Sunday, May 27, 2012

I lived Saturday in three dimensions.

Wen Wei Wang

At a 2 pm matinee performance of the yearly event  held at the Vancouver Playhouse (for too long an exquisite Vancouver secret), the Arts Umbrella Dance Company’s Season Finale, I ran into visual artist Tiko Kerr and we talked about enjoying very good professional dance in real time, place and depth. In this day and age of the ubiquitous computer monitor we were watching dance in three dimensions. While doing so, I tried to stop Einstein’s fourth by hoping the event would not end.

It did.

So I went for more and attended that evening’s final performance. In doing so I was able to see the full program as the two-day event (three separate programs, three performances) incorporated far too many pieces to be enjoyed in one sitting, so they were staggered to accommodate all the choreographers and give the performers of the Senior Dance Company and the Apprentice Dancers, all in all about 70 dancers, room to do their thing. And a fine thing that was.

The two o’clock show left me most satisfied as was my 9 year-old granddaughter Lauren and there was a variety of dance that avoided (yes!) tap dancing, flamenco, belly dancing, cutesy dancing, character dancing and anything resembling May-pole dancing in a schmaltzy 19th century mode. It was all brutal (in a good way) direct modern ballet or modern dance. Not that it was devoid of humor. There was lots of that. But the performances would end (alternating the Seniors and the Apprentices) with almost nonexistent  and most efficient breaks between them.

And that could have been it and I could write about every individual dance and give you glowing remarks on the choreographers involved and that they came from all over the world just for the Arts Umbrella Dance Company.

But I would rather write about the first three pieces of the evening which had not been included in the matinee. Dawn by Choreographer Wen Wei Wang (the Seniors), jeune et jaune by Simone Orlando (the Apprentices) and An Instant by Lesley Telford (the Seniors).

The first, right off the bat, was about a healthy, handsome, beautiful, fit group of dancers who have discovered sexual longing and the bitter sweetness that it involves. Costume Designer Linda Chow stuck (very smart!) to basics and this year’s collection of male dancers, were wearing only short shorts. They showed off rippled washboard stomachs and thighs that bulged where they should. They were all tall (from my vantage point of center first row where my eyes are about the level of dancers’ ankles) masculine, good looking and oozing with charm when needed and pathos when obliged. The women wore clothing that did not intrude on their beauty and the combination reminded me of Cornelius Fischer-Credo's The Beauty Machine (featuring three very tall and stately dancers) and of Helmut Newton’s series called Big Nudes. I felt in some moments like a voyeur and in others like I was clicking the shutter on my Nikon FM-2. This raging heterosexual man could not take his eyes off those young men!

The second dance by Simone Orlando featured music of the Oscar Peterson Trio and the costumes by Kate Burroughs were in a bright, happy yellow that made me, momentarily forget the sexual shenanigans of Wen Wei Wan’s piece. This dance was about the discovery of love and the opposite sex. It was an exploration done in the good taste and elegance that Simone Orlando always brings to anything she choreographs. Wen Wei Wang was about innocence’s fall, Orlando’s about innocence being flaunted. Orlando’s piece was the Moët & Chandon palate cleanser between the two heavy pieces and Lesley Telford’s An Instant was just that. Kate Burroughs's costumes showing hints of the Matrix series of films made me imagine that these dancers were a 21st century version of Bernstein’s Jets and, while they were not holding menacing switchblades, I could almost see them.

Simone Orlando

An Instant made me see the light (and I don't write this all in jest!). The Seniors all look at each other in complete understanding as they dance. They are sort of like all those blond girls and boys in John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos (film Village of the Damned). Are they all part of a cabal, a secret organization, a pseudo masonic lodge (is Artemis Gordon a Mason? Am I the first to catch on?) that is out to infiltrate the world with intelligence and poise? And I know who one of the ringleaders might be. His name is Paxton Ricketts. And surely the enforcer would be Scott Fowler?

I ran into Ballet BC’s Donald Sales and told him how I had liked these three pieces and that I could have (almost) gone home right after, perfectly happy. I mentioned An Instant. His comment was, “You like all that European stuff.” Yes! Especially anything by the Netherlands Dans Theater 1, which just so happens is where choreographer Lesley Telford works.

Kate Burroughs

The rest of the show included such young choreographers as Ballet BC’s Alyson Fretz who only graduated from Arts Umbrella but a couple of years ago. It included edgy stuff by the red-haired wonder Lina Fitzner, disco (as in ballet disco) splendidly choreographed to the music of Cyndi Lauper by James Kudelka, a blend of Canadian and European heavy duty stuff by my fave (and Ballet BC’s Emily Molnar) Gioconda Barbuto to finally Aszure Barton’s Les Chambres des Jacques (less about sexual longing as out and out lust) that featured and mixed the music of Gilles Vigneault with Vivaldi’s. The costumes by Shirley Chan and Shelly Nichele had the women of the Senior Dance Company wearing tight corsets that made me lose my breath! At one point Christoph von Riedemann (I last remember him as a healthy looking young boy) who is now a most becoming red haired man, on his knees, gently makes it like he is traveling with his mouth, ever so close, up Kiera Hill’s legs and shortly after Brazilian Joao de Paula (handsome and an expert in primitive candomblé rights) yells out, “puta que pariu!” I know what that means but I had to go back stage to confirm what I thought I had heard. It is close to Spanish and it means “ …the whore mother who bore you!”  Joaa de Paula indeed did confirm it. Artistic Director Artemis Gordon was quick to explain, “It is part of Aszure Barton’s choreography so we have to respect her vision.” I might have noticed a wink but if I did I would not reveal that here.

I am so glad that Artemis Gordon and her fine troupe respect the vision of the renowned choreographers they manage to lure to Granville Island. Now let's stop making this an exclusive Vancouver secret!
Yes it was an evening of lust, sexual longing, and a touch of profanity but all done in exquisite good taste. We in Vancouver deserve this sort of thing, even if we all don’t know about it.

Lejos, esa lejanía tan lejana que es la memoria de mi niñez. Tan lejos esa imagen en el espejo. Soy yo y nadie más. Lejos también cuando Mercedes me llamaba, “Alejandro, a comer. Lavate la cara y las manos. No te olvidés las rodillas.” Lejos, esa memoria de esos negros Celia y Abelardo que una vez me llevaron a un candomblé allá por Urquiza para que vieran mis pelos rubios. Lejos esa travesía, ese interminable traqueteo en el tranvía número 35 al centro, al apartamento de mi abuelita Dolores. Lejos ese tren a Retiro y la anticipación de las películas de conboys en Avenida Lavalle con mi papá. Lejos, tan lejos, el ruido metálico de la apertura del portón de nuestra casa en Melián y la entrada de mi sonriente mamá. Lejos ese olor a pampa mojada con la venida del pampero casi siempre en un domingo a la noche. Lejos, ese solitario ombú en el horizonte desde mi montura sobre el alazán. Lejos los imposiblemente doblados dedos artríticos de las manos de mi Auntie Winnie sirviéndonos té en su casa en Acassuso. Lejos, pero no tan lejos ese olor a whisky y Player’s Navy Cut de mi papá cuando me abrazaba. Lejos, muy lejos esa lejanía que es la memoria de mi niñez ahora que soy un pingüino al norte del paralelo 49. No tan lejos esa memoria de esas siestas en Méjico con mi Rosemary en el cual dormir era un vil pretexto de no hacerlo. No tan lejos el fin de esa lejanía que me acerca a un principio sin memoria, sin lejanías.


A possible translation of the above could be my mother’s poem:






Argentine Nostalgia

I thought I’d never miss: -
The wide expanse of pasture of the pampas,
The lead gray skies & stratus clouds
The whistling, whining, violent “pamperos”,
The wet moist cold,
The hot damp heat,
The monotonous landscape
Bare of trees & bushes 7 human beings
Populated by lazy, cattle.


But I do,
And remember,
The balmy breezes of early spring,
The mauve of jacarandá trees in early fall,
The crisp, white frost of midwinter,
The golden yellow of the aroma in late spring
The pungent, acrid odor of the figs in midsummer.


I thought I’d never miss:
The untidy almacén at my corner
Overflowing with cellophane bags of capeletti & ravioli
And mounds of sacks of new potatoes,
Reeking of onions & “tipo Roquefort cheese”,
Of smoked ham & bacon hanging from hooks

Or: The heated discussion of the Italian neighbours,
The chattering, singing & crying of their children,
The clatter of their plates & knives - they ate
In the patio & almost lived there,
Their plaintive singing of their summer land
And the merry quartets from Barbero & Rigoletto.

Or: The austere grays & browns & blacks
That Porteños think proper to wear,
Their sober silence and quiet in public vehicles
The busy little sidewalk cafes under striped awnings,
The interminable wait for tram 35,
The long and never ending route it took,


But I do,
And remember,
The exquisite taste and stark simplicity
That Porteños think proper for wear,
Their polite “permiso” as they sidled by you on colectivos
The gracious old-fashioned cadence of the
“Cuando” danced in a café.
The beautiful church on Juramento and Cabildo
I always watched out for out of the window of Tram 35
The expectation of getting to Mother’s flat,
At the end of the line,
And the warmth I’d get there!


Filomena de Irureta Goyena de Hayward
Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, Mexico
Dec 5, 1956.





Or it could be Jorge Luís Borges’s poem:

El Sur
Desde uno de tus patios haber mirado
las antiguas estrellas,
desde el banco de sombra haber mirado
esas luces dispersas
que mi ignorancia no ha aprendido a nombrar
ni a ordenar en constelaciones,
haber sentido el círculo del agua
en el secreto aljibe,
el olor de jazmín y la madreselva,
el silencio del pájaro dormido,
el arco del zaguán, la humedad
- esas cosas, acaso, son el poema.





But no. Perhaps it's the following:

That Prague cemetery is but an echo of that island of the day before. Lisa, Lisa from Cochinchina, that impossibly far, as far-as-one-can-be place, from that lone ombú on the horizon - far from the vantage point of my galloping horse, of my childhood. Lisa, she of the impossibly beautiful chest (and why not!) I called up, not too long ago, and asked her if she would pose for me again. “No,”she replied, I have gotten fat.”

Saturday, May 26, 2012

You have a studio. You have a backdrop. You have a beautiful model. You have a camera (on a tripod). You have a light and you have you. In most situations this is a formula for failure. It is particularly prone to failure if all of those diverse elements above are all on non intersecting parallel lines. The results most likely might be boring pictures and if you have a motorized film camera or a digital camera with the same you will have many boring pictures. Add to this the new element that after each picture you might want to look at the result in the back and or show it to your subject and your flow of inspiration will be inspiration interruptus.

I teach photography and I attempt to impart to my students my passion for the portrait. I can hear them zip and zip. I can see them fall for models who act like models and do poses that are model-like. The models purse their lips; they swing their hips, this way or that way. They wink.

I tell my students to wear good underarm deodorant. I tell them to brush their teeth and chew gum or suck on breath mints. I tell them to get close with a medium wide angle lens so as to almost be confrontational with their subject.

They mostly reject the advice and further ignore my instructions to bring that light (or lights) really close and get dramatic shadows.

But a memory for the value of shadows which suggest curvature and three dimensions in what really is a world of two dimensions (a photograph is just that) is almost forgotten. Very good cameras, when faced with extremely low light will pop up a flash. The light will evenly light the face into flatness.



A memory for the window lighting of the Flemish painters is now forgotten. It is not forgotten because it is not remembered. It is forgotten because few of my students, regardless of their age have seen paintings, old masters or gone to museums. What they see is on the net.

Here are two photographs of Joanne Dahl whom I photographed sometime in the early 90s. I remember that my lighting was the light coming in through the windows of my studio. It faced the big white wall that was Eaton’s and then Sears. The light would come in and be reflected back by the wall on the opposite side of my studio which was white. For this shot I used a velour drape as a backdrop and snapped with my Nikon FM-2 and a 50 or perhaps a 35mm lens.

I do not find the photographs boring but then I cannot possibly be objective as I am the one who took the pictures.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Polystichum munitum

The paradox of fertilizing plants in a garden is that these plants then beyond their bounds and we end up cutting them back or, in some cases, pulling them out.

The term ground cover is a botanical name that in the years that we have been gardening on Athlone Street is a term that I now see as a fearsome one. Ground cover suggests like that other non existing misnomer, “maintenance-free gardening” that the gardener can sit back and relax and sip iced tea all summer. As far as I can tell from the experience obtained with all our hits and misses is that this scenario can only occur on a concrete deck equipped with a couple of deck chairs and a little table for the tea and the cucumber sandwiches.

Now ground covers, I now know very few that don’t march in every direction (not only sideways but backwards and forwards. Here are some that have become a problem:

Lamium maculatum
Vancouveria hexandra
Vancouveria chrysantha
Epimedium
Oxalis crassipes
Euphorbia robbiae
Viola labradorica purpurea
Arum italicum
Convallaria majalis
hardy geraniums (many of them)


Unfortunately Rosemary will not have her chance to deny what I am about to write here. The majority of the plants mentioned above are plants that she initially purchased and then planted. These ground covers emerge early in the season and they will then shade my hostas as they come out of the ground. The ones that you would least likely suspect as being deadly are the frothy and beautiful Labrador Violets. They jump into potted plants or surround plants in the ground and they then weave a tight root system that will eventually choke much larger plants to extinction.

There have been some recriminations of late but Rosemary and I have made peace as we methodically remove those ground covers.

Taking many containers to our green dump I noticed a dried up frond from one of our sword ferns. I picked it up and I was struck by its beauty. For just a bit I forgot the thug-like ground covers and marveled at the beauty of plants even when they have been clipped away and discarded.

Thursday, May 24, 2012


My friend Ian Bateson is in England dealing with his father’s death and having the extra problem of making arrangements to take care of his almost blind mother. Thinking about all this last night I reflected on the diminishing circle of friends and how I have dispensed with my up-until-now all important phone book/diary. I call few people and even fewer call me.

I told my wife last night, “I want to be having breakfast (huevos rancheros), papaya and café con leche in the heat of a Mérida café. I feel alien to this city where we live in. It is cold and our roses are not going to do as well if this cold persists. I miss my mother, my father, and our warm friends from Mexico. I miss my relatives in Buenos Aires. I want Argentine pizza.” Rosemary’s answer was that I make arrangements to make it so (at least the part of the Mérida café, our friends in Mexico and Buenos Aires).

Because my father left our house when I was nine I spent most of my life with my mother and grandmother. I think that I had an unusually close relationship with both those women.

In much the same way that I photograph children as non smiling adults, my mother and grandmother treated me like an adult during my childhood. In my 20s I was the “joven” when I would visit my mother in Veracruz. I graduated to “el señor” when I showed up with my new bride Rosemary.

Unlike in other marriages with terrible mothers in law, Rosemary and my mother Filomena got along famously. In fact if I think of it, it would seem that my Rosemary was a bit more outward with her “inhibited New Dublin, Ontario, reticence to show affection” with my mother than she was with me!

We were struggling financially in our Arboledas, Estado de Mexico house. My mother was living with us and she understood what it was not to have money as that had been her situation most of her life. Without thinking twice one day we arrived to find that her piano was gone. She had sold it to pay for our mortgage that month. “I am deaf. I cannot hear myself play Chopin and Beethoven. I have to imagine it. It is painful. I didn’t need that piano.” I took it all at face value but it was Rosemary who was aware of the sacrifice my mother had made.

My mother and I often talked. Rosemary told me that I was not very affectionate to her and that I treated her with little respect sometimes. One day that I will not forget my mother was most candid. She suffered from Meniere’s Disease. She had a constant ringing I he ears. This was the only sound she could hear as the disease had destroyed the workings of her inner ear. She had no balance and suffered terrible bouts of nausea.

She told me, “I am still a young woman (late 50s) and I have not had a man in many years. I miss it. I have a longing. I do not believe any more in a God who answers my prayers. I believe He is impervious and remote. I do not want to live like this. There has to be more to life.”

I did not know what to tell her and I was silent. Perhaps a year later she died in her bead of peritonitis and Rosemary and I both heard that breathing inwards that ended just there.

I must say that many times in my 44 year marriage to Rosemary we have had our rough spots (in fact we went to counseling in the late 70s but it was a farce! She had a woman psychiatrist and I had a male one. We would decide together what we would answer to them in our separate sessions with them). It was not too long ago where I would say to Rosemary, “I am not happy in this house.” She would counter with the inevitable, “Then leave.” I would attempt to explain that he house was half mine. Those conflicts are long forgotten and we live with almost no conflicts.

I would say that one of our bonds is a bond that we share. We both love my mother and we miss her. When I look at the baby grand Chickering in our living room I can only imagine the smile on my mother’s face if she could play it. In fact I can imagine her playing it as she imagines that she could hear it.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012



We would walk the streets, a prodigy in short pants and his mother, so defiantly beautiful that all transactions stopped, and we’d enter a slow-motion world where women, men, children, dogs, cats, and firemen in their trucks would look at her with such longing in their eyes, that I felt like some usurper who was carrying her off to another hill.

The Dark Lady From Belorusse - Jerome Charyn 1997

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Tim Turner & Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes's Duke of Wellington

For any who might visit this site with a modicum of regularity it must be obvious that the present writer is up to something involving a red Mexican rebozo and his friends of disparate professions. At last count I have managed to put up 18. I have 10 more in the wings except my subjects are recalcitrant about writing their essays. Some of these include Celia Duthie, Bruno Freschi, a handyman, a violinist, a gardener/cook/handyman (Celia Duthie’s husband Nick Hunt), a beautiful Argentine model turned hairdresser, a painter, Bill Richardson and the present subject of today’s blog Tim Turner whose profession I will leave till later when his essay is produced.

But I cannot resist to place here his Fuji instant film portrait (a test before I used my Ektachrome) merge with Goya’s famous portrait of the Duke of Wellington. When Turner faced my camera I instantly saw the connection with Goya’s portrait which hangs at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. I went to the National Gallery with my granddaughter Rebecca a few years ago and I pointed at the painting and said to her, “This man defeated that man on the other side. The man on that other side is Napoleon painted by one Jacques-Louis David.”

The Me&My Project with the red shawl.

Katheryn Petersen Accordionist
Stefanie Denz Artist
Ivette Hernández Actress
Byron Chief-Moon Actor/Dancer
Colin Horricks Doctor
Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Columnist
Jocelyn Morlock Composer
Corinne McConchie Librarian
Rachel Ditor Dramaturg
Patrick Reid Statesman, Flag Designer
Michael Varga CBC Cameraman
Bronwen Marsden Playwright/Actress/Director
David Baines Vancouver Sun Columnist
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward Photographer
Lauren Elizabeth Stewart Student
Sandrine Cassini Dancer/Choreographer
Meredith Kalaman Dancer/Choreographer
Juliya Kate Dominatrix

Monday, May 21, 2012

In November 2008 I went to Pender Island (on a de Havilland Beaver) with my friend Abraham Rogatnick. We went to visit his friend Karl Stittgen and his wife Nora.

Karl Stittgen & Miho in the library

I was curious to find out more about Stittgen as I had photographed his only competition, Toni Cavelti several times. Both are now retired. To determine which is the most famous of the two depends on which one of them you ask. Suffice to note that they are friends. German-born (Ludwigshafen, 1930) Karl Stittgen arrived in Vancouver in 1952 and ran his jewelry business until 1974. He then traveled to India, California and Arizona and studied interior design. He restarted his jewelry business in 1984 but sold it in 1995. What led him to move to Pender Island and build a house in homage to Frank Lloyd Wright in 11992 (the house was finished in 1995) began when he saw a spread of a Frank Lloyd Wright house in a 1956 House Beautiful Magazine. Karl Stittgen and his Japanese/Canadian wife Nora live on their 6-acre property, Halcyon Days, with their Akita Inu dog Miho. Miho is named after the famous Japanese museum of design, the Miho Museum. The Stittgens live the life of aesthetes. They eat well and drink German wine. Both are expert potters. Stittgen rarely uses his computer as he says it would prevent him from making things and reading. Stittgen tested some of his Frank Lloyd applications in his house in West Vancouver now owned by Douglas Coupland.



Below is my Q&A for Bob Mercer’s (alas!) defunct VLM Magazine. It was part of a series called My Favourite Room.

What is your favourite room?

My favourite room is the library which was called sanctuary by Frank Lloyd Wright. A sanctuary has no openings to the outside. If you are totally concentrated on what is going on the inside, namely your books, you are lost in your reading and your thoughts.



You are known in Vancouver as having been one of the best jewelers. What is your contribution to architecture?

I studied architecture since 1959 when I was exposed to early Frank Lloyd Wright applications. I had the opportunity, which some people in Vancouver gave me, to redo their houses. I did this so that I could use my aesthetic sense to their interiors and my ambition has always been to build a house on the basis of the philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright. I have done this here on Pender Island.

Why is it that thanks to Frank Lloyd Wright you are a good cook?

When I went to Taliesin West in 1961 (Wright died in 1959) to become a member of the fellowship, I found that we pupils of Frank Lloyd Wright had to look after the kitchen, the fields and the gardens, because the fellowship was supposed to be self-sufficient. When I arrived, since I was a newcomer, I was naturally put in the kitchen. I had to peel potatoes and clean the spinach, lettuce and pumpkins. I learned how to cook.

Deny that you are not obsessed with Frank Lloyd Wright.


Deny? I am rather obsessed because Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture is without any doubt the most livable there is. This compared to Modernist architecture or of the Arts & Crafts style makes me shudder. For a while in Vancouver we had what was then called the post & beam style which was derivative of Wright’s construction methods. They were wonderful houses! I don’t understand why that trend of the 50s and 60s has not continued and that we have gone back to the Arts & Crafts style. Frank Lloyd Wright’s interiors have been proven by people who live in them as being interiors that “form” a lifestyle.



Are you a potter?

I am a potter.

If Frank Lloyd Wright were your elder brother what would he say about that?

I am absolutely certain that he would encourage me to be even more of a potter because he was interested in the crafts. His whole philosophy of house building was based on craftsmanship. He taught his apprentices to be masons. He wanted them to be masons, carpenters, and chimney builders so that when they designed a house they knew how everything fit together. He was an admirer of the crafts and designed one of the finest craft shops in the country in San Francisco on Maiden Lane for ceramics. He would be pleased with the derivative of his architecture that I built in my own house and also be pleased with me being a ceramist or potter.



When you designed this house is there any part of it in which you took into consideration your wife Nora?

The whole house, I originally called a temple to Nora and that’s what it was called when it was started and then it became Halcyon Days. When people asked me what I was doing, I told them, “I am building a temple to Nora.”