Rearranging the landscape with your host...

My friend and fellow artist Shanna Maurizi just posted this video interview that was shot last September in NYC. The circle hunt project further illuminated and, in this case, animated too!

Fire Work at Trench Contemporary Art

This odd assortment of watercolours and drawings consists of previously unexhibited work that shares the fortune of having survived being first engulfed in flames then thoroughly doused by the local fire department last Christmas morning. The show opens Thursday, January 6, 2011, 6 - 9pm and will run through February 12, 2011. Regular gallery hours are 12 - 6pm, Tuesday to Saturday.

For the curious...

A bit of background to my upcoming show Fire Work at Trench Contemporary Art in this article in the Vancouver Courier.

A Cat Bust

It may not be respectable but drawing cats is hilarious. Meet Mao, my cousin's Siamese cat.

New Work at the New Trench Gallery

I will be exhibiting a few new drawings and watercolours in a group show at Trench Gallery this December. The opening is Thursday, December 2, 2010 at #102 - 148 Alexander St., Vancouver.

Art for Life Auction

The Art for Life Auction is this Saturday. I have two pen and ink drawings in the silent auction. So...

Build your art collection, have fun and support people living with life-threatening illnesses at the Art For Life Fine Art Auction - Saturday, November 13, 2010 at Vancouver's Five Sixty Club (560 Seymour St).

 and eat desserts.

New Work at Gallery Atsui

Selections from my series of Carrie Walker drawings will be on display at Gallery Atsui along with the work of Kitty Blandy and Jillian McDonald. These drawings are portraits based on photos of women who share my name gleaned from the Internet.

Guest curated by Michael Bjornson, the exhibition title The Other "...posits the hypothesis that all creative expression is, in a sense, self portraiture or, at the very least, an extension of the way we see and/or feel about ourselves." The opening is at 8pm this Friday, October 8, 2010 at 602 East Hastings St.

Searching for the Picturesque in Ohio and Pennsylvania

Explaining the circle hunt...

“We have now only to request the attendance of every man and boy

who has any grudge or ill-will against the bear, wolves and panthers.”

-advertisement, American Field, March 1821

Shortly, I will be travelling to three known locations in North America where circle hunts were held during the mid 1700’s through to the mid 1800’s: Hinckley, Ohio; Richfield, Pennsylvania and Beech Creek, Pennsylvania. At these locations, I will sketch the current landscape following William Gilpin’s guidelines set out in his book, originally published in 1792, Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque Travel; and On Sketching Landscape.

While Gilpin was writing his tracts on the “picturesque” and promoting the gentile occupation of sketching the rural landscapes of England; on this side of the the Atlantic, Euro-American colonists were coming to terms with the hostilities of their environment through a strange and brutal ritual called a “circle hunt.” An account of the Great Pennsylvania Circle Hunt of 1760 describes the gathering of 200 armed men who, forming a circle of 30 miles in diameter, marched towards the center of this circle slaughtering every creature within its borders. Although many animals managed to break free of the encroaching circle of men, the final count of the day’s carnage included 41 panthers, 109 wolves, 112 foxes, 114 mountain cats, 17 black bears, 1 white bear, 2 elk, 198 deer, 111 buffaloes, 3 fishers, 1 otter, 12 gluttons, 3 beavers and “upwards of 500 smaller animals.”

I will be sketching the landscapes where these hunts occurred using Gilpin’s guidelines for sketching the “picturesque” which he defined as the qualities that make a particular landscape suited to be drawn or painted. With several dozen landscape sketches complete, I will return to my studio. Referring to historical records of the numbers and kinds of animals killed during these hunts, I will draw the animals back into the landscapes, allowing them to posthumously re-inhabit their environment. Through this process, I will endeavor to create a ritualistic reversal, a futile restoration, an archive and an epitaph, while at the same time illustrating the complexities and absurdities inherent in the relationship between civilization and wildlife.

The brutality of the circle hunt, which in its time was considered a social, sporting event with a practical outcome, stands in sharp contrast not only to concurrent ideas of the “picturesque” but also to present day efforts in North America towards wildlife conservation. I am interested in this historical period as it marks the beginning of a significant shift, indeed a rift, in the relationship between man and nature which, in turn, is reflected in visual representations of animals. This theme is explored by John Berger in his essay “Why Look at Animals?” wherein he writes “the image of a wild animal becomes the starting-point of a daydream: a point from which the daydreamer departs with his back turned.” With this work, I want to indulge these daydreams while simultaneously addressing the realities of our fraught history with animals.

I would like to thank the Canada Council for their generous support of this project.

New Studio!

and yes, that is a ping pong table.

one new work from Vermont.

Crowning of Flower Queen 1912

Evangelist, psychic, photographer, sculptor, recovering alcoholic, nuclear physics student and now, Carrie Walker, queen...

New Studio!

albeit it temporary. My studio for the month of March is in this old church in Johnson, Vermont.

The guts.

Studio Sketch

It turned out to be the best studio I ever had; my fourth one in Vancouver. The large North facing windows only leaked a little in heavy rain. Not once had someone spread shit on the bathroom wall. We never had to sweep rubble off the steps after it rained. It was neither so unbearably hot in summer nor so miserably cold in winter that I couldn’t work, I mean nothing more than a week or two knocked out if the temperature was extreme either way. Usually nothing a little space heater couldn’t handle, as long as it was plugged in the East wall and not the West wall so the breaker wouldn’t go. Recently the breakers had started blowing every afternoon despite our precautions but we fixed this problem by unscrewing a few of the overhead fluorescents. The smell of stale grease coming up from the restaurants below was easily cleared out by cracking the windows and running a small fan. The front door’s hydraulics were shot making it hard to get in and out with an armload of supplies but it was secure. The building was only broken into once while we were there, the thieves hoisting themselves through one of the back windows whose latches had all long ago busted off and never been repaired. The linoleum was crumbling under our feet and the ceiling tiles looked like they might come crashing down onto our heads but it wasn’t like the building would be condemned. The neighbourhood was safe at night, there was food and coffee available nearby and I had a number of friends working in the neighbourhood. And no rats, Sonja reminds me. As a minor bonus, we used to be able to give directions to our studio by describing it as being “around the corner from the adult toy store, just down from Puncturehaus, above the Wet Wizard bookstore.” It was perfect.

Fire, Fundraiser, Art!

A number of friends have kindly organized a fundraising event for Sonja and me. It will held this Friday, January 29, 2010 at 1727 W. 3rd Ave, 7 - 11pm.

Salvaged Drawings

As I watched firemen pour gallons of water down on my flaming studio on Christmas morning 2009, it appeared that I'd lost everything, all my supplies, furniture and a collection of probably 500 drawings. Thirteen days after the fire we were granted access to the building. Inside my studio (which I accessed by climbing under a fallen wall and slipping through a hole between two joists) my drawing drawers stood intact. My friend Dina and I removed some charred rubble from around the drawers from which I was able to pull out what turned out to be close to 300 soaking wet drawings. I spent three days drying out the work with blotting paper and stacks of records and books to press them flat. I've been able to salvage roughly 200 drawings, a little smoke damage and charcoal here and there, but most with nary a scratch upon them. Above are two smoke damaged drawings.