B.C. COAST in BLACK & WHITE by Gary Sim

MT. WADDINGTON & SCIMITAR ICEFALL

This image is compiled from a number of photographs taken from the Bell 47 helicopter that our climbing team used to access the area. Mt. Waddington is on the right, Mt. Combatant on the left, and in the lower middle the 3,000 foot high Scimitar Icefall drops precipitously down to the Scimitar Glacier.

SOMBRIO POINT

This is a view near Sombrio Point, Vancouver Island. Huge waves had been pounding the shoreline all day. In the drawing I am standing on a rock to give a sense of scale to the photograph, not expecting to be almost washed into the sea.

QUEEN CHARLOTTE HARBOUR

I flew to Masset in 2012 for a field review at the hospital, and extended my visit for two days so that I could sightsee. Saturday I drove south to Queen Charlotte City and its scenic harbour. Eight hours later the 7.8 earthquake hit, and it wasn’t so much fun any more.

WAITING FOR MORE SHIPS FROM CHINA

I am fascinated with container cranes. The cranes in this drawing have since been replaced with cranes that are even larger. I decided to eliminate some details, so the cranes became all black, and the pile of shipping containers on the shoreline became a white space representing their transient nature. The mountains and the mist remain.

MUTE SWAN

The Vancouver Parks Board used to import mute swans from England so that the swans could swim around Lost Lagoon looking picturesque for the tourists. They had their wing feathers chopped off so that they could not fly away. No wonder they always looked mad!

CHEAKAMUS SALVAGE

A tense moment as two BC RAIL heavy salvage cranes lift a derailed locomotive. Armand the Carman is directing both cranes as they lift the engine and swing it up and over the flatcar, on which it will be towed to Squamish for repair.

LIFTING 808

Locomotive 808 has just been lifted back to the track from 180 feet underwater in Seton Lake. The two wrecking cranes are just rigging to pick it up and turn it parallel to the track, and put it onto two sets of wheels ("trucks") so that it can be towed to the Squamish shops for repair.

MEDIUM FORMAT DRAWINGS, RELIEF PRINTS, ETCHINGS

SKOOKUMCHUCK

The Skookumchuck Rapids near Egmont on the Sunshine Coast is a Mecca for kayakers. The tidal flow into Sechelt Inlet produces a huge standing wave for them to play on.

MORNING OWL

A barred owl seen one morning on a walk in Stanley Park. At first I thought I was going to scare it away, but it was actually using me to help hunt for its morning meal.

HIGHER RISES

Three different eras of residential construction on Bute Street in Vancouver. The building on the right used to be the Women’s Apartments, rented to women only.

LOOKING AWAY

A sunset view of English Bay with anchored freighter and tug with chip barges in the distance. A view from starfish in the water to stars in the sky.

TERMINAL MORAINE

After more than a day hiking down the Scimitar Glacier, we reached the terminal moraine at the end of the glacier. All of the rocks were very unstable to walk on.

ON THE SCIMITAR GLACIER

One of a series of drawings showing scenes of the descent from Mt. Waddington. The ice was quite hard and easy to walk on, but crevices on the glacier were filled with snow, hard to see, and dangerous to walk on.

END OF THE RUN

The remains of a once-mighty salmon lie on the bottom of the Stave River, picked clean after the Fall spawning run.

WATER TAXI

The Lund water taxi approaches a public dock with a load of tradesmen arriving to build summer cottages. The public dock has since been replaced with a new and improved one, so this view has become historic.

LOOKING WEST

A view looking west across an island beach, at the north end of Georgia Strait. For the islanders the previous winter was unusual, as large amounts of driftwood, logs, and stumps washed up on the south shore.

SMALL FORMAT RELIEF PRINTS

LITTLE BIRD

It was not easy getting a good picture of this little bird, there were a number that just showed a blur where the bird was, or had just been.

HUMMINGBIRD

This print is based on a photograph of a hummingbird that I took on Mayne Island. I was staying with friends who had lots of flowers, and the place was alive with hummingbirds.

SEAGULL

This is from a photograph that I took of a glaucous seagull last year in Stanley Park. It was just standing there minding its own business.

HERON, LOST LAGOON

This heron was enjoying the sunshine as it dried itself out on the shore of Lost Lagoon, Stanley Park, Vancouver.

YOUNG HERON

This young heron was sunning and preening itself on a rock near the shore of Lost Lagoon, Stanley Park, Vancouver.

BALD EAGLE, MASSET

I photographed this large eagle during an architectural field review in Masset. I was driving along Masset Inlet, and came to a building on the shoreline where someone seemed to be throwing out fish guts onto the shore. A large number of bald eagles and ravens were circling around, this one was standing on a phone pole watching the action.

BETWEEN TIDES

This tugboat is the Seaspan Raven, seen loitering in English Bay offshore from Stanley Park, waiting between tides for the next bit of work to do.

PENGUINS

This print is based on a family photograph taken at the Stanley Park zoo about 1964. The penguin enclosure had a slide and a pool. There was a baby penguin in one of the pictures, a sign was posted saying "If woolly baby penguin falls in water - RESCUE IT!"

FIVE BAMBOO

I went for a walk in Stanley Park and wandered into the rhododendron garden. In the middle of it was a stand of giant bamboo. The five main bamboo stalks are hand-embossed into the damp cotton paper after the impression is taken out of the press.

DREAM SNAKE

This print shows an imaginary rattlesnake coiled on the ground, rattles up. It took a while to cut the lino as there are over 1,200 diamonds on the snake. I've also been hand colouring some of the impressions such as this one.

LIONS IN SUMMER

This is a view of the Lions on Vancouver's North Shore, looking up Capilano valley above the Cleveland dam. The clouds shown are imaginary, but I like the way my printing process "puffs" them up out of the plane of the paper, making them three-dimensional.

SMALL FORMAT KIYOUGI & KUMIKO ASSEMBLIES, DRAWINGS & PHOTOGRAPHY

During the winter of 2020-2021, I became interested in the Japanese art of kumiko, building things out of finely crafted pieces of wood without glue or other fasteners. Although there are a number of traditional Japanese designs, I started designing assemblies based on geometry, and specifically on Islamic designs. The “spinning kite” is one such design, in which a 12-sided polygon is fitted inside a square, such that 4 of its 12 sides are congruent with the 4 sides of the square. From the intersection points diagonals are drawn such that the space is divided into 4 symmetrical kite shapes with an empty square in the middle. I also tried designs with 4, 5, 6, and 8 sides. More recently I’ve been using the same wood to make small frames. Kiyougi, a paper made in Japan by shaving very thin sheets of wood off a block of pine, is also useful for artwork in a variety of ways.