From a recent walk along the English Bay seawall.

It has been a while since the last NEWS posting, it was a very quiet fall season. However, my proposed donations of BC ARTISTS material to the University of Victoria Library and Special Collections has commenced, and three shipments of publications and original artwork have been sent. I compiled a number of spreadsheets listing additional publications for the Archivist's review and selection, and am waiting to hear back from them. Compiling the spreadsheets has been a fair bit of work, but they are useful in a number of ways, including inventory, appraisal, indexing, and insurance.

A selection of Sim solstice greeting cards:
RGBK(Y) Mandala, Frosty Window, First Winter, West End in Winter, Tangled, Snow on Elms

The University of Victoria was selected because they are very interested in collecting material in the field of BC art history. Robert Amos, the well-known Victoria artist, writer, and biographer of E.J. Hughes, donated a huge collection of ephemera to them, and senior Vancouver artist Pnina Granirer also donated a significant amount of her personal archives. Robert encouraged me to contact U.Vic., and they were enthusiastic about receiving donations from my BC ARTISTS collection. So far so good!

A selection of Sim solstice greeting cards:
Angleman & the Lights Tangle, Twin Trees in Winter, Decorated Tree, Peace, Snow, Universolmas

Many thanks are due to all of the people who have supported me this year in my BC Artists project, including:
    Touchstones Museum & Gallery, Nelson, for catalogue donations
    Robert Amos and Touchwood Editions, Victoria, for research support and donations of E.J. Hughes books
    Private donor, North Vancouver, for donation of the Savary Pudding
    Private donor, North Vancouver, for donation of art school Prospectii, exhibition catalogues, and artist fond
    Vancouver Art Gallery Library and Archives, for research support
    Private donor, Ottawa ON, for ongoing support
    Vancouver artist Pnina Granirer, for donation of a number of hard-to-find catalogues and publications
    Lara Wilson, Director Special Collections/Archivist, University of Victoria, for accepting donations
    The Ferry Building Gallery, West Vancouver, for engaging me to lecture on BC ARTISTS
    West Vancouver Museum & Archives, for research support

And, especially, thanks to all of the people who have kept going this year despite all of the difficulties and restrictions.

In these pandemic times I hope you are all healthy and well. Best wishes for the holiday season, and a safe and happy new year!

   
Installation views courtesy Co-Curator Allan Collier.

Cover photograph provided courtesy of Touchwood Editions.

Ferries, fishboats, and recreational vessels have also been a part of my life, starting with sailing on the M.V. Hollyburn (a retired West Vancouver passenger ferry) up the North Arm of Burrard Inlet to Camp Howdy in 1958. Later on I "messed with boats" and at one time or another owned a Laser sailboat, a canoe, and a dory. So, when I first became aware of the art of E.J. Hughes many years ago, I fell in love with it as well. It is fair to say that I can't get enough of it!

THE E.J. HUGHES BOOK OF BOATS (ISBN 9781771513364 hardcover, $22.00 Cdn) written by Robert Amos, has just been published by Touchwood Editions in both a lovely little hardcover book as well as an electronic version. I was very happy to hear from the author that this was coming out, as the coastal artworks by Hughes seem to come alive with all of the craft that he paints with such obvious love.

The book is 88 pages, consisting mostly of illustrations of artwork by Hughes. Although this might seem to be an insufficient number of pages, the focus on boats - big and small - actually allows the book to provide a comprehensive look at this specific topic. The illustrations are accompanied by photographs of Hughes and his family, and places that he painted. Pencil sketches and studies for paintings provide interesting historical background, as does the informative text by Robert Amos. Quotations from the artist's correspondence and interviews give a glimpse of what Hughes was thinking at the time.

E.J. Hughes 1996, photograph by Sarah Amos.

E.J. Hughes has slowly reached a prominent status in Canadian art, and it is a well-deserved and hard-earned reputation. A growing number of books on Hughes attest to the public's interest in his work. THE E.J. HUGHES BOOK OF BOATS is a valuable and attractive addition to this library.

Village Wharf, E.J. Hughes 2004
Photograph provided courtesy of Touchwood Editions

The Adventures of Noman - CONNECTIONS by Gary Sim, 2019
Pen & ink, india ink brushpen on paper.

I noticed this little handbill posted on a nearby telephone pole for an exhibition at the Outsiders and Others Gallery at 716 East Hastings St.

I found another on-line link posted to my BC ARTISTS project, this one from the University of British Columbia Library, thank you!

Elevator shaft at The Prime, Surrey

A scene in Fez, Morocco, the oldest walled city in Africa

Me almost getting washed away at Sombrio Point, Vancouver Island

A view of Shalalth BC

Mace Point, Savary Island

One of my Grade One artworks

One of a gang of aggressive young red squirrels working the bridge for handouts.

This was a friendly little duck, it waddled over to check me out.

Some of the donation.

Now that they've dug the hole on Robson Street, they're filling it in. Doesn't make any sense.

Draft cover layout, photo courtesy Douglas Welch

The project reached a certain point, becoming one of a number of similar documents in progress intended to be merged as a chapter into an auto-biography. I printed it out in colour, and put it aside. Other projects like writing and self publishing Railway Rock Gang came along. The only public mention of the climb was a line item on my website CV in the "education" section. Last year I was contacted by one of the people who had been on the climb, Douglas Welch, who had looked for Waddington on the internet and found my one little note about it.

We got together for a couple of drinks and to catch up on the climb, what we remembered, who we still knew, and so on. He had scanned a number of his own photographs, and showed them to me on his laptop computer. They were really good pictures, such as the one shown above, and he gave me digital copies of them to use as I wished, after I sent him a copy of my writing project. Spurred on by this I slowly started to update, expand, and completely re-format the chapter I'd been working on into an actual book of its own. What was also interesting about meeting Doug again was that we had worked together in 2007 as consultants on the Squamish-Lil'Wat Cultural Centre in Whistler. He had been the theatrical consultant for the 85-seat theatre and stage, and I was doing contract administration for the architects. Despite all of the meetings we were in together, we didn't recognize each other from the climb thirty years earlier.

Some of the 700+ images in BC ARTISTS

One of the few planes that flew directly overhead

Untitled watercolour by Maud Rees Sherman

Does the sky look blue again? View from my balcony, late afternoon sun on Cappadocian Maple trees

I love this old neon sign on a corner store down the block

A little gazebo in a park across the road

Signs of the times: COVID-19 distancing on the left, invasive japanese beetle larvicide spraying on the right

My Pothos plant after a spray water wash

Posing my Pothos plant for a drawing, prior to taking cuttings

Recent cherry blossoms with stupid and needless traffic control sign

What does a drawer full of relief print blocks look like?

View of the art cave: working on BC Artists, surrounded by artwork and art books

Number 3 on the reference hit parade!

I kept finding more catalogues, though, and more artists, more artist groups, more exhibition venues. The list of artists kept growing, and so did the number of biographies, as well as the amount of information cumulatively added to the biographies. The index finally reached over 1,700 artists some years ago, and today I just finished transcribing and linking the last catalogue, the Vancouver Art Gallery's 1950 19th Annual B.C. Artists' exhibition.

This catalogue incurred the creation of the last 16 biography files in the original index. Every artist in the index now has their own biography file. Job well done! I have to confess, I didn't think I would spend anything like this amount of time on the project. Just doing the last catalogue and tidying up loose ends took me ten hours of continuous work.

The whole project has taken thousands of hours, cost thousands of dollars, referenced thousands of publications, and listed over nineteen thousand artists. A friend recently referred to me as a "completist" and I thought it was a point well taken. I actually would have finished this part of the project a long time ago, except that I kept making extensive digressions and expansions along the way, such as listing the 17,000+ post-1950 artists in the A to Z index.

Other digressions along the way included:
           compiling a list of art school students and graduates up to 1950
           transcribing the Island Arts & Crafts Society list of exhibitors
           transcribing the West Vancouver Sketch Club list of members
           transcribing and adding to the list of Greater Vancouver Art Galleries
           indexing the 1977 Visual Artists of B.C. (2,200 artists)
           compiling a series of Occasional Papers including Art & Framing Stores of Vancouver

Anyway, I think you get the picture, 'nuf said.

Looking east at 1000-block, everything on the right is boarded up.

Even the stupid little "parklets" are closed.

This is a good idea: "one man's hoarding is another man's floor"

There is a definite lack of "plenty" now.

This looks like we've had another hockey riot. Is this really necessary?

I guess the person putting up "closed" signs didn't have "remove welcome signs" in their scope of work.

I input the first half of it last year, then moved on to other things. I finally spent a couple of days finishing input for the second half. This included going through hundreds of pieces of art ephemera looking for galleries and exhibitions to add to the list, as well as adding scores of links to BC ARTISTS exhibitions and artist biographies.

The list is not complete, and probably can never be complete, but this is as close to a comprehensive list of local art galleries - public and private - as you will find, with particular emphasis on galleries that existed from 1950 to 2010.

John Kyle drawing

Eight of the catalogues are for BC Society of Fine Arts Annual Exhibitions, these new listings complete the annual exhibitions from 1935 to 1950. Five of the catalogues are for the Vancouver Art Gallery's BC Artists annual exhibitions, I am working to complete this series to 1950 as well, and have transcribed 22 of them from 1932 to 1948, with only 6 to go! Sixteen post-1950 catalogues have also been added, and 72 artists newly referenced from them.

J. Smart Copying Press

Underside of J. Smart Copying Press

Underside of J. Smart #9 frying pan with 12" rule

Detail - underside of J. Smart #9 frying pan

Haro Park Lodge, one of the epicentres of the disease hear, is just two blocks away, St. Paul's Hospital 6 blocks, Sunset Towers Retirement Centre is 3 blocks down Barclay, it must be heartening for people in those facilities to hear this!

It was confirmed by the Ecology Society this morning that my art show and linocut demo this coming weekend at the Lost Lagoon Nature House has been cancelled as part of the overall closures of Vancouver Parks Board facilities. We are all hopeful that this event can be held after the emergency.

With all Vancouver Community and Rec Centres now closed indefinitely, the ART IN THE CITY event on May 1 to 3 is officially cancelled. As well, I was accepted to have work in the West End Community Centre's lobby display case, but with the centre closed that won't happen.

Of course this is not all about ME. Best wishes to those people who now find themselves out of work, all the folks who work in libraries, schools, rec centres, restaurants, bars, museums, etc. Even better wishes to all those people who work in health care services - you will need all the help you can get.

  

A number of people have been asking about the process used to create the relief prints that are on display, I going to do a workshop and demonstration on linocut printing on March 15 at the market. If you are interested in attending this event (details pending), please email either Sim Publishing or Pacific Arts Market to let us know you are interested.

Please refer to EVENTS page for more information about the venue and the event itself.

A view of the front half of the art market

The Sim artwork display

From an article in Canadian Art magazine, 1956

A screen capture of the tweet

A longer version of the tweet was posted on the Library & Archives blog, per below.

A screen capture of the blog

Morning Owl

Skyline

The recent upload of BC ARTISTS project to the internet is starting to get responses from various facilities:

Another print titled MORNING OWL has been cut and trial proofed, and will be posted as soon as the ink is dry enough to allow scanning. Another new print SKYLINE is also ready to be editioned. Another design has been laid out and is ready for cutting, although not until after the display is up at the Pacific Arts Market.

We forgot to mention that late last year Sim Publishing donated 60 books and exhibition catalogues to an interior art gallery, to help build their library.

Research is ongoing for the powerpoint presentation at the Ferry Building Gallery in West Vancouver on Feb. 20, from 7 - 9 p.m., on early artists of the North Shore. See events page for more information.

Koulou

Although the weather was horribly dark and raining, it was warm and friendly inside, where I met the Crystal, the Manager. I showed her my collection of recent prints, and she was quite interested in representing me. We agreed on a 4-week period, from January 8 to February 4, 2020.

I went by again yesterday to finalize the paperwork, the weather had changed to sunny and cold, which was much better. Crystal was having a Christmas event, complete with Santa Claus and treats. She also plans other events such as paint-in's, workshops, demonstrations, and other holiday happenings. I bought a lovely little original pen & ink drawing by Stephanie B. Creative, matted and framed, for $38.00 ... !

Hope you can drop by in January! See their website for more information.