36 The Secret of Pirates' Hill 1956  (have in blue)

37 The Ghost of Skeleton Rock 1957 (have in blue)

BLUE REWRITES

8   The Mystery of Cabin Island 1966 

10 What Happened at Midnight 1967 

12 Footprints Under the Window 1962 

13 The Mark on the Door 1967 

16 A Figure in Hiding 1965 

20 The Mystery of the Flying Express 1968 

26 The Phantom Freighter 1970 

27 The Secret of Skull Mountain 1966 

28 The Sign of the Crooked Arrow 1970 

29 The Secret of the Lost Tunnel 1968 

30 The Wailing Siren Mystery 1968 

31 The Secret of Wildcat Swamp 1969 

33 The Yellow Feather Mystery 1971 

35 The Clue in the Embers 1972 

BLUE ORIGINALS

43 The Mystery of the Aztec Warrior 1964 

44 The Haunted Fort 1965 

45 The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge 1966 

48 The Arctic Patrol Mystery 1969 

49 The Bombay Boomerang 1970 

50 Danger on the Vampire Trail 1971 

51 The Masked Monkey 1972 

52 The Shattered Helmet 1973 

54 The Mysterious Caravan 1975 

55 The Witch-Master's Key 1976 

57 Mystery of the Firebird Rocket 1978 

58 Sting of the Scorpion 1979

hachtman | marquee

new yorker | sep 13, 2010

calvin | the immense weight of glory

Wherever you turn your eyes, there is no portion of the world that does not exhibit some sparks of beauty. It is impossible to contemplate the vast and beautiful fabric without being overwhelmed by the immense weight of glory.

John Calvin,
Institutes of the Christian Religion

france freeman | iphone photos

iPhone photos by france freeman

freeman is a professional photographer

and photo blogger from seattle

geoffrey hill | accessibility

Accessible is a perfectly good word if applied to supermarket aisles, art galleries, polling stations and public lavatories, but it has no place in the discussion of poetry and poetics. Human beings are difficult. We're difficult to ourselves; we're difficult to each other and we are mysteries to ourselves; we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most "intellectual" piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are? Why does music, why does poetry have to address us in simplified terms, when, if such simplifications were applied to our own inner selves, we would find it demeaning?

Geoffrey Hill
Professor of Poetry, Oxford University
from "Who's Afraid Of Geoffrey Hill?" by Gregory Wolfe, Image Journal, Summer 2010

photos | found wanting | betty spackman installation

*

I took these photos during a visit to Betty Spackman's Fort Langley studio in February of this year. The first ten images are elements of the "Found Wanting" project, in progress at that time. The rest are general shots of the artist's studio. The completed installation is presently showing at the Penticton Art Gallery, where it will run until November 7. In 2011 it moves to the Reach Gallery in Abbotsford, opening January 27.

photos | piers, tunstall bay

iPhone photos, treated with filters from the Camera Bag app
Tunstall Bay, Bowen Island

jay griffiths | resplendently unnecessary

Play matters because, against the gray backdrop of a jobbing sky, play is the rainbow, is energy, is wicked flirtatiousness, is the helplessly laughing, the leglessly laddered, the God of Things which Brimmeth Over, the pint down the pub, the de trop overflow of excess, the resplendently unnecessary and the one-too-many which make the whole damn thing worthwhile. Play is harvest, is abundance, is generosity, the harvest of pleasure after work, the excess and the gusto, the more-than-enough, the gifts, the spirit of exchange. To play a game is, in German ein Spiel spielen, and the brimmingness, the spilling-over abundance of play is mirrored in this brimming-over phrase: spill it, spiel it twice — just for fun.

Jay Griffiths
A Sideways Look at Time

photo | lantern, public dreams society | folk festival 2010

hoagy carmichael | on stardust

"And then it happened, that queer sensation that this melody was bigger than me. Maybe I hadn't written it at all. The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, 'Maybe I didn't write you, but I found you.' "

photos | sunflowers

iPhone photos
filtered with camera bag

granville street, south of 41st
west side of the street, with the sun low in the sky