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Touchstones - Nelson
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Other
- Hits: 2210
Take the daughter to the local museum. Nelson. Touchstones. Most of the other museums aren't open yet, we've been to Creston (closed), to The Meadows (closed), to Salmo (closed), in the off season nobody wants to open.
The closed galleries, looking through the windows, our breath fogging the glass, everything we (I) want to know is inside...
We go to Touchstones, Nelson. They're always (I think) open. The gift shop, amusing, for a minute.
The History museum, upstairs, always the same, always interesting...
Some Native artifacts, pestle, fishing weights, baskets...
More native artifacts, arrowheads, spearheads, flints, an Iron hammer...
A pair of Antique women's skates. I rather like the fashion, women's skates now are all painted white, these are infinitely cooler...
And, without a doubt my favorite item, an old icon found in the Slocan Valley when they were felling trees, it was hammered to a tree by some well meaning missionaries for the Natives to worship, estimated around 1830 or 1840...
The daughter feigns interest.
Then into the main exhibit. Edge of the Light, Tanya Pixie Johnson.
It's completely my thing. Mixed media, found objects, artifacts...and everywhere the "no photography" icon. There's no one patrolling, nobody would probably care, I doubt even the artist would care, but out of respect (abiding laws I disagree with) - I'll refrain from sharing pictures and instead describe some of the art:
Antique photographs, Victorian, with spring eyes and buttons protruding, drawn and etched upon, altered, statues - abstract, combinations of antique handles, knobs, taps, cameras, horns, square nails, the miscellany of garbage finds while out metal detecting arranged into - well, more ornate abstractions that somehow engage you, old jars filled with ... (I don't remember, moss? Lichen?), all bound together with twigs, stones, nails...
Dolls, old and creepy, paint peeling and flaking off their faces, filled with clockwork gears, the Brother's Quay comes to mind (and hers, I'm sure), halo's and auras of twigs, bodies of cheap plastic, the limbs amputated and used repurposed in other sculptures, the Virgin Mary, carved out of wood, old postcards replace the face, in simple frames that somehow lend a spirituality to her ideas...
Old books, opened, elaborated upon, drawn, annotated, doodled, shadow boxes of carefully cut out papers, it continues...
...fur dolls, coyote, dogs, other skulls for the head, stitched fur bodies, other found objects...
The daughter pays attention. She knows this, knows my apartment, jeep, house, the hundreds of places I've lived overflowing with junk, guesses now at my intentions...
Nothing I'd buy, I have all of this, can find all of this, will find - the rest of this, and my assemblages, while tangent, would not be precisely the same. But I'm impressed nonetheless, she's definitely on my page...
Deep Dreaming Bob Ross
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Other
- Hits: 1543
"This artwork represents what it would be like for an AI to watch Bob Ross on LSD (once someone invents digital drugs). It shows some of the unreasonable effectiveness and strange inner workings of deep learning systems. The unique characteristics of the human voice is learned and generated as well as hallucinations of a system trying to find images which are not there."
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Google Maps
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
- Hits: 1413
Recently Google Maps updated it's maps with new imagery, removing all those areas obfuscated by cloud cover. Presumably they didn't map Skull Island because it's perpetually shrouded by clouds, but wherever a clear image existed it replaced one with clouds, allowing you to view a (presumably) sunnier world.
Which explains the curious patchwork of winter and clouds I found in this image:
The couldn't get all the clouds (Maybe THAT's where King Kong is living), but they got some. Note the curious squares of winter...
Living Someplace Ordinary
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2100
And always the Grass is Greener. By which I mean I watch the prospecting videos, read the literature, think to myself "If Only I was in Australia/Nevada/Arizona/London/Alberta...", always, always the game is elsewhere...
Somewhere in Australia a poor bloke's found no gold and is wishing he was in the Kootenays, away from the deadly spiders and venomous snakes and crocodiles...someplace easy, with shade and fresh, abundant water...
I'm well aware of the fallacy that treasure is never underfoot, when very often it is, I resist the urge to pack up, confine my explorations to an hour's drive.
Yesterday, good, a good spot, I was there before, few years ago, nothing great, but if I crossed over the creek, found a way to get to the other side, there's abundant potential. It's not as easy as it sounds, 6-8 feet wide, deep, swift current and abundant boulders, slip and things won't be so good, but I can see the potential, a good day, try it out, snipe, clean the rocks, the crevices, the moss from the boulders, fill a bucket and pan it out, I might be surprised.
For the moment, living someplace ordinary, but making my plans to improve it...
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