art-action

Crawling to walking

Hosting the nineteen hours of the East Side Crawl and meeting the 2000 or so visitors to William Clark Studios, where a record 27 artists and designers spruced up their studios, required many more hours to set up and then recover. My BIG THANKS to Penelope Harris, Lori Weidenhammer and Pierre-Andre Sonolet who helped to host the studio. I couldn't have done it without them. I am also very grateful to Madeleine Wood, especially, and all of my William Clark studio mates who made set up into fun and games. That is indeed a great part of ECC: getting to know everyone else in the warehouse.

The best of ECC this year was making ATC's with Penelope and Avi (a youngster who hangs out at William Clark, a lot); meeting people who had been at Sharon's seed tapestry party (seen in the photos on the wall); meeting Joseph Lin (eco-warrior for the local Chinese community); talking about Bedhouin quilting with Tarek; getting all excited about Covering Up with Pierre and just about everyone else (people loved the idea); having a big celebratory feast with my family and the rest of the crew...

I will be posting a photo album soon, once I fix a few problems on the external hard drive. In the meantime, take action:

Covering Up

Make an intervention on the City of Vancouver Skyline
Take your blanket or bed sheet or other household linen out onto the streets of Vancouver, Canada.
Hold it up to cover up the view.  As you make this intervention on the skyline or streetscape,
have someone else photograph you.

Mail or email the image to us with the location, date and time of your intervention.
We will collect them on a blog and host an exhibition.
Participants will be credited and will receive printed documentation of the exhibition.

Deadline – February 1 2010
Exhibition Dates – February 12 – 28, 2010
Location TBA                                     

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Email images (no bigger than 1 MB) here:
    coveringup[at]gmail.com

Mail Images here:
    Covering Up
    Box 74540
    Vancouver, BC V6K 4P4

This project is hosted by Pierre-André Sonolet and Lois Klassen
photo - Pierre-André Sonolet

East Side Culture Crawl

More Art Actions
Celebrate a year of action: An Eastside Culture Crawl Open Studio: Lois Klassen & friends**: Studio 5, William Clark Studios (1310 William): posters, photos, videos, seedpacks, bookworks, prayer flags, & other documents from a year of social art projects and experiments: Bring your own posters and documentation to add to the wall, or to trade: November 21 (5-10pm), 22+23 (11am-6pm) 2008.
** Archive City, Kriss Boggild, Comforter Art Action, Penelope Harris, Sharon Kallis, Light Factory Publications, Pierre-Andre Sonolet, Lori Weidenhammer, and more.

 

Eastside Culture Crawl

More

So, we have packed away Coyote Comforts and La Couverture Vivante. To remember the event, I have posted a photo album of snapshots from the performance (see right column). The two comforters that Maggie Winston & I made during the 2-day sew-in still need to be washed before we send them on to a shelter in the DTES. We have made only a small dent in the box of squares that Maggie accumulated during the Earth Festival in 2006, so we aim to have more sew-ins and sewing circles with the same aim in mind. I suppose I will make a lot of use of that coyote mask.

More Art Actions: And now, I am off to the studio to get things ready for the East Side Culture Crawl, November 21, 22, 23. It will be an open-studio to celebrate a year in action.... Left over posters, memorabilia, multiples, documentation, photographs from mine and others' activities will be available to look over, share or trade or buy for low prices. I hope that you can stop by for a visit....

Coyote Comforts

Coyote Comforts: A Performative Sew-In

Maggie Winston and Lois Klassen at the exhibit The Living Blanket/La Couverture Vivante (CentreA, Vancouver)

On Friday, Maggie and I invoked the energy and creativity of the Coyote and set out to transform an enormous stack of altered fabric coyote prints into functional blankets. The squares originated at an art intervention at the Earth Festival (during the World Urban Forum, 2006). The block print by Pat Beaton was altered by festival participants with their reflections on environmental issues. The prints as 'prayer flags' were then distributed throughout the outdoor festival site. After it was all over, Maggie took the stack of over 1000 squares into storage. Almost 3 years later, the wandering coyotes are now ready to transform again, this time into comforters. So it has become a Comforter Art-Action. When completed these quilts will be distributed to local shelters.

Coyote Comforts will continue at the same place on Friday, Nov 7 (11 - 2 or so) and -elsewhere?- until all of the squares are transformed...