November 2023
Art Season
Helen's birthday is in November and we happened to go over to
Victoria for the Remembrance Day. Getting to Victoria turned
out to be a bit of a challenge - all of the ferries were canceled
Friday night because of high wind but we didn't figure that out
until we arrived at the ferry terminal and saw all the gates
dark. Thankfully the next morning the boats were sailing
again. Saturday was Helen's birthday so we stayed in for a
home kicked meal and cheesecake!
Made on Mayne
I have an interest in art crawls
and I found out last year that my parents hadn't been to all of the
Gulf Islands. After doing some research (which isn't easy
because many of these events put up flyers on Island but the website
is out of date) I discovered the Mayne Island tour was the same
weekend as a Helen's birthday and a long weekend. The ideal
day was Saturday because some of the attractions on Mayne are closed
on Sundays, but with the bad weather Sunday was the best of a bad
situation.
The ferry from Victoria had perhaps
6 cars going to Mayne, but it stopped at Pender and Galiano before
getting to Mayne. The ferry is large and comfortable (a few
people got second breakfast) and we got to watch the islands go by
from a warm seat. Marcus spotted a river otter on the dock in
Galiano!
There are
two large locations on Mayne Island and then a number of "studio
tours". The Mayne Island Agricultural Hall had a perhaps 8
artists set up. We ate our picnic lunch in the next door yard.
The larger community
hall had more than a dozen vendors including some food
vendors. The Hall itself was beautiful - I'm sure many a
wedding has been held here.
And after that, we were off to individual artist studios.
Eastside Culture Crawl
On Friday night I was sewing a bag with the daughter and she asked
me how much I liked the Eastside Culture Crawl. She was
surprised to find that I like the crawl more than I like
Christmas! The Crawl is inspiring, shows new things and shows
how hard people are trying to evolve and innovate. This year I
started on Thursday night at Pandora's Box Art Studios - a new
building to the crawl this year.
The Eastside Art Crawl takes you
into all sorts of buildings you don't go into normally. Shady
Acres Artist Studio was once a Funeral Home, but is now split into
many small studios. Another building was a three story walk up
that was a live/work space:
On my "must see" list is The ARC (Commercial style live work space
with a lot of film industry people) and Portside Studios (painters
and more on the second floor of what was once a small warehouse.
Markerlabs
Makerlabs
is a strong destination because there is so much going on.
Even though only a dozen artists may be showing in any given year,
the work going on in Markerlabs is amazing. Every year, it
tugs a bit encouraging taking out a membership and doing physical
work.
The big draw every year is 1000 Parker Street. Claira and I
went on Saturday morning and explored just the second and third
floor. This hive of activity is probably one of the more
expensive art spaces, but there is a ton of great work being shown
every year.
Special shout out to the Mergatroid building - right next to 1000
Parker street. One space had three very advanced textile
artists that showed what the state of the art in looms looks like.
I didn't get to half of the studios this year - I missed
Chinatown, South Clark and the Terminal Avenue spaces. I'm
already looking forward to next year.
Tags: Eastside Culture Crawl(3), paint brush(1), rim light(1), window(1), dragon(1), textiles(1)
People: Claira(4), Helen(2), Lloyd(1), Marcus(1), Nara(1), Janet(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > Blogs for 2023 to 2005 > November 2023
Last Modified Wednesday, December 13th, 2023 at 22:18:15 Edit
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