the landscape of possibilities

My friends Cass and Mavie just returned from an epic two week adventure in New Zealand.

Last night Cass cooked a delicious dinner and gave us a slideshow of their journey- it was mind blowing! They bought a 1972? cb350 twin (aaaaoooooowwwwww) with a sidecar!!!!!! (aaaaoooooowwwwwww) from a dear old man in the South island and camped all the way up to Auckland in the North island.

Hot springs/mountain passes/magical hikes/epic swim spots- you name it, they lived it! Cass even took a photo of a menu for me which read:

soup of the now


I love it! Cass is an amazing writer, when I was writing here and now/now and then, she gave me some valuable feedback and general encouragement, which I needed at the time. Cass had never read Play it as it lays I leant her my copy of Joan Didion's novel- I was really excited by the prospect of the novel going on a New Zealand adventure- pages well travelled!

The book came back a little weathered, Cass apologised but I was stoked, every mark and line reveals a story. I imagine that the black marks on the cover are tyre marks- maybe the book flew out of Cass's hands as Mavie hit a shrub leaving a riverside camp spot, perhaps the red dots are from the sidecar or the petrol tank (their motorbike was red) and that even the rain wanted a piece of Didion's novel as they hiked up a mountain.

I like the idea that a novel can experience a journey as the journeyer experiences the novel- the landscapes of the novel intertwine with the physical landscapes surrounding the reader and the landscapes within the readers own mind.

Brad Phillips- Collection of the Artist, Type C print, 2010

Summer 
by John Ashbery 

There is that sound like the wind 
Forgetting in the branches that means something 
Nobody can translate. And there is the sobering “later on,” 
When you consider what a thing meant, and put it down. 

For the time being the shadow is ample 
And hardly seen, divided among the twigs of a tree, 
The trees of a forest, just as life is divided up 
Between you and me, and among all the others out there. 

And the thinning-out phase follows 
The period of reflection. And suddenly, to be dying 
Is not a little or mean or cheap thing, 
Only wearying, the heat unbearable, 

And also the little mindless constructions put upon 
Our fantasies of what we did: summer, the ball of pine needles, 
The loose fates serving our acts, with token smiles, 
Carrying out their instructions too accurately— 

Too late to cancel them now—and winter, the twitter 
Of cold stars at the pane, that describes with broad gestures 
That state of being that is not so big after all. 
Summer involves going down as a steep flight of steps 

To a narrow ledge over the water. Is this it, then, 
This iron comfort, these reasonable taboos, 
Or did you mean it when you stopped? And the face 
Resembles yours, the one reflected in the water.

in eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke 

we live in conservative times

Jim Verburg takes beautiful photo's, he sent me these pic's of my studio from Open Studio Day at Banff, I was pretty nervous about the event, but it turned out to be an awesome afternoon.


I had fun chatting with the different people that came through. I remember having an amazing conversation with one of the librarians there. She was around in the sixties and we were talking about then in comparison to now- she said something that has been ringing through my head ever since:

WE LIVE IN CONSERVATIVE TIMES

She helped me out a lot during my time in Banff. I'd write out a request in pencil on a little slip of paper and she would go to the basement to sift out old Allan Kaprow exhibition catalogues and Liz Magor lecture tapes from the amazing archives there for me. 


Jim Verburg is a busy man. He just had a show in Prague, you can see what he is getting up to here ^

rocks water friends

Lake Catani, November 2010

Braid and orb (young woman), oil on panel. Tiziana La Melia 2010

Bow River, Banff June 2010

We built a bridge across the river- it was now. I remember convincing Jeremy to take his shoes off and get his feet wet- the water was freezing and glacial. As we were selecting and carting rocks across the water a dog appeared from the woods. 

His owners threw a massive rock into the flowing river and he jumped in, after sifting through a couple of boulders he found his and carted it back to his owners- unperturbed by the rock's weight or the water's temperature. 

We never built the bridge the whole way across, we wondered how it would affect the flow of the river and the wildlife around it. I remember feeling really alive- the air was fresh, we had hiked a small portion of the Hoodoo trail and I was in the company of new friends. 

Friends/Caves I made in Banff 2010, Photographed in January 2011