St Petersburg

Ever been to Russia? I haven't, but with the power of the internet I can pretend.

WARNING! Do not use this map for navigation purposes. The scale is all wonky and I forgot a bridge!

Lists are the thing

I've been keeping myself busy of late, and perhaps that's why I haven't been on here too much. I always talk about the blog as a tool I use to ensure I write on a semi-regular basis, but when I find other creative outlets I suppose it falls by the wayside. Or outlets of any kind of activity really.

Black Creek is open for schools so I'm working there a few days a week, learning the Many Hands program and doing tours. We have three stations in Many Hands - spinning (and wool more generally), baking, and the workshop. Because I'm a fella I'm usually in the workshop. Historical accuracy and all that. It's fun and I still get to eat whatever is left over from the baking, so that's good. It's also fun to tour at this time of year when the village has no one else in it. You can talk in buildings for as long as you want and if the kids feel like losing there minds I can even send them running.

I've also been transcribing, doing taxes, drawing, reading and sometimes writing.

For the last while I've been listing what I want to get done and have been putting write/draw at the bottom of every list. Some days I get to it, others no, and I've been choosing draw most times when I do. I'll get back to the novel soon, no doubt.

Lists have been great as far as getting me to get things done when I have the time. When I run out of jobs like taxes and transcribing, hopefully my lists will see me writing and drawing all day long. Fingers crossed! They've also been helpful in sending me to bed at a reasonable time. If I'm tired and the list is done I go to bed. As simple as it sounds it goes against my normal tactic of finding activities that keep me awake.

Maturity (no matter how smell the steps in that direction are) is weird.

I was drawing last night, sitting on the couch and making little mistakes as I went. I'm inking pencil lines so I really don't want to be making mistakes at this stage, but I just couldn't stop. I was in a tired/out of it mindset where I convinced myself to keep working, and not make the tiny effort necessary that would make the working situation better. In retrospect I should have moved over to the table, set up a light and continued apace. Oh well. Next time. And looking at it now the mistakes aren't the end of the world.

Who knew being crunched up on a couch wasn't most conducive to tiny, detailed drawing?

I also have another show tonight. 8:30 at the Bad Dog Theatre and pay what you want as you exit. You should come. If I don't post this blog before the show, I wonder if I will remember to edit this part. MYSTERIES. (I'm going to make it!)

And I've signed up for a clown workshop, starting in May. That should be a real gas!

Maybe another improv class too, but I've also applied for a couple more jobs - more museums! - so I'm not going to rush at anything too forcefully.

Finally, look at this.

It's from my shower curtain, and it tells me one thing: polyester will bring the world together! Unless you use a different alphabet. In those cases I guess we're at war.

Sorry guy.

Skip-Skip-Skip to my letterpress and poetry

So remember back when I made this?

Good times, right? Well, check this out.

Imagine all the pebbles and battle beasts I could store in those jobbies. Too many!

The photo is courtesy of The Sweetie Pie Press, and is taken in the workshops of the Trip Print Press. Self described "Practitioners of the black art, letterpress."

Scary!

And fantastic.

Mostly fantastic, because those are not just wondrous wall decorations, no sir. Solely a great place to store toys? NAY! (Although they could do that.) We are of course looking at a lovely set of type trays.

You know how you scroll through your word processor options and can make words look however you want? Well, in real world publishing each of those choices would mean an entirely different tray with a pile of each letter in a particular, coherent style (a font if you will) so you can say whatever it is you want to say and make it look nice too. And of course there are different sizes, so there's that to consider as well.

I may be mis-placing certain terms in the description but I'm hopeful the people that are wiser about these things will lodge their corrections in the comments section.

It's all pretty straightforward, but I'm still excited because this reminds me of the time I spent standing and staring at all the toys in the Black Creek Pioneer Village printing office prior to Christmas, fantasizing. And I'm pleased that such things still exist as viable entities in the real world. There's no reason they shouldn't but like a lot of stuff, until a functioning letterpress is shoved in my face, I don't think about it.

It all makes me want to get married, just for the invitations, or successful enough that I need business cards.

Hell, I'm just really jealous of their drafting table and gigantic rules. Everything is relative of course, and I'm calling them gigantic because I've just spent the last 30 minutes scratching and re-scratching the same, almost 3 mm twinned lines into my next drawing. 3 mm is too small, the margin for error on length and angles too big.

Mercy. I need a drafting table, or a bigger pieces of paper and a regular table would work too.

One day I might put words to paper, rather than just screen, but in the meantime here we are. So why not tack on a poem a poem to the post? It's my blog, so sure!

Here's one that's part of my spit it out while the spitting's good and call it poetry because you're still not totally sure what poetry is or what constitutes good poetry so you may as well show the world what you wrote and maybe the world will tell you it's all right or maybe the world will tell you it's complete crap but it'll be good either way because then you'll know someone read it poetry project.

This particular poem was belched upon the paper in a furious scramble of penmanship, followed by minimal editing. Hopefully said belching is something more than white noise.

-----

Backpack full of groceries

My arms are buzzing

below, above

everything there is to think of

a mash of tortured

black & white

in a world that's the grey clarity

of a nuclear powered mud storm

Malleable is an intention

but to

fight & struggle

against the brain

seems,

feels,

is

wrong & tiring

So much effort except when

walking & walking

and all the problems are there

but fine,

far off at the

destination & nothing

until it's reached.

Maps and architecture and cities and me and an artist named Alice

I'm never sure how I get onto things, but at some point I found myself on this blog, which led me to one Alice Aycock's website. I thought some of her stuff looked really neat, and not just because she is using a grey background on her page and an awesome orangey-yellow colour for her main title. I'm also excited because her work ties in, however tangentially, with some of my interests in art, urban form, architecture, etc. that I've been reading and thinking about of late. (All the pictures I show below are from her website, where you can find more of her work and lots more information.)

Her stuff is farther down but first...

I recently finished this:

That is a drawing of a city. It's pencil on paper and as you can see my efforts at going over the lines were more aggressive in some parts than in others. I think I might do a series of these, maybe start inking them.

In my map I've largely blocked in spaces in terms of grass, concrete or water. There is also just a bit of detail (roof lines and some differentiation for docks) in some of the 'built' blocks. I've added some colour below so you can see what I'm talking about

For the most part, the areas without colour are human structures of one form or another.

This blocking is similar to how a Toronto mapmaker dealt with the problem of describing a city in 2-D from above. Leaving most blocks as blocks and restricting built detail to the ghosting of large institutional footprints. No little lines for house roofs in this one.

But then I came across this image on Aycock's site. What would I do for a building with a hat on?

Low Building With Dirt Roof (For Mary), 1973

I never considered how green roofs or any rooftop park would play in a map until I saw this picture. The traditional top-down view for maps works because things are simplified, often with the notion of single land use. But when there's a significant built park in a city, even if it's high in the air, it needs to be acknowledged. People following a 2-D map and finding a building where they expected green space would be surprised, so there needs to be differentiation of some type, whether it is colour, shape, labeling or something else.

And if I decided to take on a utopian mapping project (I quake even at the thought) I would need to consider the mixed land use that might be taking place on a very fine scale. Methinks I need to start drawing on bigger sheets of paper. More to follow on this theme, no doubt.

"The City of Walls", Isometric, 1978
The Garden of Scripts (Villandry), 1986

Maze, 1972

Walled Trench/Earth Platform/Center Pit, 1975

A Simple Network of Underground Wells and Tunnels, 1975

Project for a Circular Building with Narrow Ledges for Walking, 1976

I like these pieces because they are able to experiment with ideas of structure and architecture, without being concerned with eventual tenants. It's like she gets to play more freely with the signs and signifiers (pardon my weakness in semiotics) of architecture because she's building in farmers' fields. I'm sure she still takes human form into account, but unlike a 'proper' architect she has fewer restrictions. An architect must consider daily human use and if they don't think about how people will live in their built spaces, said spaces stand a good chance of failing.

Looking through the site, I'm definitely a bigger fan of her earlier work. She seems to focus more on architecture and structure than in her later stuff. Starting in the 80s her work begins to take on a more sculptural and decorative air. By decorative I mean there is less concern with function (as vague as it might be) and more with aesthetics. Her sculptures are still fantastic and full of use, it's just that the architecture that remains as a theme in some pieces is often more abstract and less obvious.

I'm always wary of venturing opinions on realms foreign to me (at least in writing, when speaking I venture insupportable opinions on things I know nothing about all the time). I worry I lack the vocabulary to express my notions accurately. Oh well. No offence intended anyone!

Functional and Fantasy Stair and Cyclone Fragment, 1996

And I'm not saying her sculpture is bad. Just that I like the themes she's exploring in her earlier work more.

If someone knows what I'm talking about, feel free to tell me.

Also, everyone should look at the artist's site. There are so many cool things there, even a machine that makes the world! In the meantime, play on this...

The Game of Flyers, 1980

Note at the bottom (that is here): I did an experiment and didn't promote the previous post. The results of the experiment tells me no one has looked at it. If you're interested, it's there and it's about food!