I recalled a funny memory a moment ago

When I was in grade 7 in elementary school, my class went on a week long field trip to Vancouver. I remember one day going to the Emily Carr campus and wandering around looking at the art displayed there. The first thing I saw when I walked in was a table with a television playing a looped video showing a guy with a garden hose down his pants, with the other end attached to a briefcase. He spun around in circles swinging the garden hose and suitcase around. On the table was the actual garden house used. I remember my friend poking at the garden hose, until he saw the video. I saw a lot of other strange stuff that day, but the other one that stood out in my mind was the sock exhibit. There were socks of every colour strewn about throughout the exhibit area. I remember looking at one pile of socks with bewilderment for awhile. A security guard came up to me and said something to the effect of "So thats Art, huh?"

I was looking at some "conceptual" new york style photography on an artist's website when these memories came back to me.

Wild guess...were you born in 1958.

Yikes, that takes me back.

I think it was 1980 when I went to art school for the first time, and it was to the Emily Carr College of Art. My timing was bad because they were just about ready to move into the Granville Island location, and all the foundation (first) year students were completely isolated from all the other students. We went to school in Gastown, about four flights up in an old cement floored, brick walled, and exposed pipes dinosaur of a building. On my morning walks to class I would have to dodge the street hosers; people whose job it was to hose all the puke off of the sidewalks in front of the scum bucket bars before the tourists turned up to shop.

We weren't given any instruction on the basic fundimentals in any medium...they just handed us the materials and off we went. The people who excelled were those that could talk a mile long blue streak about what their piece said, rather than having the piece itself convey the meaning for them. The one that stands out the most for me was a students wrapping of a part of the basement in plastic - already an old idea at the time - and how she had praise heaped upon her for her explanation.

I was out of there before Christmas break.

The next year I took the fine arts program at Langara, also in Vancouver, where they believed it was necessary to learn the basics of how to use the materials. Some people settled right into Emily Carr and would have felt too bound up at Langara, but for me, I was better off with the more classical approach.

Murray

Rjas,

I have a funny story for you. By the way I graduated from Emily Carr in 1991 and not everybody that went there was into conceptual photography. I was more like Murray and into a more traditional approach. There was room for that but you were on your own. Hey the darkrooms were totally primo and I spent as much time in there printing as much fibre and really big colour prints as I could! And did I ever spend alot of time in those darkrooms. This was on the Granville Island campus.

Anyways to get back to the funny story. I went to an opening at Exposure Gallery way back when I was attending Emily Carr. Exposure Gallery is a photography gallery on Beatty Street in Yale Town before it was all trendy. Anyways this patron starting yelling so loudly that everyone in the gallery stopped talking to listen. This guy just started ranting about whatever was on his mind. When he was finished everyone clapped!!! People thought it was a performance piece! I laughed so hard.

Again, happy guy that Murray, living the best part of the planet. Show us some pictures from fishing Skeena river or Kitimat. How is all there.

www.Leica-R.com

Daniel_OB said:

Again, happy guy that Murray, living the best part of the planet. Show us some pictures from fishing Skeena river or Kitimat. How is all there.

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Hi Daniel,

Everything here is going great. (Shhhh...don't let the word out about how the north coast of BC is Paradise...I like not having to contend with crowds)!

Too bad you're not a subscriber, or you could scoot to my personal APUG gallery to see some photographs of it

Murray