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All text, photography and artwork is COPYRIGHT by GARY SIM unless noted otherwise.
JULY 23: UNFINISHED DRAWING "COASTAL DEFENSE" ALMOST DONE AFTER 10 YEARS
Coastal Defense
I started this drawing either in 2014 or 2015, after I finished drawing
Waiting For More Ships From China. However, somewhere along the line I bogged
down in the amount of drawing required to finish it. After leaning it up against a
wall for a few months, I put it in a drawer to keep the dust off. Every couple
of years or so I would look at it again, and sometimes do a little more drawing on it.
In Spring 2024 I did more drawing in hopes of finishing it in time for Art in the City,
or the WECC display case, but didn't have the time. Now in late July I am trying again.
The actual image is 16" high x 22" wide, drawn on BFK Rives Infinity paper, using
Copic Multi-liner pigment ink pens, graphite pencil, and Prismacolor pencils.
The drawing is done from an enlargment of a digital photograph that I took one day
during a hike in Lighthouse Park, West Vancouver, from a small rock offshore that was exposed
at low tide. The drawing shown is a work in progress, there are a few things left to do.
The Point Atkinson lighthouse has been protecting the entry to Vancouver harbour for many years, and
I grew up listening to its foghorn blasting away on many dark foggy nights. Now its radio beacon, radar
reflectors, and other modern gadgets have supplanted the horn and the light. In the foreground
of the drawing an abandoned World War II searchlight emplacement sits intact, ready to be
manned again at a moment's notice. Behind the searchlight and out of sight in this view was
the "examination" gun, a cannon manned at all times during the war, ready to repel invaders
and to fire warning shots at vessels that didn't stop at the examination line prior to
entering harbour. The hard rocks along the shore have also done their share of
coastal defense, they show the linear scars of glaciation and glacial rounding from an
outflowing glacier during the last ice age.
JULY 20: VANCITY CREDIT UNION EXHIBITION STARTS IN AUGUST
An exciting opportunity came up recently to have a solo exhibition of my artwork in
the window of the VanCity Credit Union on Robson at Denman. A curated selection of
12 limited edition prints will be on display through August,
September, and October - a full 3-month long exhibition. See link for more information:
ORIGINAL RELIEF PRINTS BY GARY SIM
JULY 15: SEVEN NEW SUMMER ARTWORKS
BIG BAMBOO linocut: final impression and block prior to trimming for printing.
This is an enlarged (11"h x 8.2"w) and more detailed version of my edition titled Five
Bamboo (6" x 4") that I cut in 2023.
This is a series of drawings from life, started while sitting on various benches along the
seawall in Coal Harbour, Vancouver. There is usually only a little time to do a sketch,
since the wind may come up, it starts to rain, clouds cover the sun, the shadows move and
the light changes ... you may also be getting roasted in the sun, shivering in the cold,
bothered by mosquitoes or other insects. Thus, each of these drawings began as a pencil
sketch from life, just sitting on a bench trying to decide how much of the view I should
put into the drawing. Ideally it goes well, outlines of mountains, trees and
buildings are added, along with colour notations. Usually one sitting is enough to get the
drawing started, it is then finished at home with pigment pen & ink and Prismacolour and
graphite pencils. Occasionally I go back to the same location to add or correct some details.
Lost Lagoon and Low Tide On Barclay Street are another two drawings from life. I was sitting on
a park bench looking over Lost Lagoon, Stanley Park, Vancouver in the first drawing. The second
drawing illustrates an unfortunate plumbing failure of our apartment building's outdoor pool,
just when pool weather has arrived. This drawing required a number of visits to the pool deck to
work out details. The old Ford pickup truck is drawn from photographs that I
took in 2012 on an Okanagan backroad.
JULY 14: POP-UP SHOW OF SIM ARTWORK IN NARAMATA
Sim artwork on display at 4th Meridian, Naramata. Photographs courtesy
4th Meridian.
My friends at 4th Meridian
in Penticton acquired a nice collection
of my artwork for sale in their stores. At the moment the work is being displayed
in their summer store in Naramata. They put up a one-day solo display of the work
on Sunday July 14, but alas a bicycle race closed the road to Naramata that day.
They will be putting the show up again on Sunday July 21.
JUNE 11: IN THE DITCH
I heard about this book a few years ago, but was unable to find a copy of it to read.
I tried again recently on bookfinder.com, and discovered that a number of copies were
available for online purchase. I promptly ordered a copy, and it arrived in the mail
today. YIPPERS! 184 pages, softcover, a second printing of the first and only edition.
I have yet to do more than flip through the pages, but it looks fascinating. It is a
collection of stories about derailments and salvage operations on the Pacific Great Eastern
railway, later BC RAIL, from 1929 to 1965. I knew some of the people mentioned in the book,
and worked with them when I was employed by BC RAIL, and am familiar with most of the
locations that are described, so it is a precious memoir for me. As a bonus, Robert D.
Turner, Curator Emeritus at the Royal BC Museum, wrote a nice review of the book, as he
did for my book Railway Rock Gang, which essentially continues
the story from 1978 to 1987.
JUNE 10: VANCOUVER HISTORICAL SOCIETY ARTICLE ON T.S.H. SHEARMAN
Image courtesy Vancouver Historical Society
My friend Michael Kluckner, President of the Vancouver Historical Society (VHS), recently posted
this article in their June 2024 newsletter, Vol. 63 No. 9. The article is abstracted
from a large number of newspaper clippings on Thomas S.H. Shearman (1859-1944), one of the uncles of early
Vancouver artist Maud Rees Sherman, and the brother of
Ruiter Stinson Sherman. An interesting connection between
the Sherman family and the VHS is that the Society's founding President was Walter Noble
Sage, Maud Sherman's first cousin on her mother's side of the family.
Unfotunately, Shearman's lifelong quest to build the world's largest telescope was never
realized. It wasn't for lack of persistance! Shearman was Vancouver's first official
weatherman, in addition to his telescope quest. For many years he was actually kept on
retainer by Edward Mahon, an early developer of Vancouver and the North Shore, as Mahon's
personal astronomer. Mahon was an ardent amateur astronomer, who even made his own small
telescopes, probably with Shearman's help. Refer to THE GREEN NECKLACE, by Walter
Volovsek, for Mahon's extensive biography.
JUNE 9: FLOATEL ARRIVING IN VANCOUVER HARBOUR
I was doing a sketch of Vancouver harbour on June 9, sitting on a bench on the seawall.
It was a very nice day and a lot of people were out on the seawall and in the harbour.
A cruise ship came into view from behind Brockton Point, slowly cruising along the north
shore of the harbour. It didn't go to a cruise ship terminal. I found out later that it
was going to visit the drydock on the north shore. It was Bridgeman's FLOATEL, a
cruise ship that has been converted into a floating hotel, for use as housing adjacent
to projects that are close to the ocean. In this case, the ship is intended to house
construction workers at the new LNG plant being built on Howe Sound at Woodfibre.
The ship has actually been in the news recently. The town council in Squamish has yet
to approve its use, and in early June they actually ordered it to leave. On the other
hand, the BC government has officially ordered it to be used at Woodfibre. As of mid-June
the folks in Squamish are chewing this over. As usual, there are at least two different
schools of thought about it.
MAY 24: ART IN THE CITY 2024 PHOTOGRAPHS
Here are a couple of belated photographs of the Art in the City event May 3 - 5 at the West End
Community Centre. I took down some large drawings and two framed etchings for display. They were
all admired but not sold. It was actually a bit of a slow event. For one thing there was a Canucks
game at the same time as the Friday night opening, and there was a marathon being run around the
West End on Sunday. Luckily, Saturday was quite busy. I took my self-published greeting cards to sell
for the first time in years, and a steady stream of $5 bills trickled into my wallet. I also sold
a few limited edition prints, and people took a lot of business cards.
I made a point of taking samples of all the tools and materials that I use for making relief prints
and etchings, and spent a lot of time describing how I get the results that I do. A couple of
people asked if I give lessons, which was interesting. I had organized two linocut workshops in
early 2020, but they were cancelled because of the pandemic, and I haven't tried again.
MAY 11: WEST END LIVING LIBRARY
Yesterday I tried something different, and for an hour became a "living book" across
the street at Barclay Manor, headquarters of the West End Seniors Network. I talked
about my book Railway Rock Gang, and the kinds of things the Rock Gang did on
a daily basis, or on special projects. I took along a number of photographs taken
at the time, plus assorted ephemera. Although the audience was intended to be quite
small, a number of un-registered visitors swarmed the room and more chairs were
brought in. Eventually there were 13 people in the room besides me. The talk went
well, and there were a lot of interesting questions.
MAY 5: NEW LIMITED EDITION PRINTS
Mock Turtle, Southern Snail, Northern Snail (click images for more info)
APRIL 30: NEW RELIEF PRINT "CANADA GOOSE"
Canada Goose
This linocut is made from a photograph that I took at Lost Lagoon, Stanley Park, Vancouver.
I liked the reflection of the goose in the water. This impression is from the second state of
the lino block. The actual image is 6" high by 8" wide, and is now available for purchase
in a limited edition of 30 impressions.
APRIL 18: 2024 ART IN THE CITY FLYER
Greetings! The Art in the City event is just two weeks away, and I am busy getting
my artwork ready for the show. There will be a number of new artworks on exhibit, as
well as artworks created in other years. This year I will also have a number of
greeting cards for sale.
APRIL 16: NEW RELIEF PRINT "TREE SWALLOWS"
Tree Swallows
I saw these two swallows sitting on a branch beside Lost Lagoon, Stanley Park, Vancouver.
I was out for a morning walk, and it struck me that these birds would make a simple but
striking composition for a new relief print. This impression is from the second state of
the lino block. The actual image is 6" high by 8" wide, and is now available for purchase
in a limited edition of 30 impressions. Japanese Unryu paper was laid across the branch
in a few places to provide some random texture on the branch.
MARCH 24: THE BRITISH COLUMBIA REVIEW POSTS ARTICLE ON BC ARTISTS AND SIM
Screen capture from online article
The British Columbia Review is an online web site that reviews publications related to B.C. and
also provides occasional editorial articles and commentaries. For some years there has been an
offer outstanding for them to write a review of BC Artists. Trevor Marc-Hughes recently asked author
Christina Johnson-Dean to do the review, and it was posted yesterday.
It is a very complimentary article, and the review extends beyond the BC Artists project to include
my own biographical and personal activities through the years. There are lots of active links in
the article that provide instant access to web pages that are mentioned in the text. Johnson-Dean
clearly "dove deeply" into both the BC Artists and Sim Publishing websites to find information
and images. Luckily my policy of "don't lie in writing" kept the review accurate.
An interesting part of the article compares how Johnson-Dean used the project 13 years ago,
researching artist Ina D.D. Uhthoff for Mother Tongue Publishing's Unheralded Artists
series of books, to how much information is in the file about the artist (and others) today.
Typically the well-known artists with numerous monographs are updated only with
additional exhibition information or newspaper reviews. I prefer not to tell life stories if
they have already been well told, as Johnson-Dean did with Ina Uhthoff and Mary Filer, for example.
MARCH 13: EXHIBITION NOW ON AT WEST END COMMUNITY CENTRE
Adventures of Noman - click image for exhibition information
Birds Around Us - click image for exhibition information
The two new exhibitions went up smoothly yesterday, despite the large number of
artworks and all of the ephemera added to the birds part of the show. For the first time
I simply used gridwall hangers, with the artwork attached to them with super magnets.
No picture frames to purchase or lug around, and no glass to cause unwanted reflections.
The intent of the Noman show is to make it look like a deconstructed sketchbook that has
been spread across the wall. The birds exhibition shows the final artworks, plus all the
tools and equipment used to produce the prints. Yesterday a number of people came to see
the show while I was there (and not there), so it is off to a good start!
MARCH 10: EXHIBITION OF BIRD DRAWINGS & PRINTS ADDED TO WECC SHOW
MARCH 8: THREE NEW LITTLE BIRD LINOCUTS
Red-breasted Nuthatch, White-breasted Nuthatch, Oregon Junco
I spent quite a bit of time this winter trying to photograph a number of species of "little birds"
that visit my porch. After taking hundreds of pictures - most showing either a blurred
bird or a place where a bird had just flown away - I managed to take a few that were
useful for making linocuts. Each bird is represented life size, each linocut image
is 3" high x 4.5" wide. Click on images for more information.
FEBRUARY 25: MAJOR UPDATES TO BC ARTISTS PROJECT
It may seem silly to announce "major updates" to the BRITISH
COLUMBIA ARTISTS project, considering that there are already over 6,000 web pages
and images posted. However, a lot of information has been added this year in two main
series of updates. First, eight exhibition catalogues for the
B.C. Society of Fine Arts from 1950 to 1957
have been transcribed and all artist biographies updated or created.
Second, a number of newspaper clippings have been transcribed related to artist
Maud Sherman and her father
R.S. Sherman, both of them exhibiting with the
Vancouver Sketch Club from 1918 to 1924. In addition to expanding
their exhibition records, this has created numerous artist biographies, updated many more,
and listed hundreds of artworks.
The project continues to receive many visitors. In the past week alone, there were 553
visitors, who looked at 1,738 web pages, an average of 3.14 page views per visitor. Each
visitor's average duration of visit was 207 seconds, for a combined total of almost 32 hours!
Thank you to all visitors, I hope that you found some useful information.
FEBRUARY 16: THE ADVENTURES OF NOMAN EXHIBITION MARCH 12 - APRIL 2
Nomanclature
New exhibition of Sim drawings just booked starting March 12, refer to:
JANUARY 29: SIM PRINT "WAITING" AT ONLINE AUCTION
Waiting
A friend emailed to let me know that one of my limited edition prints is up for
auction at Invaluable on-line auctions. Very little of my artwork has come onto the
secondary market. I donated this particular print to the Alcuin Society's annual
book auction 20 years ago, and it was purchased by collector and printer Don Atkins.
He passed away in 2006, and his widow Barbara in 2023, some of their collection is now
coming onto the market. This auction closed on February 11.
JANUARY 3: BC ARTISTS DONATION OFFER
I have been compiling information on BC Artists for over 25 years, and have
produced a massive amount of material that is posted for free public
access at BC Artists. However, posting the
project for free access means that I pay for absolutely everything. Since a
lot of people use the project on a regular basis, I thought it would be
appropriate to solicit donations in support of the project. I cannot offer
a tax receipt, but I have put together a rewards program for donors. Please
look at the web page at:
JANUARY 2: TRIAL PROOFS OF A NEW PRINT
Blackberry Harbour State 1.
This is another old fishing boat that I saw when I was on vacation at Egmont,
at the northern end of the Sechelt Peninsula. I can see a few things that I'd
like to work on before I do an edition, but this is pretty close to what I wanted.
JANUARY 1: ANOTHER NEW YEAR
Best wishes for a happy and successful New Year to all visitors to my website.
For the first time in years I didn't even wake up at midnight due to all of the
cheering, yelling, honking, and fireworks. There were no fireworks, and luckily no
parties that I could hear in this apartment building, and if anyone was cheering
they weren't very loud.
2023 was a pretty crazy year in a lot of ways, two major wars in progress and a lot
of smaller ones, and lots of climate disasters including floods, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes,
earthquakes, landslides, and all the rest. It seems that all of that will get worse.
2023 was a good year for my artwork, I created 11 limited edition prints, and
exhibited at three successful events during the year, selling 40 artworks. Hopefully
2024 will be even better.
I plan to do less work this year on BC ARTISTS and will
try to finish LOOKING FOR MAUD, my biography of early Vancouver artist
Maud Rees Sherman and her family, her life, and times.
I have essentially been working on that since 1996, and I need to finish it. I made
good progress on it last year, although I spent much time working on a spreadsheet
of the Sherman family's residences, families, and employment, gleaned from extensive
searches on the internet for City Directories in BC and in Ontario. That produced
some interesting results, especially in Ontario prior to 1900, before most of the Sherman
family moved to BC.
Thanks to everyone who has helped with BC ARTISTS, and to everyone who purchased or
expressed interest in my artwork.
Continue to 2023
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