Goodbye RCA!

Today is my final day at the Royal College of Art. It has been a fabulous time here and I leave with mixed feelings. Last night one of the tutors, Mark, and several of the students gave me a send off at the Art Bar. I realized how integrated I had become in their world during these 6 weeks.
I am off to visit my friend Isobel in her hometown outside of Oxford for the weekend and then I will spend a night in Birmingham with a couple, Helen and Andy, and their two children, whom I met at the Banff Centre two years ago. (actually they only had one child then!) Then it's off to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit my father-in-law's cousin, Ann, for a night, then....I'm going to Paris! Yes after much thought and many choices, I decided to go to Paris on the Eurostar through the Chunnel. Mark from RCA suggested a reasonably priced hotel and I will be there for 5 days before I come home. My flight back to Calgary is on the 20th of March. Will be home in time for my birthday (as I always seem to be!)
So I'm not sure when or if I will post again. If I find an internet cafe in Paris I will let you know of my adventures in Paris. It has been fun making these posts and I enjoyed having something to help me focus on some of my experiences. Please remember that for every post I put on here there were many, many, many, many more experiences. Thanks to everyone who contributed comments, I enjoyed your feedback, even though I couldn't seem to create a dialogue, which I had hoped for but didn't seem to accomplish. Au Revoir!
(I wish Amber was coming with me to interpret for me!)

I've Met My Match

Sunday and Monday I spent the days with Jennifer, one of my fellow grad students from UofC. She is here for a week with her husband Stephen. Stephen owns a publishing company and is at the London Book Fair until today, so we managed to squeeze in a good two day visit. On Sunday I took her around the East End of London, or at least some of what I know of it. We had a fun day and I got caught up on some of what is happening in Calgary. We had a fabulous buffet curry lunch on Brick Lane and I took her round to my (Barton's) place for tea. Then yesterday I brought her to see the Royal College of Art and then we went to the Victoria and Alberta Museum, which is just down the street. I wanted to see the Cornelia Parker piece which I had missed the first time I was there, and she wanted to see some of the paintings, as she has a love and keen interest in older landscape paintings. Our plan was to just pop in and see those two things and then we could go off somewhere else. We got there at about 11 in the morning, and they kicked us out at 5:30! We were the second to last people to get our coats from the coat check and they turned the lights off to get us out of the gift shop. In all those 6 1/2 hours or so neither of us were bored and although I had been there the first week I was here, I found lots more to look at and we were like addicts who just couldn't tear ourselves away, even though we were overloaded and tired. We did take a short break for lunch and I introduced her to the V&A brownies, which are the best brownies I have ever had in my entire life.
While I was at the V&A I discovered a little room with some calligraphy. Well, you would expect to find calligraphy in a British museum, but this was different, because this wasn't old calligraphy from centuries ago, this was contemporary calligraphy from a work in progress. As I looked around I realized that this project, a new version of the Saint John's Bible, was illustrated and penned by Donald Jackson. Now I don't know if anyone reading this is a calligrapher, but when I was very involved, you could say obsessed, with calligraphy (Bob used to call our house Calligraphy Central), Donald Jackson was one of THE ultimate contemporary calligraphers. He is the calligrapher to Queen Elizabeth, and what was always interesting about him was that he took a very expressionistic approach to his calligraphy and his illustrations. Unusual for a calligrapher, as they are often quite conservative. In the 80's I had studied with a San Francisco calligrapher Thomas Ingmire on many occasions in Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria and California. Thomas was the first American to be admitted into the prestigious Society of Scribes and Illuminators here in London after a rigourous application process and Donald Jackson was one of Thomas' mentors.
As I looked around this little gallery I was thinking to myself how I could see Donald's influence on Thomas, particularly in two broadsides - one a rough and another of the completed pages. I went round the room again and watched the short videos provided. I went round the room again and read all the signs, and that's when I realized that this project of Donald's was huge and that he had a team of artist's, calligrapher's, bookbinders and on and on and on and that Thomas was one of the artist calligraphers and that the two pages that I thought were Donald's but reminded me of Thomas, were actually done by Thomas. I was quite excited to have stumbled onto this beautiful book that reminded me of a kinder and simpler time in my artistic career.
The book project will cost about £2 million by the time it is completed and has been a life long ambition of Donald's. He put forth the idea in 1995 and started on it in 1998. It will be completed in 2007. You can go to the V&A website to read about it. There have just been so many wonderful surprises in London, and this was one of them. You can read more about it at the V&A website at http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/prints_books/saintjohnsbible/
I am happy to find it this year, as the Bow Valley Calligraphy Guild, which I am a founding member of, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
Oh...and by the way I did find the Cornelia Parker piece and I did really love it!

The Institute for Contemporary Art

This gallery has been on my list all along but it took me awhile to get there. I had been close, unknowingly of course. Something could be just around the corner but I might not find right away. So I made a plan for the day and this was a part of it. When I arrived there was a cashier and so I asked if there was an entrance fee (there often isn't but sometimes there is). Yes, she said, it's £2.50, but there aren't any paintings, drawings, prints or sculptures to see, there is just a performance piece by Tino Sehgal. That's fine, I said, when does it start? You can go in any time. It's on-going. So I paid my £2.50 and she told me to wait beside her desk.
I was greeted by a young girl, about 10 years old. She says hello, and starts walking toward a set of closed doors a few feet away. I follow. She opens the doors and then says, Can I ask you a question? I say yes. She says, what do you think progress means? I say I think it means moving forward. Moving forward, hmmmm she says. This whole conversation is taking place while I walk with her through an empty gallery space. There is another girl in her mid-teens at the other side of the space. My young friend says to the older girl, She thinks progress means moving forward. The young girl stays behind as I continue walking with the older girl. The older girl asks me what I do. I tell her I am a graduate student in Fine Arts at the University of Calgary, Canada and that I am on exchange at the Royal College of Art. She asks me what kind of artwork I make. I tell her I do some photography, printmaking, drawing. She asks me if I think art has progressed since the invention of photography? I tell her I think it has, it has just moved in a different direction than it was moving in before. We are joined by a young man probably in his mid-to-late twenties. He listens to what we are talking about and then he starts talking to me and I continue walking through the empty gallery spaces with him. He questions my assumption that art kept progressing and suggests that maybe what happened wasn't progress. Anything I say in response is challenged and questioned. He leads me down a narrow set of stairs that winds around and as we reach the bottom, he jumps down the last few stairs and is out of my sight by the time I reach the bottom. There is an older white-haired man waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He starts talking to me about our two sides, dualities, although he never uses that word. He talks of how when we are making a decision and are having a hard time, we often speak of being of two minds, and yet describe it as listening to either your heart or your head. He talks about our conscious and our unconscious. We are again walking through the empty gallery spaces. I spot a mirror and ask him if he minds if I take a photo of myself in the mirror. He agrees to join me. I tell him I am doing a series of self-portraits in mirrors and reflective surfaces. He asks me what my favourite one is. I say, there is no one photo that is my favourtie, but I particularly like the ones that show what is behind me and what is in front of me and with my image visible, but very transparent. I tell him that when you are visiting a city alone, you can feel quite invisible because you know no one and no one knows you. We are at a set of doors. He opens the doors and we are back at the cashier's desk.

Where Does Food Come From? and miscellanea in response to comments as well as another English lesson

One thing that has amazed me is where produce comes from in Britain. It all sounds so exotic to me. Tenderstem broccoli (the kind you get in chinese restaurants) from Kenya, peppers and strawberries from Spain, rainbow trout from Argyll Scotland (and it doesn't even look like a pair of socks or a vest), baby courgettes from Kenya (we know them as zuchinni), stringless green beans from Morocco, mandarin oranges from Cyprus. Of course to the Brits it probably sounds exotic to get things from California and Mexico and Central and South America and the Okanagan or Taber!
Catherine writes from Mexico where she is basking on a quiet beach enjoying her retirement having a totally different experience to me. And no Catherine, I haven't had any responses to my blog from weirdos as you thought I might. And yes I do enjoy being able to do what I want when I want at my own pace and schedule, but it would be nice to share it with someone, at least part of the time. Tabby writes me about Ralph up to his shinannegan's in the legislature again throwing books at paiges. You should read about what the British politicians get into trouble about, and the press here is really quite ugly. The headlines scream at you everyday using very strong, mean and aggressive language. The sky has actually been blue here much more than I would have thought. It is clear today and there was a little thin layer of ice on the canal this morning. First time I've experienced that. There is a pair of swans nesting along the banks of the canal, right across from our living room window. And what do Londoners delight in - beer and chips! and the fact that they think they live in the best city in the world (but would us colonials agree with that??!!) And yes Amber, I too look forward to a phone call without the echo of my own voice repeating in my ear. As if I need to listen to myself any more than I already am.
And are you ready for another English lesson? I'll continue with bollocks, as it seems to have more than one meaning as in "He (she) has no bollocks!" I think my flatmates are starting to get annoyed with my asking them what words mean. What we call pototo chips, they call crisps, what we call french fries or chips, they call chips. What we call running shoes they call training shoes. A truck is a lorry, a baby carriage is a pram, the trunk of a car is a boot and the hood is the bonnet, an aubergine is an eggplant, the High Street is a street where there are a lot of stores for shopping, pants are underwear not slacks, The City is the financial and business centre of London and a Jordy (sp?) is someone who comes from Newcastle, but it seems that they have to be born and raised there as Barton isn't one.

Museums and Galleries and Openings

Well it seems I have saturated myself. After feeling like a ravenous art andculture hound for four weeks, I crashed on the weekend, fully gorged and satisfied as if I had just finished an enormous feast. I could not face another museum or gallery or crowded street, so on Saturday I stayed home most of the day reading, writing, thinking, reflecting...doing laundry! I walked to the Broadway Market down the canal, had a coffee and people-watched (I must say there is great people watching in London) and bought the Sat. Guardian newspaper, which I find a treat to read. I don't think my flatmates think it's particularly a fun thing to do on a Sat. night in London, but for me it was just grand. On Sunday I spent a good part of the day reading the novel, Brick Lane by Monica Ali, which was on Barton's bookshelf (excellent book by the way and so appropriate to read in London) and I went to the Cafe Gallery for the opening of the RCA 2nd year Printmaking Student's Show. Okay, okay, I couldn't totally escape crowds or culture...it is London after all.
I have seen and done so many things in the last five weeks it's hard for me to believe: The Science Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Museum of Natural History, The Tate Modern, The Tate Britain, The National Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery, The British Museum, Sir John Soane's Museum, The Photographer's Gallery, Kew Gardens, a tour of about a dozen small galleries in the East End, The Hayward Gallery, The White Cube Gallery, The Whitechapel Gallery, The William Morris Gallery. I have seen Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, The Parliament Buildings, The Tower of London all from the outside, but haven't gone on any tours. I went to an opening for a show Elizabeth is in at the Deutschbank last week and one of her friends took me along to another gallery opening after that in the East End. I also went to see La Boheme in the Royal Albert Hall. And sometimes I get off at a tube stop just to see what's there, as there is always something interesting and each area of the city has a different flavour.I have of course just barely scraped the surface of the London art scene, but from what I've seen of student work and gallery work we are not doing too badly in our little cowtown considering our population. I figure there is much more to see here, but you have to wade through a lot of stuff to find the interesting art. Most people who live here don't even go out and see it. I would mention something I've seen that I thought was interesting and nobody else had seen it. Everyone is too busy with their school work or their jobs and just barely make it there and back every day. There are a lot of busy and tired people in London.
It is also quite a big deal to get anywhere and although London is compact and dense, compared to Calgary, it does seem to take a good chunk of time to get around and if you don't have a travel card for the public transportation it is costly as well. Public transportation is also not very accessible for handicapped or seniors, too many stairs in the stations and gaps and unevenness between the trains and the platforms. Even people with strollers have to make quite an effort to get around. You have to be quick getting on and off and the bus drivers love to drive like they're driving a racing car down the bus lanes and seem to delight in throwing people around in the back of the bus, or as you are going up or down the stairs to the upper deck. I guess the whole city kind of keeps you off balance in a way.
This morning I gave a presentation to some of the students in Printmaking about my own work. I will have lots of material to sort through when I get home to make more work with.
Thanks to everyone who sends e-mails and comments to the blog, it helps me cope with being so far away for so long.