by Marja-Leena

windows

StevestonWindow.jpg

Last Saturday we drove daughter Elisa, J, our granddaughters and piles of luggage to the airport. They are off to Europe to work and travel until Christmas. My, the house is quiet now with just the three of us!

As we often do when we drive somewhere farther, and it being a gorgeous day, and we were already in Richmond (where the airport is), we decided to have an outing. It had been many years since we had been to the fishing village of Steveston, on the southernmost edge of Richmond (a city south of Vancouver). We were surprised to find how much this has been developed, with the old Britannia Shipyard now a national historic site, and lovely walks on top of the dike leading to the lively Fisherman’s Wharf where we indulged in fresh seafood while sitting on a sunny patio watching crowds shopping for fish straight off the boats.

So, lots of photos to show you (starting with the locked doors) for I went camera happy over the interesting old shipyard and the fishing boats.

StevestonWindow2.jpg

See the other photos in this series:
locked doors
artifacts
walls
if walls could speak

September 10, 2008 in Canada and BC, Photoworks, Urban 10 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

locked doors

shipyardlocks1.jpg

shipyardlock2.jpg

Yesterday at the old shipyards in Steveston, BC (more details to come later).

Sept 10th update: see next post.

Much later: more from the Old Britannia Shipyard here:
artifacts
walls
if walls could speak

September 7, 2008 in Canada and BC, History, Photoworks, Urban 9 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

more steps

industry.jpg

Steps for big people.
Compare to the steps for little people.
Non-organic vs organic. Industry vs play.

September 5, 2008 in Photoworks, Urban 3 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

a step

step2.jpg

September 3, 2008 in Photoworks, Textures 7 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

poetry postcards

leadpipe3.jpg

I’m delighted to share with you that Tom Montag and I have had our collaboration accepted and up at Postal Poetry, an exciting new site for individually and collaboratively created poetry postcards.

Tom has already expressed his pleasure and also mentions our earlier collaboration for qarrstiluni – please visit him for those details!

The co-editors of Postal Poetry are poets Dana Guthrie Martin of gorgeous somewhere and Dave Bonta of Via Negativa, qarrtsiluni and many other sites. They invite submissions of either digital poetry postcards and ‘real’ ones by snail mail.

September 1, 2008 in Being an Artist, Blogging, Found Objects, Photoworks 4 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

last of the old

FalseCreekOld.jpg

This may be the last vestige of the old industrial district along False Creek, Vancouver.
Luxury condominiums and the Olympic Village are moving in. What a change.

August 31, 2008 in Photoworks, Urban 4 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

ARKEO series

detailARKEO2.jpg

detail from ARKEO #2

My latest completed work may now be viewed in my gallery** – please have a look at ARKEO.

Regular readers may find the first one looks familiar. Now titled ARKEO #1, I had posted about in its earliest form, then in a later state. You may find it interesting to compare its development.

I work mostly in series and I usually wait to complete the whole series before I come up with the title. This time I have only three completed pieces to start with but the title came to me readily. However I hesitate to write too much about it in case it will limit the directions that future pieces in the series may take.

As always, I struggle with the words summarizing my work. It’s particularly challenging for me to do so in one or two sentences, such as for this ‘gallery’*. A huge thank you goes to my visiting daughter Anita, a writer and editor, for brainstorming with me last night, helping me to clarify what my work is about and guiding me to a concise way to say it. This morning, it was clear to me that I’m still continuing to explore variations on the same themes as I did in my earlier series going back over more than a decade: messages (Silent Messengers series), connections (Nexus series), paths (Paths series), and transformation, deterioration (Meta-morphosis series) in the context of past, present and future. (See, this is wordy. Hope you like the one in the gallery much better.)

* this newest gallery does not have any statements about the work.
** UPDATE again, re latest 2012 gallery: The ARKEO series may now be viewed in my new GALLERY (link also found on the top of the left bar)

August 26, 2008 in Arkeo, Being an Artist, Digital printmaking, Printworks 19 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

delinquent

mauveflower.jpg

As I mentioned before, I have been catching up with some printmaking the past two weeks. I completed the two editions as planned, then documented and photographed them. I have yet to process the images and post them here to my gallery, though I’ve been eager to do so. I’ve been delinquent in my promises! Blame summer.

Extreme fatigue and laziness set in as the weather got ever hotter, peaking at an oppressively humid and hot 39C (100F) on the weekend, at least in our neighbourhood (it’s always cooler at the weather station at the airport, should you be looking!). Heat wimp that I am, I struggled to do basic daily chores, never mind blogging and preparing for visitors!

Our eldest daughter is here for a week’s visit. As you may recall, we now have a house full with the other two daughters now living here, one with husband and two little girls. The three sisters are enjoying each other and the nieces are enjoying the extra attention from their game-loving aunts. At the end of the week, we will be joined by my sister-in-law from the US.

So we are overwhelmed by a big family and it’s happy noises, activities and appetite, but we’re not complaining for it’s for such a short while. The daughter with husband and kids will be off to the UK again soon, with trips to the continent revolving around work as well as sightseeing and family visits. We’ll miss the little ones in particular, but they will all be back for Christmas at least. If they are back in the UK in the spring, we may even make a trip over there at last!

You may be interested in reading Erika’s account of her day’s outing with her father to Pemberton’s Slow Food Cycle this past Sunday. I’m not a cyclist anymore but would have loved to see those farms in the Pemberton Valley.

Meanwhile this week we are having some cooler temperatures with occasional but much-needed showers, what a relief! Slowly body and brain are feeling a little more human. Maybe I’ll get those images up soon.

August 19, 2008 in Being an Artist, Home 14 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

nameless tree

long_cones.jpg

On the way to the studio this morning,
I paused, as I often do, to admire this magnificent tree
with its long evergreen needles and long green cones,
longer than my large hands,
numerous open dry cones at its base…

August 12, 2008 in Nature, Photoworks 8 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

lovely links

yukon.jpg

The Yukon Delta taken 5/26/2002 by ASTER
Image courtesy of USGS National Center for EROS and NASA Landsat Project Science Office

1. Our Earth as Art – Landsat-7 and ASTER satellite images of the earth that look like fabulous artworks. Thanks to artist Joanne Mattera, do check out her favourites. I’d seen these somewhere before and am so pleased to see these again so that I can save the link here. Inspirations for my own work?

2. This is an amazing must-see short film: Lena Geiseke’s 3D Exploration of Picasso’s Guernica**

3. Mark your calendars! The second annual International Rock-Flipping Day is on September 7th! Read all about it and plan to participate.

** UPDATE March 4th, 2014: Previous link had expired. Replaced with another that I just came across at Open Culture.

August 10, 2008 in Blogging, Films, Nature, Neat stuff, Photography 5 Comments »