This week, I fit in a couple of shows, made a few marks, but mostly pondered.

Viewing

Close by me, The Gallery George was showing an Instagram group I follow, the Vancouver street photography collective (Van-SPC). I was delighted to see a Barbara Strigel piece, plus another one that really grabbed my eye, by Ian Galsworth.

As I told the gallery curator, I’m not normally drawn to figurative or street photography, but what they pulled together into a show was compelling and cohesive, down to the similar frames and presentation.

Then, a bit further out, I found Gallery B1 at the Beaumont Studios, where an artist collective, 13 Feet Off The Ground, was finishing up a show of their work.

Deb Bakos caught my attention with her hard-hitting quilt; I grabbed just a section, here. From her statement, Deb said she’s been working on her She Thread Project, “a three-dimensional vignette of individual voices that are part of the larger discourse around body autonomy”.

She continues with this take: “All of my art is work in progress; iperfect and eveloving, much like the efforts women continue to make towards a more just future for ourselves and our daughters.” Wow!

I was glad to catch the show just in time, and thankful to Alison Keenan, a collective member, for pointing me to it, and to this venue, new to me.

Meetings & Making

What if? I love that question! What if the free feeling in my scribble sketchbook carried over to a larger piece? I used some larger sections from previous mark-making on the big manila sketchpad, then added drippy marks with the applicator from a bottle of ink.

Ohhhh, this is a direction I like! I let it sit for a bit, and I may have added some lighter areas to the middle since then. But the elements: rose madder on manila, India ink on manila, poster paper from the street, and charts from my old electronics magazine find are all talking to each other. I also nabbed a scrap from artist friend Diane Kappa‘s printmaking calendar, because the colours were just right. And then to let the sepia ink go for a little line walk over all of it? Wayyy too fun.

I’m going to keep at this mark-making thing, whether in sketchbooks or in larger work. Like here, some square sketches I played with this week:

Both of these used some large graphite cubes working their way in & out of wet paper, in addition to the other marks and water added afterwards.

Pondering

Otherwise, I made tiny tweaks, and gazed a lot at my work in Lightroom. I have two series near completion: the aerials and the urban sketches.

Here’s how the urban sketches looked at some point this week. Are they done? Maybe. Do they have a destination? No, not really. I thought they might be interesting as scarves? Oooh, what if they were printed as posters, and replastered over their sources? (Which are now, of course, plastered over with OTHER posters already.)

Another option: a digital frame? I shared one with my family last week, and it was fun to set up. When I see my work on a screen — as a screen saver, or even smaller as on the frame — it looks most like what I see when I’m creating. Must investigate…

This piece, from the aerials series, looks close to done, to me. I added just a bit more teal to the top right areas for balance. Better? I guess.

What I’m working on, based on the Finding Your Joy class, is whether these pieces, done before that class, do in fact bring me joy. Or, should I just shove them into a project drawer and move on?

Maybe it’s time for something more radical, and less series-driven. Maybe all I should do is swipe ink around on paper for a very long while. I don’t know.

How do you find your way out of a quandary like this? Taking input, if you have any!

Previous Week