Just like the rock sculptures here, my daily life can resemble a precarious balancing act to keep the volunteer/work/freelance ratio intact. Some days it’s harder to maintain than others. Managing today was relatively simple: one patient drop-off, The Firm, pick up film, subway to meeting in Scarborough, home to emails, editing, writing and whatnot. This is a personal website, not a commercial venture, but for my own reasons I like to write something daily and post some photos. It’s like my daily vitamin and how I unwind from the day. (I don’t take vitamins, but you know what I mean…)

I was pleased to finally see the images from the last two rolls of film shot while I was in Ottawa earlier this month. Picking up film is exciting! It’s all a surprise, especially when the shooting/developing intervals are longer. For any film users out there who don’t know about Shoppers Drug Mart film developing, $2.99 is all they charge to develop a roll of film and put it on CD. It’s simply the best deal around. It was the only way I could afford shooting 18 rolls of film in Havana, Cuba, at the end of 2006. It makes shooting film less of a luxury.

Back to the photos, the artist behind the rock sculptures is a fellow named John Ceprano, who happened to be there while we were so I got him on film just before the sky opened and poured on everyone at Remic Rapids:

More information about the sculptures can be found on Ceprano’s website here.

More from Remic Rapids (I like the reflection):

An abandoned barn in Wakefield, Quebec:

My favourite shots taken in Gatineau Park, Quebec:

To see all the photos in the “Analogue in Ottawa” set, click through the Pictobrowser below or view them as a full-screen slideshow in Flickr.

This is amazingly creative: a woman on maternity leave takes photos of her baby sleeping, imagining her daydreams. She uses a simple point-and-shoot camera, creating the scene in a few minutes and working quickly before her baby wakes up.

http://milasdaydreams.blogspot.com/

Mila’s mama worked in advertising and her father is a composer (his music is the soundtrack). I’ll bet Mila has some pretty imaginative daydreams!

http://www.vancouverbiennale.com

Just a few for now…

The official website: http://www.torontoartexpo.com/

I’m still working through the photos, but here are the 30-second videoclips I shot of the Korean Salmunori dance and drum group Jeng Yi and the whirling dervishes from Turkey at the opening night of the Toronto Art Expo:

I spent most of the evening staked out in the front row so I could shoot the whirling dervishes up close. I only brought my 50mm f/1.8 lens with me, not the zoom, because I didn’t have a press pass and usually art events discourage photography. I didn’t want to attract attention to myself.

I also grabbed some brochures about Turkey from their table near the entrance. What helps me to plan trips is to use the tourist brochures as a guide for distances and timing between cities. There are lots of maps for orientation and the descriptions about each city are useful, too. And, of course, it’s all free!

From the Piedmont Park website:

The Noguchi Playscape, located near the 12th Street Gate, was designed by world-renown artist and sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904 – 1988), under the aegis of the High Museum and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Completed in 1976, Playscapes is the only Noguchi-designed playground completed in his lifetime. Noguchi playgrounds are aspects of what he called “the sculpture of spaces”, intended to make sculpture a useful part of everyday life. Piedmont Park’s Playscapes familiarizes children with shapes, colors and textures.

Is that not the wackiest swing you’ve ever seen? As soon as I saw the slide, I wanted to take photos around the playground. I love to see art in everyday function.

I have so many stories about Atlanta to tell (all good), but I need to catch up on sleep first…

I came across TRANS 1′s Flickr photostream by accident and I am just blown away by his work. The eyes in his graffiti are mesmerizing. Check it out!

Click here to add a name to BFO-Toronto‘s Community Art Memorial:

http://www.communityartmemorial.com/

Deadline: April 14th

Anyone can participate and you may add names as often as you wish. Please share with friends, family, networks.

Artist Robin Pacific Makes “The Presence of Absence” Felt — Interactively Online, Broadcast from Downtown Toronto Video Billboards, at Two Indoor Exhibitions, and from an Outdoor Projection Exhibition

Robin Pacific’s latest public art project, The Presence of Absence, creates an ongoing shared urban experience of communal mourning. Using downtown video billboards, a publicly interactive web site, and three public exhibitions, The Presence of Absence combines art and new technology to knit the city back together through our shared losses. It aims to re-invent the social mourning that our culture has relinquished.

Robin Pacific guided members of Bereaved Families of Ontario-Toronto as well as members of the Jane/Finch community through an art workshop process to create the word “Love”, the word “Remember” or the letters “R.I.P.” in honour of their deceased family members and friends. There were 103 participants; the youngest is 3 1/2 years old and the oldest is 87. The resulting artworks will be on the interactive website and form the heart of The Presence of Absence community art memorial.

Until April 14, Robin Pacific invites the public to participate in creating The Presence of Absence memorial by remembering one or more relatives or friends who have died. On the web site at www.communityartmemorial.com people will be able to select one of the artworks, enter the name of someone they know who has died, add some words about them and their own name. People may participate as many times as they wish. The website will be active until April 14.

Robin Pacific is a professional artist currently working as Artist in Residence with Bereaved Families of Ontario. Her work is popular and conceptual, embracing painting, drawing, video, new media, installation and various community based projects. She is a co-founder of Art Starts Community Cultural Centre, and has exhibited widely, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario. www.robinpacific.ca
 
For those of you in Toronto: The original artworks are on display in the City Hall rotunda April 6-12, and at the Yorkgate Mall, Jane and Finch, April 14-20.

The entire memorial will be projected through the window of the Bereaved Families of Ontario offices on 28 Madison Ave., April 14-20, 8:30-10 PM.  It’s one block north of Bloor, one block east of Spadina.

The project is promoted with a 30 second spot on a video billboard on Dundas, facing south and a 10 second spot on 6 other video billboards around Toronto.

“The truest words of all: I will not forget you. You are in my waking thoughts, my sweetest memories, my dearest dreams. I will not forget you. You have touched my soul, opened my eyes, changed my very experience of the universe. I will not forget you. I see you in the flowers, the sunset, the sweep of the horizon and all things that stretch to infinity. I will not forget you. I have carved you on the palm of my hand. I carry you with me forever.”
–Ellen Sue Stern, Living with Loss

Depending on what people use it for, I usually say yes if it’s for charity/asked nicely/assured proper attribution (name/link back) because I am generally a sharing type of person. I’ve considered a Creative Commons license in the past for my point-and-shoot photos, but surprisingly I’ve sold p&s photos and I don’t want to take the extra time to use different categories — it’s easier just to use one!

Here are a couple of positive examples, where I was happy to share and reciprocate in giving credit:

(I was planning to post this at Halloween, but I completely forgot…)

Burningbliss asked to remix my photo of Alberto.

Fotofyoog: Gail at Large’s "Bravo Alberto!" by burningbliss

His description:

Part of my collaborative “Fotofyoog” Project (see set). The original photo came from Gail at Large – her photo titled “BRAVO ALBERTO!” Thanks “Gail” for such a wonderful photo to play with! =) And yes…the split, creepy monster, outer-image was also manipulated from Gail’s original pixels (if you look at the details you will see that both the “good” and the “evil” images were created from the exact same original photo).

Here’s the link to the comparison photo.

In other news, one of my 2006 film photos of a likeness of Stanley Segalla, the Flying Farmer, accompanied an article written about the man. It’s funny because I have photos of Segalla in the flesh, but the cut-out made the grade…

Two and a half years ago Stanley Segalla, then 81, flew from his home in Connecticut to Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in upstate New York on very short notice to help me scatter David’s ashes on his birthday when we couldn’t get the biplane that day. I’ve written more about Stanley Segalla here.

The author of the article, John Cilio, sent me the PDF last month, which you can open up and read here. (PDF posted with permission.) I just found the online version here — it was published in the November issue of the Atlantic Flyer.

It’s the end of an era for Segalla — he flew his last Flying Farmer routine at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in the closing weekend last month. He’s following the sun and moving full-time to Florida for his other business, where he teaches aerobatic flying in the winters. Even at 83, the man’s still working but at least he won’t be commuting back and forth from Connecticut!

My tote bag with a design by Keet Leibowitz* (aka Relentlesstoil) arrived yesterday, much to my delight. It’s part of a campaign to fundraise for the March of Dimes.

The March of Dimes is an nonprofit organisation dedicated to improving the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. The March of Dimes also works with partner agencies to improve the health of infants and mothers worldwide. They’ve been around a long time, starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s crusade to beat polio.

Mother’s Day is this weekend in many countries (March for the UK, and throughout the year for other countries), please consider a donation to the March of Dimes or a similar charity supporting family health in your area.

* Keet also illustrated my aviator print from Siobhan.