Wednesday, December 23, 2009



December 23 is a strange day. It is not Christmas Eve, it is not Christmas. There is a fine lethargy to the day in which I usually do nothing but read and drink tea. I did just that today, nothing. But the blog beckoned and I had to think of something. I looked at the mess that is a winter garden and imagined it in the spring again. Then I thought about the heat of summmer, those rare Vancouver summer days when it is really hot. Those are the days that are dearest to my heart. They bring in nostalgia for the heat of Mexico or of my native Buenos Aires. Indeed December 23 is usually one of the hottest days of the Buenos Aires summer. But today the heat took me to my files of Jo-Ann, the Thursday Girl.

In late summer I took pictures of Jo-Ann the "Thursday Girl" who came to my studio a few Thursdays per year beginning in 2006. Here you see one of the first pictures and one of the last, on the roof of my studio.

Jo-Ann is of Dutch origin and perhaps that suggests to me that she has a 15 century Flemish painting kind of face. It is strong. She shows confidence and equanimity. For some strange reasons few of my pictures of her are my usual portraits or nude portraits. She somehow blends into the backgrounds and becomes a whole with it.


The first picture is one of the most remarkable nudes I feel I have taken. Unfortunately I had to crop it because of my policy of not showing full nudes in my blog. Her hand is perfect and she projects in the full nude the stability of the Golden Gate Bridge. I am not in any way intimating that she is not slim. She is!

The second picture which I have tinted red suggests to me the heat of that day in early September. You cannot "see" the noises that were coming from the pneumatic hammers that were drilling into the intersection of Robson and Granville. The ruckus did not faze Jo-Ann in the least.

I dislike reading the newspapers at this time of the year with their “year in pictures” or “the year that was”. I noticed a picture today in the NY Times of Bush looking out of the window of his not-quite-the-presidential-helicopter as he left DC. It seems a century ago. I don’t want to look at more of those pictures.

I want to look at pictures of Jo-Ann on the roof of my studio on a hot afternoon. It is my hope that Jo-Ann will not discontinue our Thursdays.