David Garcia: Meaning, Metaphor and the Personal Library

Copenhagen-based architect David Garcia runs an eponymous studio which he calls "an experimental architectural platform" with an open door philosophy, encouraging collaborations with designers, artists and engineers.

"Archive" is three-part installation which explores meaning, metaphor and the notion of the personal library. was first exhibited at the Royal Danish Art Academy Fall Show in 2005. Garcia calls these installations "investigations on space and books. Its departure point is density and micro spaces, and a series of traditional relationships that humans have to books."


Archive I (midground installation above) is "a weight balance library. The reader's chair is elevated in proportion to the amount of books in the shelves." This is a witty take on the bourgeois tradition of book ownership and display as a signifier of status. The piece is also a commentary on the right to learn, and freely share information. The more books are removed from the shelves, and consumed, the lighter the library becomes. The reader becomes "well rounded" with the weight and importance of imparted knowledge , but paradoxically closer to being "well grounded", if the information is shared and not re-shelved.

Archive III (glimpsed in the background) is a "censored book stand. The books close suddenly if anyone approaches the reading stand." (Take that, DRM!)

Archive II is a "circular library for the nomad book collector, allowing the user to step inside, and walk away with half a ton of books."

"Private collections have existed for centuries, but when this is added to nomadic behaviour, curious contradictions arise; this is the area studied by Archive II. How can an individual travel with it’s own library, given that books are so heavy? This is something we can all relate to when moving house. Archive II is a nomadic library, a transport system and an intimate space. Inspired by ancient travelling libraries from the Far East, which visited courts and cities, Archive II transforms this into a personal space, where walking and reading coexist as refuge and transport." ( Cozy...there's an app for that!)

Garcia notes that in the 9 hours it might take to read an average novel, you'd be able to travel about 43 kilometers, dryly adding "If you read and walk, watch out for traffic." This gives new meaning to the dangers of texting while driving.

Archive II is owned and on exhibition at the University of Roskilde Main Library, designed by the firm Henning Larsen (Garcia is an associate of the firm). Photographs of this gorgeous building can be seen here.

Liz Parkinson's Art Brings Joy to Unhappy Hipsters

If you appreciate modern residential design you are likely a regular reader of "Dwell" magazine, and enjoyed "From Brown to Green", an inspiring story about the Adams-Fleming residence (an abbreviated on-line version can be found here). Much as I like the magazine, they do have a peculiar slant to their editorial policy: children and pets are photographed as if they are mere fashion accessories, and the home owners appear to be in a state of perpetually disaffected ennui. This makes for easy pickings for the hilarious tumblr/blog "Unhappy Hipsters" which gave the following caption to this image from the Dwell article by photographer Lorne Bridgman:
(click on the photo to enlarge)


His first day in the house and little Alfie was alarmed—even their hobbies were joyless. (He’d be hitting the catnip hard.)

Good One!

Full disclosure: Adams and Fleming are personal friends and clients of A.K. Collings Fine Art. They are both wonderful cooks and generous to their wide and varied circle of friends and students. Their home is made for entertaining and it is at it's best when it is full of people, as it often is. Art makes a major contribution to the sense of warmth and humanity felt by their visitors, a fact which is not captured in the photos accompanying the article. Adams and Fleming have a very good collection of Canadian contemporary craft and fine art, and so it was a pity that none of the artists were properly referenced in the article. (Note to Dwell and other architecture and home dec mags: don't you think it's just as important to credit the artists as it is the makers of faucets and fridges? This same room was previously featured in a Canadian design publication, which saw fit to mention a chunk of wood gnawed by an anonymous beaver, but said nothing about the (human) artists.)

The two large works on the rear wall are gorgeous drypoint prints by Liz Parkinson, from her Copperplate Appellation series. The series presents late-season weeds as oversized specimens. Scale denotes importance: the familiar nuisance is identified and its individual visual attributes championed. In size (48"x31.5"), concept, beauty and technical execution, these prints are a real tour de force.

Parkinson recently had a mid-career retrospective at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington. I've shown A Morphology Naturalized (veil) at my own gallery in the past, but to see it hung in the the third floor loft of this former barley mill was breathtaking. Veil is printed on translucent gampi (a handmade Japanese tissue paper). In the iteration for this installation, it measured an extraordinary 16'x16'. With the slightest breath, breeze or motion past, the veil moves as if it were alive. To quote Parkinson: "The veil shifts and sways from tradition to lyric to perhaps thoughtless richness and ruin. It contains elements of a formal morphology transformed into decorative language. It is an enormous print and an ephemeral sculpture. It is a botanical marvel; a familiar setting; a dandelion; a weed."


The exhibition was sensitively curated by Maralynn Cherry, who wrote the following:

"Fair LONCIERA prints the dewy lawn And decks with brighter blush the vermil dawn; Winds round the shadowy rocks, and pancied vales, And scents with sweeter breath the summer-gales.
(Erasmus Darwin The Love of Plants 1789)

Printmaking techniques are steeped in the history of text and illustration as ancient Chinese rubbings transform into intaglio woodblocks, etchings and lithography: skills that reshape the social history of representation. Liz Parkinson uses the art of printmaking to extend the boundaries of natural form and pattern. The detailed layering of her print work runs parallel with her sensitive perceptions of memory as an inherent archive. Botanical illustration and the insights of the naturalist are ever present in the work. Parkinson methodically guides the viewer through an assemblage of floral prints presented in arrays that evoke, at times, the wallpapers and tapestries of the Arts and Crafts movement, early fresco’s or the beauty of Redouté’s lily classifications. Taxonomy weaves an underlying thread throughout the exhibition. Here the act of naming the specimen combines the aura of the field journey with the aesthetic bonding of art, science and nature. Our imaginations are tempered by the poetic and structural composition of these floral patterns. Yet, Parkinson’s sight does not rest here. Rather, she reinvents the gaze of the floral to encompass both the social and historical documentation of a living morphology."

I have had the pleasure of placing Parkinson's work in a number of homes, as varied as the owners themselves. The fact that her art works in such a wide variety of settings is a testament to her skill. The work is simultaneously gentle and strong, and capably holds its own without overpowering, wherever it is placed. The following monoprint will soon be hung in the dining room of a rambling and wonky farmhouse which has had multiple additions (mostly incongruous) over its 150 year history: it is as un-modern and un-designed as can be imagined, and aside from also being inhabited by two people who are also generous hosts, this farmhouse is as different as can be from the Adams-Fleming residence. Derrida's Field is a large 4'x4' monoprint, employing multiple printing techniques, as well as the application of gold leaf, imparting a layered and painterly feel.



Derrida's Field Litho, drypoint, relief, acrylic and gold leaf on wet mounted Japanese paper
48" x 48"

The following two monoprints are from Parkinson's Morphology series, and use drypoint and flocking techniques:

Morphology In and Out, monoprint, drypoint and flocking, 36x48, 2003


That was the Colour, monoprint, drypoint and flocking, 31.5x34, 2003

Parkinson's works are at their best when seen in situ. Here they are in installation at the former A.K. Collings Gallery. The blown glass sculptures in the foreground are by Eva Milinkovic.


Parkinson is a master print maker, and her works are prominent in the well-known Ernst and Young Print Collection. In addition to her many private patrons, Parkinson's works are held in The Canada Council Art Bank, The Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Federal Business Development Bank, The Canadian Securities Commission, The Toronto Stock Exchange, The Tom Thompson Gallery and many other public and corporate collections.

She lives and works in a re-purposed circa 1850 fire hall in a small town outside of Toronto.


For inquiries about availability of these and other works, contact akcollings(at)sympatico(dot)ca.
More images can also be seen at Parkinson's website.

David Bolduc

I am saddened to announce that David Bolduc has died. He was 64 years of age, and died following a short and extremely courageous battle with cancer. He continued painting through it all, producing an entirely new body of work for an extraordinary show at Christopher Cutts Gallery just 3 months ago. His paintings contained an enormous energy and life force, as if channeling the very essence and fire of his soul. Working with David last year for the exhibition of new works he so generously created for my small gallery was a true privilege.

In 2006, Linda Corbett recorded a series of videotaped interviews with David. They are available to be viewed on line, courtesy of the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art Database Project. How fortunate we are to have this important documentary record of a significant painter, poet and raconteur. He will be missed.

UPDATE: Link to obituary in the Globe and Mail

The Future of Publishing

This video was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books and produced by Khaki Films. Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally. Make sure you watch it up to at least the halfway point, there's a surprise!.

Helen Adam

Today is International Women's Day. I recently spent the afternoon at MoMA wandering through the Tim Burton exhibition. What does one have to do with the other?

Helen Adam (1909-1993) was a poet, free spirit and iconoclast. She wrote in the style of the Victorian ballad. Although much older, and working within a very different creative framework, she counted Allen Ginsberg and the very young Patti Smith among her colleagues, along with many other members of the literary avant garde in New York and San Francisco. I think she would have liked Tim Burton.

In "Apartment at Twin Peaks" she takes the crone stereotype and makes it her own, with characteristic black humour:

"New Year’s Eve, and the moon like a flame.
From as far as Fresno my girl friends came.
I knew my party simply could not miss
Though I served my husband as the principle dish."

Here's an excerpt from Ron Mann's "Poetry in Motion" (1981).

Why You Should Buy Art

I am back from New York, and this William Powhida print is one souvenir of a wonderful and art-filled trip. You can click on the image to enlarge.
(Actually, I bought the print online at Jen Beckman's "20x200" which is well worth a virtual visit, whether you can get to New York or not.)

I am an erratic blogger, and for that, I apologize. You'd think I'd have plenty to write about, having just spent the last week in New York, in the company of Our Montreal Correspondent. The problem is, I am slow thinker, and I need time to mull before I write...not a trait particularly well suited to the pace of the blogosphere.

While in NY, OMC and I visited the William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton event, "#class" at Winkleman Gallery, and participated in Saturday's Powhida-led "Art Walk" through a range of Chelsea galleries.

And since I am still mulling over that experience, for now I'll leave you with Eva Diaz's description and contextualization of the goings-on at #class, from Artforum:

"Mass education in the post–World War II period positioned pedagogy as a pivot between personal growth and wider sociopolitical transformation. Recent large-scale student protests against fee hikes and the profit-driven campus at the New School and throughout the University of California system can be seen as part of a larger reaction to how the prospect of education was subsequently instrumentalized as a consumer transaction. Similarly, a spate of artist collectives are reassessing how progressive pedagogical models can be employed as consciousness-raising tools. Joining related endeavors such as 16 Beaver, the Public School, e-flux’s Night School, and the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, artists William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton have created #class, a series of public workshops in a classroom setting that, in its eclectic sprawl, seeks to investigate the effects of the economic downturn on the field of art: on its production, reception, distribution, and consumption; on its educational institutions and its institutions of display.
The setup is simple: A room contains several worktables and chairs lined with four chalkboards. Dozens of programs and open-ended brainstorming sessions have been scheduled for the one-month duration of the exhibition, and the artists will be present on a daily basis to use the gallery as a studio space. The “curriculum” ranges from the intentionally hokey (motivational speakers promising to unleash “wild creativity”) to the near heretical (dealers guaranteeing to answer questions about the art market with complete transparency)."

You can follow the events for yourself, by visiting the #class blog, and Ed Winkleman's blog, where you'll find a link to a gallery cam running a continuous live feed during gallery hours.

Pearl Van Geest: A Love Affair with Paint

Pearl Van Geest loves paint, and in a very literal way, the paint loves her back: the boundary between herself and the canvas could be described as a semi-permeable membrane. She paints with the sort of id-soaked, primary process-driven intensity often associated with "intuitive" or "outsider" art. However, she and her paintings are far from naive: she is a broadly educated, well traveled person, and a highly skilled, technically adept painter.

In the tradition of the Automatistes, she appears to be able to allow her subconscious to free itself from rational restrictions. Her colours are saturated and sensual. The subject matter, and her very technique, is carnal and oral.

Jean Paul Riopelle said: "Painting is an illness. It's a germ you catch one day". I think he was referring to the experience of simultaneously consuming, and being consumed by, the creative process. Van Geest speaks of her art in similar terms:
"Can the boundary or skin between the human and natural world be dissolved or made transparent by the energy of desire, by Eros, by love, by ecstasy and a desire to connect: to be at once subsumed and to possess what we see, feel, touch, taste and hear?"




“Spoiled in Rubies”, 2002. Oil and lipstick on canvas. 72″ × 72″. (Collection of the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre)

Above is one in a series of paintings begun in 2001 in which "the canvas is first covered in lip prints/kiss marks; used for their mutable symbolic significance and also for their remarkable morphological similarity to other natural forms, suggesting by implication, in addition to love and sensuality, our essential corporality and connection with the rest of the natural world."

Actual lip prints, actual lipstick.

In 2006 she began her "flower-eating" paintings. These paintings are self portraits, painted from a series of photographs of herself in the act of consuming lilies. Lilies are sexy, with male and female sex organs exposed and unashamed. As the series progresses, these paintings become increasingly disinhibited. In the most recent, the pollen is smeared on her face, a sensual merging of self with the natural world.



“On Possession 1”. Oil on canvas. 48″ × 48″.

I've never met Van Geest, but we have recently had a brief e-mail correspondence. She wrote:
"In the flower-eating paintings I was interested in playing with the lily contrasted with the datura. The datura and its family relative Belladonna, has a darker association in mythology and also pharmacologically, having being been used "recreationally" as a hallucinogen and also apparently having been given to women during labour. Among its active ingredients is atrophine and women used to put drops their eyes to dilate their pupils to appear more alluring. Witches made a "flying salve" which included datura of belladonna as one of the ingredients. The lily in medieval paintings of the Virgin Mary, represented the virgin birth and in some versions of Roman mythology, Juno impregnated herself with a lily."

This seems as a good place as any to mention that Van Geest was originally educated as a scientist, and entered art school after several years of travel and teaching high school Biology and Chemistry. I asked her about her transition from the world of science to the world of art. She wrote: "I love science - the observing, looking closely, inquiry, problem solving, knowing something about the inside of things and how things work and exploration. I like how learning about science makes the world seem even more miraculous. I love grand views and the worlds inside small intimate things like lichen and club moss. I like observing the same things over and over again, seeing the changes. I always drew, painted and took art courses while doing my BSc and also in high school. In grade 13 I received the art award and the biology award so the split (which as you know more than me isn't really as some people make it out to be, science and art both being creative and open endeavors) was always there..I was longing to go to art school. Making art became more and more of an imperative. I wanted to do it all the time. ."

Twenty years after first entering Guelph University to study biology, Van Geest graduated from Ontario College of Art and Design. She enjoyed critical recognition straight out of the gate, with awards and grants, and shows at some impressive Toronto and area galleries. In 2003, she was a finalist in the prestigious RBC painting competition, and in 2008, she was recognized by inclusion in the "emerging artist" category for Magenta Foundation's "Carte Blanche 2".

From Van Geest's website: "I am interested in the intersection of art and science, with questions that arise about the nature of reality and the natural world, our place in it and perception of it. In my paintings I explore the boundary or “skin” between the human and the natural world and ways in which our consciousness, and sensual and cultural perceptions can both facilitate and impede an experience of the natural world."

Van Geest has spent productive stretches of time in residence at Pouch Cove, Newfoundland. The result has been landscape paintings, which begin "as simple pencil line sketches, some done while sitting on the cliffs recording the pattern of the waves on the sea over a period of time ". Here again, her method recalls one technique of the Automatistes, in which paintings emerged from gestural, "automatic" drawings, the purpose of which was to over-ride the conscious influence of the ego and subvert the influence of culturally specific aesthetic judgement.

In Newfoundland, she became "compelled by openings and splits in the world...
The perspective is reversed, the mouth has become a cave".


“Love on the Rocks”, 2008. Oil on canvas. 60″ × 48″.



"Cove" 2010. Oil on canvas, 48" x 48".

The exploration of boundaries, permeability and portals are constant themes in Van Geest's work. This is the common thread through the three bodies of work. In Freudian theory, the individual whose development has been arrested at the oral stage forever struggles with boundary issues. Unable to differentiate between the self and the other, the person remains un-individuated, and forever unfulfilled in the wish for impossible merger and "perfect love". However, the straightforward application of this kind of analysis to Van Geest's work would be reductive, and do a disservice to the subtle complexity of her dance with paint and canvas. Psychoanalyst Ernst Kris used the phrase "regression in service of the ego" to describe the creative life of the successful artist. This is what she accomplishes. She has the ability to go "there", to use her considerable skill and artistic gift to translate the experience, and then to "bring it back". Her paintings are gorgeous celebrations of the most fundamental aspect of being human.

Visit Pearl Van Geest's website for more images, and details of upcoming exhibitions.