Camellia x williamsii 'Donation'& Primula vulgaris 'Pink Ice' 18 March 2024

 While I have scanned these flowers today 18 March 2024 I am placing this blog back to the 16th to fill some holes.

My Rosemary's two faces

 

Going into my small Kitsilano deck garden at this time is like meeting up with my Rosemary. I can imagine her smiling and telling me, “Look, Camellia ‘Donation’ is in bloom.’ Or she would have said when I write this, “Alex what a nice primula you bought at Lougheed Garden Works.”

The garden is returning to the company of a woman I loved for 52 years and nothing now can make me not think of her when I wake up, when I go to sleep, when I dream and during the day. Every object in our little house connects to her. And most of all, Niño and Niña, who are extra loving and attentive to me.

These cats showed me something that I did not realize until after Rosemary died. When a cat wants affection this means that the cat is affectionate. How was I ever to know that to want it is to give it?

Rosemary was coolly standoffish with me but she had her ways to show her affection and love. She would make sure I had extra tubes of toothpaste, razors and shaving cream. When I smoked my pipe she put breath mints on my night table. And she always made herself up and dressed to perfection knowing that would please me.

It is funny how these plants almost have her face and presence. I will put them in the ground tomorrow ( March 19 as it is supposed to be the last day of sun) knowing exactly where. Rosemary taught me that.

With friends and with social media I keep my political and religious beliefs to myself. I don’t understand protest art. Some years ago I went to an opening at the Museum of Anthropology of Indigenous artist  Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. In his presentation he told us that one of the principal objectives of art was to make us smile. I was astounded by his honest lack of hocus pocus.

Michael Nichol Yahgulanaas

I rarely take photographs that are ugly or show ugliness.

I am illustrating this blog with what might seem an odd combination of people, my Rosemary and Arthur Erickson.

While I will place this blog to fill a hole on15 March I am writing it at 12:30 tonight 19 March.

When I turned off my lights and my cats got close I did what I do every night which is to think that Rosemary is “not here” and she once was.

Both she and I knew that we would never see each other again after our deaths. If there will be any relief in me not thinking or grieving of her loss it will only happen when I am dead.

I believe (me) that while I do not fear death I fear the impossibility of not being able to think about not thinking, about not feeling to feel, about not seeing to see. To think of nonexistence is perhaps against our genes.

At the same time I understand that while I am alive my thoughts and memories of Rosemary make her somehow to be alive in my presence by the very absent presence of her not being by my side when I turn off the light.

All that made me think of Arthur Erickson. I photographed him so many times that we became friends. At a function hosted by Diane Farris at a second location of her gallery (much smaller and down the block) I noticed that Erickson was sitting alone at a table. It seemed that nobody wanted to sit with a man that had Alzheimer’s. I sat down and said, “Arthur it seems to me that your architecture had some inspiration from the Spanish/Mexican architect Felix Candela. He smiled and we talked for close to an hour. We discussed Candela’s pioneer work in the hyperbolic paraboloid structures  called hypars that featured curved roofs that were thin but strong. We discussed that because of the calculus and and a varying slope, straight lines could produce curves.

Felix Candela

For as long as I am alive and thinking I will never forget that intelligent conversation I had with the man. Tonight, just like Rosemary was alive because of my thoughts of him. I can remember his radio voice, his perfect diction and that smile of his.

Yes, Erickson and Rosemary are with me tonight.

Tiko Kerr in his studio - 14 March 2024

The Musicality of Seeing

Music has always been central to my artistic practice. I work with headphones on all day long. Music keeps me moving.

I like all types of music although the improvisational nature of jazz really suits my love of chance and experimentation when I create.

Over time I have become very interested in synesthesia: how one human sense can come through as another. I’m drawn to the idea of interpreting music in visual terms and vice versa.

I aim to create compositions that keep the eye restlessly roaming all over the work, in the same way that the ear is pulled along through the peaks and troughs of a symphony.

I call this the musicality of seeing.

This relief wall sculpture is a series of paper-cut collage forms and drawing elements mounted on 3 layers of plexiglass with a slight gap between them. I’ve translated the ubiquitous pandemic protective barrier of plexiglass into a window into our contemporary moment.

The work is activated by the position the viewer takes. Forms come forward and others recede in a type of breathing.

Tiko Kerr - 2024

 “Schwitter’s Symphony #8” (above) is my homage to the incredible collage pioneer from the beginning of the 20th Century, Kurt Schwitters.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In this 21st century it has become almost impossible to have a face to face communication (not on Messenger,etc) so I found it astounding and pleasant to have been invited today to my friend artist Tiko Kerr's studio. It is a large one that is has sections for each medium that he may feel like using. Because he dealt with the death of Jack Shadbolt's wife, Doris in having to put stuff where it belonged, he inherited Jack Shadbolt's favourite seat.

Somehow Kerr and I have at least been friends since the beginning of this century. He is prolific and never does anything for long without adjusting to something different. One day he came to my little Kits studio and I took a few portraits. He asked me to make about 6 different prints. I gave him the prints and on three he snipped pieces from the other three to make his collages. The one reproduced here I chose as he told me it was his favourite of the three

We call this work (in Spanish) a colaboración. I have a feeling we are going to make a few more soon.

Sometime around 2008 I convinced Georgia Straight editor Charles Campbell to put a Kerr painting of the Lions Gate Bridge (in full colour) on the cover. I have very little memory as to why I have this 9 exposure b+w contact sheet in my Tiko Kerr file. But I know that the young woman seen holding the painting is our mutual friend Anne Macauley who worked at the Dianne Farris Gallery. Perhaps I also photographed the painting with slide film and Campbell did not return it.

Narcissus 'Rinjveld's Early Sensation'

I bought these Narcissus a couple of weeks ago at Phoenix Perennials. I wrote about the hellebores I got there in this blog.

Rosemary's Corsican Hellebores & Napoleon

Rosemary had planted similar naricissus to these, but after a few years, sometimes they do not come back. One (very lonely one) did, so I wanted to cheer up the garden with a bit more yellow.

In her later years Rosemary got over her distaste for yellow, orange and red in the garden. I know that had she been around or had she accompanied me to Phoenix Perennials she would have smiled at the bright yellow colours.

In this day and age of memory loss few might know that the narcissus is the Easter Lilly.

In Norway and other European countries, the traditional Easter plant is the Påskelilje, literally meaning “Easter lily. “The Påskelilje is what we know as the daffodil (Narcissus spp.). In fact, early common names for daffodil included Easter lily and Lent lily. Wikipedia

When I scanned the two blooms I was not too impressed and I realized I had to do something more. Adding the two green stalks, I believe, fixed it.

In the last couple of days with the better weather I have managed to do some gardening. If the nicer weather persists I will put into the ground tomorrow the two narcissus containers and the two hellebores I wrote about.

My Spanish grandmother María de los Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena educated me not only as a little boy but pretty well until she died in 1970. It is because of her that I know so many refrains from the Don Quijote when Sancho Panza would hand out advice to his master.

One important , never-to-forget dictum was, “Cuando el diablo no tiene nada que hacer con el rabo espanta moscas.”  This translates to, “When the devil has nothing to do with his tail he swats flies.”

And so it was that tonight 19 March at 11:35 I am writing this. I will place it a few days back to fill a blog hole on 12 March, 2024.

I was in bed comfortably accompanied by my two cats when I came up with this idea to use up my idle time by scanning a colour negative of my friend Sarah Tonin inside the Mamiya back I used to take her picture. I shot colour negative film which has an orange mask. Since I had to scan it as a document, the result I had to reverse in Photoshop. A lot of that orange mask persisted.

I feel that now that I have done away with some of those lazy flies I can go back and accompany my cats until my bedtime.