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NEWS ARCHIVE - 2023
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All text, photography and artwork is COPYRIGHT by GARY SIM unless noted otherwise.
DECEMBER 31: 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.
DECEMBER 26: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Wayzgoose keepsakes in production
YIKES ! ! ! I just realized that I haven't posted a news item in more than two
months! Yes, things have been happening. I've just had my head down working on
BC Artists a lot this year, adding lots of images, newspaper clippings, and all
kinds of other information. It has also been the "year of the linocut" as I've
done a lot of work on them and issued 10 editions, with another print almost
ready to print.
Art events are finally getting back to normal after the pandemic, and I exhibited
my work at three events this year: Art in the City, the WECC display case, and the
Alcuin Society Wayzgoose. Events like those are always a lot of work, but they
were all successful in their own way, and I sold a record 40 artworks in 2023!
Quality of life at 1348 Barclay Street has been unfortunately seriously degraded
this year by the owner doing continuous and mostly needless renovations to the building.
These included ripping out a perfectly good soffit at the entry and putting in a cheap
metal one, the main accomplishment here was that two security cameras were removed and
not replaced. The entire main floor lobby was gutted and very slowly rebuilt, taking
8 months overall of noise and mess, and still not complete. They put in a new drywall
ceiling, then ripped it out and put in a wood laminate ceiling. The laundry room was
non-functional for months this year after the drain line plugged. Now they're smashing
all the tiles off the building's exterior and getting ready to paint it black and white.
Despite all of that, it's still a good building to live in, and I've been here
thirty-one and a half years! Somehow it doesn't seem that long. It's been interesting
seeing all the different tenants come and go, and there have been about eight pairs of
managers along the way.
NOVEMBER 4 & 5: 2023 TRAIN EXPO
General view of the 2023 Train Expo
A friend wondered if I was able to help out on a volunteer basis at the 2023
Train Expo, a show devoted to model trains and to trains in general. It wasn't
clear what I was going to be doing, but I said yes and spent two days out at
the old Forum at the PNE. It turned out that I was helping to run an interactive
display where anybody who was interested could paint a pre-cast plaster rock in any
colours they chose, with any one (or more) of a variety of brushes, and then
take it away with them. It was actually quite fun, and, assisted by Tom Hopping,
we encouraged a lot of people to paint some plaster. At least one of our visitors
voted us "best booth" but we didn't win the award. Perhaps another time. I took the
opportunity to do a little bit of guerilla marketing, two of my prints are on the
table, and I also sold a few copies of Railway Rock Gang.
Plaster rock painting at the 2023 Train Expo
OCTOBER 16: ALCUIN SOCIETY WAYZGOOSE A SUCCESSFUL SHOW
View of Sim table
The Alcuin Society Wayzgoose letterpress printing fair has come and gone. What a great event,
and how wonderful to see so many familiar faces after four years! The event was very well
attended, especially in mid-afternoon when the aisles were full of people admiring the
displays. Sim Publishing had a very busy day, and sold a number of prints as well as
explaining the "Sim method" of making relief prints to interested visitors. Many thanks to
the Alcuin Society and its volunteers, and the Vancouver Public Library for hosting the event.
Rod McDonald of the Canadian Typography Archives was giving away freshly printed posters and
handbills at the table next to me. He kindly allowed me to spread out onto his table, mostly
with a display of Robert Reid's design work that I put out as a
memorial display for Robert,
who passed away last year. The Archives recently posted a web site about their activities,
please visit Canadian Typography Archives for more
information about what they are doing.
View of the room
OCTOBER 2: NEW LINOCUT PRINT "GREEN HARBOUR" TO BE SHOWN AT WAYZGOOSE
(low res image from State 2)
The ALCUIN SOCIETY WAYZGOOSE LETTERPRESS PRINTING FAIR is almost here! Please
visit the Fair on October 14th at the Main Branch of the Vancouver Public Library. I
have been busy cutting and printing a new hand-tinted linocut titled GREEN HARBOUR,
that I will unveil at the Wayzgoose. The photograph shows an impression from the first
state of the print, which I used for figuring out what colours to tint it with. The
third state is being printed for the edition, after a number of small revisions to
the image were made. The image is 8" high by 6" wide, printed on Arches Text Wove paper,
and hand tinted with Pitt brush pens.
SEPTEMBER 13: WAYZGOOSE KEEPSAKE IN PRODUCTION
The ALCUIN SOCIETY WAYZGOOSE LETTERPRESS PRINTING FAIR is quickly approaching! Please
visit the Fair on October 14th at the Main Branch of the Vancouver Public Library. I
have designed, cut, and printed a KEEPSAKE for the event, featuring a stylized compass,
titled NORTH, SOUTH, EAST & WAYZ, that I will be distributing during the event.
The fair has not been held since 2019 due to the COVID pandemic, so it will be great to
see all of the new work that has been produced in the last four years!
AUGUST 29: TRIAL PROOFS OF NEW LINOCUT PRINT "MERLIN"
Last week I went for a walk around Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park, looking for birds to
take photographs of. I saw a small bird perched on top of a dead snag. I couldn't tell
what species it was, but was able to take a few pictures of it before it flew away. I
was later able to identify the bird as a Merlin, also known as a Pigeon Hawk. One of the
photographs was good enough for me to use as a base for a new linocut. My recent linocuts
have mostly all been 4" x 6" but this one needed to be larger. I decided to cut it on a
block that is 9" x 12", and print it on paper that is 11" x 14". That size is tricky for
me to print on my little press, but I managed to print 4 trial proofs for review. The idea
is to hand-tint the print once the ink has dried.
AUGUST 1: WEST END REVIEW PUBLISHES EXHIBITION INFO
I ran into Kevin McKeown, Editor of the West End Review, on Barclay Street a couple of
days ago. We first met years ago at the Vancouver International Writers Festival, where
he was a publicist and I was a volunteer. He was interested in my exhibition at the
West End Community Centre, and despite being on a monthly deadline managed to squeeze
an article about it into the August posting. Thank you! The display has had a number of
interested visitors so far, in fact yesterday I went down to clean the glass because
a lot of children's fingerprints and handprints were all over the glass from them
looking and pointing at the display.
JULY 28: WEST END COMMUNITY CENTRE EXHIBITION NOW ON DISPLAY
My solo exhibition at the West End Community Centre is now on display until August 15th. Thank you
to Theresa Mura for helping hang the artwork. Please visit website link below for more information
about the exhbition, opening hours, address, and contact information. The page has been updated
with the artwork that is on exhibit.
JULY 15: WEST END COMMUNITY CENTRE EXHIBITION ALMOST READY
Hello! I have posted a new web page that lists all of the artworks that I expect to
exhibit starting July 25 at the West End Community Centre. The page includes the Centre's
address and opening hours.
JULY 12: NARAMATA SUPPLY COMPANY SCISSORS
I heard that the folks at 4th Meridian Art & Vintage Gifts recently opened
a second store in Naramata (the first is in Penticton). I decided to send them a gift
of a pair of scissors that I've owned for many years. After they posted the notice
seen below, the Naramata Museum became very excited about the possibility of acquiring
the scissors, as they had nothing in their collection from the Naramata Supply Company.
4M was kind enough to donate the scissors to the Museum's permanent collection. The
scissors were made in Germany, presumably some time before World War Two.
JUNE 23: RECENT ARTWORK PROJECT
I recently purchased a couple of pads of Kyougi paper, which consist of many pieces of
thinly sliced pine wood. When I mentioned this to a sushi chef that I know, he promptly
pulled out a pile of longer and wider sheets of the shaved wood, and gave them to me. He
said that they sometimes use it for food presentation. My idea was to use them for artwork.
So far I have experimented with a few sheets, including the pen & ink drawing of the great
blue heron in the photo above. The two photographs are in 4" x 6" frames, the others are
in various sizes including 4x6, 4x5, and the corncob and slice of sushi in 1.5x2 frames.
The basswood strips are all left over from my kumiko designs done in winter/spring 2021.
JUNE 16: "NEW" MAUD REES SHERMAN WATERCOLOUR ARRIVES
To my great surprise, a friend just bought a Maud Rees Sherman
watercolour in the interior of B.C., and gave it to me. The painting is 14" tall by 10" wide,
and arrived in a lovely period frame with an unusual black matte trimmed with gold leaf. The
painting is nicely signed, but is not titled nor is there any information about the painting
on the back of the frame.
All of Maud Sherman's landscape paintings are very accurate, and if you can find the actual
location you can match it to the painting. In this case I think that the painting is located
on the Yuculta Rapids, between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland, and may have been shown
in one of the 1930 or 1932 PASOVAS group exhibitions.
MAY 30: GREEN ARROW UPDATE FOR GARY SIM ART ON SIM PUBLISHING
To make it easier to navigate from one artwork to the next in the collection of drawings
and prints offered on Sim Publishing, I have added the "green arrows" as shown below (in
a reduced format) to each artwork's web page so that one click takes you to the next
artwork, or to the previous one. The artwork pages have all been reformatted into 3 table cells
so that the arrows stay in the same place on each web page. The order of images is the same as
the order shown in the DRAWINGS and PRINTS index pages. The first and last drawings link
to the DRAWINGS index, and the first and last print editions link to the PRINTS index.
Left arrow links to previous artwork, right arrow links to subsequent artwork.
MAY 14: NEW LINOCUT "SEAGULL"
I managed to edition a few impressions of this new relief print
Seagull in time for Art in the
City 2023. It's from a photograph that I took of this seagull last year in Stanley Park.
It was just standing there minding its own business. Originally I thought that its feet
would be the same colour as its beak, but the bird book says its feet are flesh-coloured,
although they looked pretty dirty in my photograph.
MAY 12: ART IN THE CITY WAS A SUCCESS
Ken & Helen Pattern and friends plus 3 of my prints; partial view of my half-booth.
A week later the dust has mostly settled ... Art in the City 2023 was successful
for both myself and for Ken & Helen Pattern, who shared my booth. Events like this
are quite a marathon experience. First, weeks of selecting and organizing artwork
to display, and getting everything ready to be moved down to the West End Community
Centre on the Friday afternoon. Then, the move and the installation. A bit of a break,
then the "Vernissage" opening on Friday evening for two hours.
That was fun, a lot of visitors showed up, our hosts provided a cash bar with wine,
beer, pop, coffee, and water, as well as tables of appetizers to nibble on while
wandering around the displays. All of the exhibitors got 2 drink tickets along with
their exhibitor i.d. There were 50 booths and they all seemed occupied.
Quite a wide variety of visual art, prints, and photography, but not much sculpture.
Saturday morning I went down a bit early and organized my artwork some more. Again, the
whole day was fairly busy, with the odd lull providing a chance to have a sandwich.
Sunday was another busy day from 11 to 4, then began the frenzy of taking it all down, packing
it all up, and getting it all home. I managed to do all that and was home by 4:55,
collapsing into the nearest comfortable chair with a drink in my hand. I sold out the
impressions of Little Bird that I had prepared and taken
with me, but forget to take down more of them on Sunday morning. In any case, I also sold
two drawings, Nine O'clock Gun and Erratic Shoreline,
and a number of limited edition prints including Five Bamboo,
Hummingbird, Higher Rises,
Dream Snake, as well as one impression of new relief print
Seagull that is not yet posted here.
Most the of friends and acquaintances who said that they would see the show did come by
to say hello, and a few others that I knew wandered by as well. A lot of people took my
business card. Many were very interested in the process of relief printing, linocut
especially, although I also described to a few folks how my two copper plate etchings
Water Taxi and Looking West were
produced. I really love the educational part of these shows, and a printed photograph
of my printing press was very useful a number of times.
APRIL 10: NEW LINOCUT "FIVE BAMBOO"
A completed impression of the print
I went for a walk in Stanley Park last week, and wandered into the rhododendron
garden. In the middle of it was a stand of giant bamboo, perhaps 30 or 40 feet
tall. I took a number of photographs, thinking that there might be a good linocut
image. Cutting the block went quite quickly, and the image is easy to print. The five
main bamboo stalks are hand-embossed into the damp print paper after the impression is taken
out of the press.
Design in red carbon paper on the block prior to cutting; an impression on the block after inking
APRIL 5: NEW LINOCUT "REACTOR"
I managed to edition a few impressions of this new relief print
Reactor in time for Art in the
City 2023. It is an abstract idea that I decided to turn into a
limited edition print.
APRIL 2: ART IN THE CITY UPDATE
Ken Pattern and I colluded to produce invitation cards for Art in the City 2023.
When I created the document, three cards to a page, I decided to do three
different sets of images for the cards. Here are two of the versions. The QR
code for each of our websites was generated using a free online tool. It should
be an interesting event. This is the sixteenth annual Art in the City, I was
in the first one in 2006! Hopefully you can drop by to say hello.
MARCH 23: NEW LINOCUTS "HUMMINGBIRD", "LITTLE BIRD" and "PENGUINS"
Click on images for edition information.
I have been working on a series of new linocuts. These feature my favorite subject:
birds. The hummingbird was seen on Mayne Island a few years ago, it is tentatively
identified as Anna's Hummingbird. The "little bird" is from a photo I took in Stanley
Park a couple of years ago. It is harder than you think to take a picture of such a
small and relatively featureless bird. The penguins are from a family photo taken at
Stanley Park about 1964, when there was a zoo.
MARCH 8: GARY SIM ARTWORK MOSAIC
I have been busy working on ways to improve marketing of my artwork. For example,
I recently updated all BC Artists A to Z index pages by adding one of my artworks
at the top of all 26 pages. These pages are the most heavily visited on my web site,
so it was an easy way to get people looking at my art, even if they weren't intending
to do so. In the first few days after
posting the update, a number of my artwork pages had already been looked at.
I had previously shown artworks by other artists there, whose last name was related
to the index letter, i.e. a Carr postcard image for C, and simply moved
those images down the index page to the alphabetical listing for that artist. I also
added all my artworks to my biography page, which gave me the idea for this
new page showing all of my posted drawings,
limited edition prints, and etchings on one page as a mosaic.
MARCH 6: ART IN THE CITY MAY 5 - 7 2023
Art in the City returns again to the West End Community Centre in May. This
3-day event will feature a display of art by Gary Sim, who will be sharing
a booth with artist Ken Pattern. Stay tuned for more details! Note: in 2006
Sim displayed his artwork in the first annual Art in the City. In 2020 I applied
and was accepted to the event, but it was cancelled due to COVID.
FEBRUARY 27: ADVENTURES OF NOMAN SLIDE SHOW
SLIDE SHOW
I thought it might be interesting for visitors to see a Powerpoint slide show, showing some
of the "Adventures of noman" series of drawings, with a commentary and some information
about the images and what they mean.
JANUARY 17: 1922 QUOTE FROM A B.C. ARTIST
Local B.C. artist Thomas W. Fripp wrote a long
opinion piece titled "The Case of Local Artists",
published in the Western Women's Weekly in 1922. In
100 years it seems that nothing has changed in the Bolshevik world.
"If the rising generation has more refining influences provided by art,
music, good literature, wholesome thoughts and higher ideals placed before
them we won't have to fear that black death of Bolshevism and Socialism that
destroys but builds not, and threatens the very heart of civilization."
Much further back in time, the historian Tacitus referenced much the same thing when
referring to a battle: "They made a desert and called it peace."
JANUARY 5: LETTER FROM UKRAINE
Letter from the Office of the President of Ukraine
In early November I mailed a present to President Zelenskyy in Kyiv: a matted and
framed copy of my print A CANDLE FOR UKRAINE, that I issued
as my 2022 solstice greeting card. I included a few pages of information and
some printouts in the box. So, for the past two months, I've been hoping to get
an answer back from Ukraine. Yesterday it arrived! It took 5 weeks to get here
from Kyiv, although they sent the letter quite promptly after receiving my package.
JANUARY 4: DALFO EXHIBITION PLANNED AT IL MUSEO
Alfredo Dalfo sculptures
In 2022 I did a lot of research for my ongoing BC ARTISTS
project. A major effort was made to find information on early Vancouver sculptor
Alfredo Dalfo (1905-1993), tracking he and his family in
city directories and Provincial vital statistics through the years. I was able to
contact his brother-in-law, and then his daughter, who were both very helpful. Eventually
I built up a good biography of the man and his work, with numerous sculptures illustrated.
I thought that it was important to do this biographical work because Dalfo had been
Charles Marega's apprentice, assistant, shop hand, and
model maker for many years, starting in 1918.
It turned out that Il Museo at the Italian Cultural Centre had a collection of 10 works
by Dalfo, and the daughter and I had lunch with the Curator Angele Clarke. We discussed
the possibility of having a Dalfo exhibition. However, 10 pieces
didn't seem to be enough for a good solo exhibition. Over the next few weeks
the daughter started sending me photos of sculptures, eventually identifying 20 pieces.
Now there would be enough. This week I re-proposed the exhibition to Il Museo, and an agreement
was made in principle to have a "short" solo exhibition in 2025!
Denomatus, 2012
SOLSTICE GREETINGS is a compilation of 22 years'
worth of my solstice greeting cards and prints. There were one or two years when I didn't
issue anything, and I am still looking for a few more images to post.
Continue to 2022
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