Art

The Canadian National Exhibition is open 18 days per year at the end of the Toronto summer. Final day for 2024 is today, September 2, Labour Day. Kristan Klimczak is down there right now taking photos of CNE visitors, just as she's done every day it's run since 2015.

The facial expressions on the Ex's visitors and employees pretty much sum up my thoughts of the event, which explains why I haven't been back since 1982. Cement, heat, lack of shade, terrible food, crazy prices, and crowds. It's hard for me to think of any place I'd rather not be. Love the photos, though!

More on Klimczak's site.

Kitty Shepherd makes colorful slipware pots. Absolutely delightful.

More to see on Shepherd's site.

I was hoping to rewatch Chris Marker's La Jetée this morning and headed to Youtube to see if an English translated version was there. I didn't find one, but did discover this lovely piece by TroisCouleurs where possible influence from Hitchcock's Vertigo on Marker's remarkable short film are considered. If you're unfamiliar with either or both films, this probably won't make sense to you, but I thought it was a lovely essay, done completely non-verbally in about 2 minutes.

If you think this essay far-fetched, here's another:

Ann Weber is a sculptor in Los Angeles who works a lot with found cardboard. I saw her work featured on Colossal today.

I thought this short video was an inspiring look at her process from "garbage picking," as my mother would call it, to sculpting:

More on Weber's site.

Lovely Leica work by Joshua Singh. More on his site.

Sweet ad by Catherine Prowse for, of all things, Palliative Care Queensland.

Breathtaking work from Tine Poppe: Gilded Lilies — Portraits of cut flowers.

I wanted to post them all but then there'd be no reason to visit Poppe's fantastic site.

Some of Lukas Vasilikos B&W series, Stories Retold. I believe most of these were shot in Greece, where Vasilikos lives.

See the full series on the Vasilikos website.

Lukas is part of the Burn My Eye collective.

Those are street maps of some of the places I've lived.

Make your own on the City Roads website.

Caleb Stein's, Down By the Hudson, a series of b&w photos taken at a watering hole in Poughkeepsie, NY, explores the camaraderie and simplicity a gathering place engenders by simply being.

The full series, including gallery shots and accompanying text, is on Caleb's site.

Anecdote Alert

The image of the soaped-up boy reminds me of people I encountered on a weekend drive as a teenager. I was camping with some friends at a lake. There was a cliff with a rope tied to an overhanging tree. Locals would emerge from the water "clean," after soaping up, swinging, and letting go. One child, who couldn't yet have been 10, forgot to wipe his palms on his shorts before grabbing the rope. The excess Sunlight stymied his grip and he plunged into the shallowest part of the lake, just that side of the rocks. When I think of it, I see him strike stone and break — some times his head, some times his arm, most often his leg — complete with crack!, or blood, depending on what's been struck. It's an overwhelming "memory" that I have to remind myself didn't happen. He was fine, though a bit shook. I don't doubt that what he saw bursting through the water — the horrified looks on the observers' faces — is burnt into his brain the way the reverse has settled in mine.

That whole weekend was one of the strangest of my youth, and none of it in a good way.