August 17, 2010

Transplant

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I got the chance to work with Team Emily to doc­u­ment their lat­est artist vision, titled Transplant. The bril­liant concept:

This sum­mer, Emily Comeau (a fibre artist from Quebec) and Emily Cook (a book and paper artist from Ontario) will be col­lab­o­rat­ing to cre­ate an immense and inter­ac­tive tun­nel book made from local plant mate­ri­als to install in a bar­ren patch of city.

Transplant is an out­door liv­ing book instal­la­tion. Constructed from found nat­ural mate­ri­als both liv­ing and dead, this instal­la­tion is sub­ject to the whims of nature and the designs of man. Each page of this book resem­bles an arch invit­ing the audi­ence to enter the immense tun­nel book. Within the pages are paper pock­ets where seeds will begin to sprout as the struc­ture is grad­u­ally beaten down by the weather. Additional arches/pages will be added through­out the exhi­bi­tion as the evo­lu­tion of decay and growth take over. This evo­lu­tion speaks to the ebb and flow of con­struc­tion and decay as the man­made world inter­acts with the nat­ural one. The story of this project is one of trans­for­ma­tion and recla­ma­tion of the urban land­scape by nature. It is the story of a cycle of decay and rebirth and of a bal­ance that can be achieved when nature’s col­lab­o­ra­tion is desired rather than fought

The sun­light com­ing through the seeded paper is such a won­der­fully strik­ing image. This is just the first arch­way, con­structed on the lawn at the Ottawa Arts Court, which is a very high-profile place (you can see the Rideau Centre right across the street). More details and orna­ments are planned as the project con­tin­ues over the next year.

My desire to record things comes from the fact that most things in this world are so ephemeral. This being a struc­ture that can dis­solve in the rain, as well as being an area fre­quented by drunks1 and home­less peo­ple, meant I was pretty adamant about doc­u­ment­ing the whole process.

  1. As we were leav­ing the area at the end of the day, some guy just up and peed into the bushes next to us. [↑]
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January 27, 2010

Art for Haiti

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Thumbnail: Art relief

There’s a fundraiser for Haitian earth­quake sur­vivors at the Cube Gallery hap­pen­ing in two weeks. An auc­tion will be held after the view­ing, and any money raised from the auc­tion will go to the Red Cross. I’ve donated one of my favourite pho­tos, the very first print of “Carrot Feet” (to which I hold much sen­ti­men­tal attach­ment), to the cause. I’m also going to per­son­ally extend this to all other prints from my Fruit and Body series, so if you pur­chase a print between now and the auc­tion, I’ll put 100% of the sale price towards the fundraiser.

If you have art­work you’d like to donate, please con­tact me and I’ll get you in touch with the appro­pri­ate peo­ple. When peo­ple can walk away with amaz­ing art­work while help­ing those in need, it’s a win-win sit­u­a­tion. I’ll be attend­ing to meet the other artists and hope­fully pick some­thing up for myself if any art­work speaks to me.

From the Cube Gallery web­site:

Haitian Disaster Art Fundraiser

In light of the dis­as­ter that has befallen the peo­ple of Haiti, Cube Gallery and AfrikArt Konnection, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Paul Dewar, MP are call­ing Canadian artists to rally together to assist in the efforts under­way to make the lives of Haitian sur­vivors better.

Event Date: February 9, 2010
Event Time: 6 pm view­ing; 8 pm auc­tion
Location: Cube Gallery, 7 Hamilton Ave. N.

Artwork view­ing: begins at 6pm
Fundraising Auction: 8pm

There will be a recep­tion, music, light foods and enter­tain­ment at Cube Gallery on Hamilton Ave. The event is hosted by Oni the Haitian Sensation.

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December 17, 2009

More Couple Photography

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Kissing in the grass

Thumbnail: By railing
Thumbnail: Butt grab
Thumbnail: Face to face
Thumbnail: Couple in leaves
Thumbnail: Looking back

Cradling

Thumbnail: Embrace
Thumbnail: Girl eyes
Thumbnail: Guy body
Thumbnail: Guy fetal
Thumbnail: Posing

Girl with legs crossed

It’s SO great to work with a cou­ple who appre­ci­ates art…enough to be will­ing to get naked for it.

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November 6, 2009

University of Toronto Photographic Art Show

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University of Toronto Dentistry art show

If you’re in Toronto, you can check out one of my prints at the University of Toronto Photographic Art Show. Rita Bauer, to whom I owe so much in sup­port, asked me if she could sub­mit the print she bought from me. Also fea­tur­ing the work of some of the amaz­ing peo­ple I met the last time I was down there, such as Jeff Comber, who does awe­some work with skate­board­ers, and Kate Tarini, whose work with panora­mas won her best in show at Maximum Exposure last year.

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June 2, 2009

Summer House Show with Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously

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House show invitation, featuring Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously

Update: Sign up for the Facebook event!

Attention Ottawa peo­ple! I’m hav­ing an indie music con­cert at my house this sum­mer1. That’s right, it’ll be an inti­mate night of folk and rap songs with Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously. Remember these two from the con­cert I went to ear­lier this year, where this awe­some and impromptu col­lab­o­ra­tion happened:

You also may have read about Jesse in an Ottawa Citizen arti­cle last month, or seen Shane per­form­ing with Krista Muir over the last few years. Well, I wanted to see both these artists per­form again, so I invited them to my house. Not only will it be a night of authen­tic music (with another col­lab­o­ra­tion, I’ve been told!), but there will be free ice cream, and you’ll get to meet my cat, with whom you’ll fall in love2. Shane has also hinted that he might bring a spe­cial guest for the night. So come and meet the musi­cians, sup­port local Canadian tal­ent, and have a fan­tas­tic time.

  1. Click the pic­ture above to down­load the invi­ta­tion. [↑]
  2. No, you can­not take her home. [↑]
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April 15, 2009

Large Print

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Large print

Large print

I finally got a large print made for myself, of the frozen lake from my trip to New Hampshire. You really need to see the orig­i­nal from the entry (on black) to get an idea of what the pic­ture looks like, because the shot I took above doesn’t do it jus­tice as I was expos­ing for the gen­eral area in my liv­ing room, los­ing much of the detail of the pic­ture. At over 48″ wide and 32″ tall, it cost me a pretty penny, but it was oh so worth it.

After some extra tweak­ing on my end to bring out the con­trast, my awe­some printer brought out the trunks of the white birch trees in the left for­est using Photoshop, adding a touch of con­trast and detail. The pic­ture was lam­i­nated with a matte fin­ish, so there’s no glass to reflect (and hence dis­tract), from he win­dows. Then my framer used one of her new fram­ing tech­niques where she takes tex­tured fab­ric and stretches it over an inside bor­der (instead of a mat board), then adds a frame that’s smooth but not flat1. The colours fit right in with the walls, while the bor­der and frame matches the couch.

It’s the first pic­ture I’ve used to dec­o­rate the main floor of my house, because I’m really picky about the stuff I put up on my walls. This one was cho­sen because the sky, the sun­set, the ice and the pat­terns in it, all speak emo­tion to me, which is what I try to achieve in my pic­tures, and some­thing I enjoy look­ing at.

  1. This means I sign, stamp, and num­ber the pic­ture on the pic­ture itself, since there’s no mat board to write on. [↑]
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April 12, 2009

Welcome Home

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Joel and Charlotte agreed to take care of Dolly while I was in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the com­bi­na­tion of another cat, a dog, a new envi­ron­ment, and my absence, stressed her out. She started mark­ing her ter­ri­tory (on their couch), even with her own lit­ter box in a secluded area, so they decided to bring her back to my house, and let Julie take care of her from then on.

Cat drawing

I found this draw­ing on my white board when I got back. Along with an espe­cially affec­tion­ate cat, it was a nice lit­tle thing to come home to.

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April 3, 2009

(Mis) Understanding Art

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Few peo­ple in my fam­ily seem to under­stand my art.

When they look at my pic­tures, they make com­ments about the qual­ity, or whether or not they’re smil­ing, or ask how much money I make. It’s never about the mean­ing, or my intent, or what I’m try­ing to express. Only one of them saw what I was going for in com­pos­ing this photo of my grandma and aunt with the poster in the background.

They also talk through my videos when watch­ing them, when every bit of pac­ing is impor­tant, miss­ing sig­nif­i­cant estab­lish­ing shots.

Maybe it’s the cul­ture. Very few Chinese kids are allowed to be artists, as it’s seen as too risky or imprac­ti­cal. My gen­er­a­tion of fam­ily seems to be full of accoun­tants, and engi­neers, pro­gram­mers, or any­thing else with secu­rity. Even though piano or vio­lin lessons are com­mon (I can’t think of a sin­gle Chinese friend who didn’t take piano lessons at one point), it’s more of a sta­tus sym­bol to be able say that you can afford the pri­vate lessons and instrument.

This is prob­a­bly why I feel like I don’t relate or can’t speak to most of my fam­ily. When they don’t under­stand my art, they don’t under­stand me.

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March 1, 2009

Name My First Painting: Winner

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Before I announce the win­ner, I wanted give a HUGE thank-you to every­one who par­tic­i­pated in my paint­ing nam­ing con­test. It’s sim­ply amaz­ing, the num­ber of ways dif­fer­ent peo­ple can see the same thing, even from dif­fer­ent angles. I par­tic­u­larly liked the lit­tle bird in the left-hand cor­ner that Julie noticed.

Even though there were a few con­sis­tent themes, like flow­ers, and dancers, the types of titles sub­mit­ted were widely rang­ing, from:

…the abstract

  • “One” (by Nick)
  • “Life” (by Sabrina)
  • “We All Do” (by Xibee)
  • “Gogh’s Brain Child” (by Servant)
  • “Groupies” (by melissa)
  • “empower enflower”, “Mondrian Chickens with­out Wheelbarrow. Hold the Rain.” (by Pearl)

…to the straightforward

  • “Happiness in the dark” (by Edrei)
  • “Beauty in Black and White” (by Lucy)
  • “Daisies” or “Headlights” (by Joe Lencioni)
  • “Dancers wear­ing fedo­ras” (by Robin)
  • “Eruption” (by Lloyd)
  • “road­side daisies”, “rocket full of posies and bil­i­ties” (by Pearl)
  • “daisy Pop Rocks” (by guili)
  • “Black-eyed daisies” (by Pelf)
  • “An Aerial View of Sufi Spinners Bringing Spring” (by der alt­modis­che, schwarze Bär)
  • “flow­ers and squares” by bya
  • “Impact” (by Melanie)

…to the creative

  • “Sunny Side Up” (by Tiana)
  • “lush brush rush” (by Pearl)
  • “A muse, a spark, a dozen(?) daisies of inspi­ra­tion” (by Jason)

…to the sci-fi

  • “Celestial Blooms” (by Julie)
  • “Stellar Bloom” (by Steph)
  • “silent hill daisies” (by Rob)
  • “gen­e­sis” or “let there be light” (by John)

The Winner: “stroke of pluck” by Pearl.

I chose this as the win­ner because of how well it describes the paint­ing to me in such few words, while being wrapped in a clever pun. Congratulations to Pearl on win­ning the paint­ing! I’ll fig­ure out a way to get it to you this week.

To show my appre­ci­a­tion for all the par­tic­i­pa­tion, any­one who sub­mit­ted a title is eli­gi­ble to receive a 5″×6″ print of the paint­ing. If you’d like a copy, just e-mail me and include your con­tact name and postal address. Since I’ll be num­ber­ing and sign­ing each lim­ited edi­tion copy, I’ll need to know if you want one by the end of the month so I can fig­ure out how many to make in total.

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February 20, 2009

Name My First Painting

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The dead­line for name sub­mis­sions is over, and the con­test is closed. I’ll announce the win­ner over the week­end. A big thank you to every­one who participated!

My first painting

This is the first paint­ing I’ve ever made. I’ll suf­fix that with “in my adult life”, because I prob­a­bly did some­thing with my hands when I was a kid.

Julie, who’s very famil­iar with the medium, got me to sit down and paint with her. I was able to play around with dif­fer­ent tech­niques of strokes and the like. It was inter­est­ing to dis­cover the way the colours bleed, the con­sis­tency of the paint, and the tex­ture of the canvas.

It’s def­i­nitely abstract. I agree with Dan’s astrol­ogy read­ing, in which he said that I see colours dif­fer­ently, but that doesn’t mean I can cre­ate them. Frédéric once told me that it’s eas­ier for him to paint than pho­to­graph, because if he needs a cer­tain colour, he can just add it to the paint­ing by hand, whereas you can’t do this with a scene in pho­tog­ra­phy. My forté seems to be in cap­tur­ing instead.

Painting doesn’t come nat­u­rally to me. In ele­men­tary and high school, I went direc­tion of music (gui­tar, voice, flute, and piano) instead of visual art. In uni­ver­sity, when I wasn’t play­ing in bands any­more, I stuck with the writ­ten word, and even­tu­ally moved to pho­tog­ra­phy and video when that wasn’t enough.

So the paint­ing cur­rently remains unti­tled. Partially because I can’t put a name to it, and par­tially because I haven’t decided what it is. Which seems a lit­tle silly to me, as my need to cre­ate has always come from the need to express. Even though Jackson Pollock once said, “When I am in my paint­ing, I’m not aware of what I’m doing”, his paint­ings still had a direc­tion, a life of their own, much like an impro­vised jazz solo.

What do you see, and what would you name it?

Leave your sug­ges­tions in the com­ments, and I’ll choose a win­ner next Friday. The win­ner will win the paint­ing! Yes, I’ll even ship it to you. The dimen­sions are roughly 8.5″×11″ (or 21.6cm×28cm).

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January 25, 2009

An Opera at The Met

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When I watched Moonstruck in my uni­ver­sity “Music in the Movies” class, we stud­ied a scene where Ronny Cammareri (Nicholas Cage’s char­ac­ter) has a date with Loretta Castorini (played by Cher) at the Metropolitan Opera. She takes off her coat, and he says, “Thank you…You know it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Opera”.

In his face, you see that he’s not talk­ing just about the opera. After los­ing his hand and fiancée, he’s at the Met, arguably the most pres­ti­gious opera house in the world, with a beau­ti­ful woman in a black dress, and he’s missed this.

Even in the screen­play, there are set direc­tions for the scene when they arrive:

CROWDS OF PEOPLE in beau­ti­ful clothes fill the plaza cre­ated by the three great build­ings. A glo­ri­ous foun­tain filled with lights forms the cen­ter­piece. Behind the foun­tain, grand and splen­didly lit, is the mag­i­cal Metropolitan Opera House.

Ever since, The Met has been this place I’ve dreamed of attend­ing. Unfortunately, it’s in New York, and decent seats can cost over $100.

Orfeo ed Euridice

So when my local movie the­atre started offer­ing live HD broad­casts of per­for­mances there, I decided I should go. To ful­fill a dream in spirit, if not in the flesh.

Read the rest of this entry »

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October 31, 2008

Design By Chocolate

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Design by chocolate

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August 2, 2008

Pregasaurus

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Pregnant with hope

Tiana asked me to take some pic­tures of her dur­ing her preg­nancy so she could have a record of what her body looks like com­pared to the rockin’ body it was before. In return, she posed for some other projects I had in mind.

Pregnant body

It was an exer­cise in colour tones and mood. As I’m get­ting more com­fort­able in work­ing with RAW files, I wanted to try my hand at adjust­ing tint, expo­sure, sat­u­ra­tion, and contrast.

At one point I asked her how to spell “pre­gasaurus” (a term she came up with to encap­su­late her girth), and she reminded me that it was a made-up word, with no com­monly accepted way of spelling it.

Pregnant and sleeping

The media makes preg­nancy out to be such a glam­orous affair, with designer clothes and celebrity births, that it seems to be dele­te­ri­ously affect­ing the younger gen­er­a­tion. I wanted to por­tray preg­nancy in a much more casual, nat­ural light. Hence the ghetto T-shirt and the belly stick­ing out.

Pregnant eating poutine

Thanks goes to Tiana for not only get­ting nude for me, but for being so pho­to­genic at eight months through the preg­nancy, and work­ing with me on these ideas.

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July 22, 2008

Blood Work

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Vial of blood

This lit­tle vial, along with a few drops of anti-coagulant, is filled with blood. My blood. I needed some for a pho­tog­ra­phy project I’m work­ing on, so I got a friend of mine in the med­ical indus­try to take it from me.

Now I’ve both fig­u­ra­tively and lit­er­ally bled for my work.

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July 4, 2008

Emergence Exposition Opus 03

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Mixed media piece

Thumbnail: Mixed media piece detail
Thumbnail: Large pieces
Thumbnail: Handmade birds
Thumbnail: Handmade birds on windowsill
Thumbnail: Misun mingles
Thumbnail: Canvas embroidery
Thumbnail: Canvas embroidery detail
Thumbnail: Memory jars
Thumbnail: Female sculpture detail
Thumbnail: Frederic mingles
Thumbnail: Invitation
Thumbnail: Abstract piece
Thumbnail: Krista Muir and Shane Watt
Thumbnail: Metal plant
Thumbnail: Metal chair
Thumbnail: Rurick pieces 1
Thumbnail: Rurick pieces 2
Thumbnail: Rurick's titles
Thumbnail: Shane Watt and his trail mix
Thumbnail: Tree sculpture detail
 

The third Emergence Exposition was the first sum­mer show. With day­light com­ing through the house, and the doors and win­dows open, there was a dif­fer­ent mood float­ing around. People also dressed lightly and in bright colours, adding to the sense of airiness.

Along with the mind-blowing visual art­work, there were per­for­mances by Con Brio, a string quar­tet, and Aura Giles, a mod­ern flutist with huge lungs.

One of the most mem­o­rable parts of the night, how­ever, was a per­for­mance of an orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion by John Alac, where he tells a story of a man about to be exe­cuted, using only his gui­tar. The num­ber of dif­fer­ent sounds he gets from pluck­ing, tap­ping, scratch­ing his strings is quite amaz­ing, although what really blew my mind was the way he got the sound of a bell to toll at 4:06.

(You can watch this in High Definition on the Vimeo site. It looks much nicer.)

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