Jan McCartney

"Mother and Son"

For +Kat Tehranchik, a reshare of a photo from Leaside Community Gardens taken ... last year ... the year before?

The reference is to the 1997 dreamlike Russian film directed by Aleksandr Sokurov, depicting the relationship between an old, dying mother and her young son. It was Sokurov's first internationally acclaimed feature film, and is the first volume of a trilogy whose subject matter is the study of the drama in human relationships. The film is slow moving and not for everyone, but then neither is the Steppenwolf's Magic Theatre.

From Rotten Tomatoes:

With a visually stunning, quiet intensity, director Alexander Sokurov awakens the senses to the world of nature, human relationships, and death in this film about the poignant last hours of a dying mother and the son who cares for her.

The film begins before the first scene and ends after the last, with the sound of wind in the trees and the songs of birds. Special filters and lenses were used to work with reflecting planes, to manipulate light and shadow as an artist would, and to give added dimension to the full experience of living each moment before death.

The mother and son are not named, they live in an isolated, run-down home in the countryside, a vast green landscape of trees and fields. One night they dream the same dream, and the son carries the mother outside, where he reads old postcards to her, and they reminisce about their past...strengthening themselves against the impact of a separation they know is coming soon. Paths -- through the forest, along a railroad track, and that of a sailing boat heading across an infinite body of water -- symbolize the journey the mother has taken and another she will take soon.

This combination of the subtle use of images to evoke a greater reality and the astounding use of sound to evoke something unseen but sensed, provides a measure for the depth of the communication and caring between the mother and son.

Although Sokurov's evocative, intimate drama begins slowly and so may put off some viewers, it is worth the wait to see how the story is told.

Taken with my li'l Nikon Coolpix.

"Birdhouse"

This rustic birdhouse in Leaside Community Gardens sits on the edge of the ravine delineating small plots of land that are gardened for produce and flowers every summer, and an industrial hell. The gardens sit within the hydro corridor. Waste land for building condos and suburbs, but a perfect oasis for the gardeners that are preparing to seed their tiny plots. And this one photographer who Rages Against The Machine.

"Crowd of Sounds"

Again, Adam Sol, from "Blind", my favourite poem in his collection, "Crowd of Sounds".

Where is there room for colour
in this crowd of sounds
that I know as the world?

The Leaside Community Gardens provides more than plots for people in the area to grow their lettuce and sunflowers. It is a little oasis in the middle of an industrial wasteland in a hydro corridor, across from Hell's Kitchen where cement trucks rumble down the road every few minutes. 

In between the trucks and tractor-trailers, I caught a lone cyclist and a tree, viewed from this little piece of heaven in the middle of hell. The gardeners are already preening their plots for the spring planting. A lovely, shy man explained to me in broken English on Monday that he hoped to start his garden next week. 

Taken with my li'l Nikon Coolpix that travels with me every day now.

"Teatro Politeama Garibaldi" for +Artistic Google curated by +Rob...

"Teatro Politeama Garibaldi" for +Artistic Google curated by +Rob Robinson +Chee Yow +Jamal Masood +Patrick Sheeran and me.

I have been unable to get "Va Pensiero" from Verdi's opera, Nabucco, out of my mind for the past two days so I went looking for a suitable image on Google Street View to create a 1950s style toy camera snapshot.

This is the Teatro Politeama Garibaldi in Palermo, Sicily.

On March 12, 2011, the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome was the site of a dramatic moment which not only electrified a nation, but changed the course of the government.

It was a performance of Verdi’s Nabucco, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Italian unification.

The opera recounts the plight of the Jews in captivity in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon as they pine for their lost homeland. Written in 1842, Verdi’s work is often credited with helping to arouse Italy’s national consciousness. The famous "Va, pensiero", also known as The Chorus of Hebrew Slaves, became an anthem for Italian patriots in the years leading up to unification in 1861. Recent polls suggest that many Italians wish "Va, pensiero" were their national anthem.

When conductor Riccardo Muti began leading the orchestra and chorus in Va, pensiero, he felt the atmosphere in the theater shift.

He could feel the audience’s visceral reaction to the Hebrew slaves’ lament: “Oh mia patria, si bella e perduta!” (Oh my country, so beautiful and lost!) When the chorus ended, the audience exploded with applause, which soon turned to a rhythmic beat as people called called out “Viva l’Italia!” and demanded an encore. Muti, who felt strongly that an opera should be performed straight through, was reluctant to grant an encore. But the change in the atmosphere had affected him as well. He turned to face the audience — which included Prime Minister Berlusconi and most of the Italian government — and made a short, sharp speech regarding the government’s drastic cuts to art funding and the culture it was endangering.

“I agree with that ‘Viva l’Italia!’ See, I’m not young anymore, but as an Italian who travels around the world I feel great pain for what’s happening in Italy. So if I respect your requests tonight and we repeat Va, pensiero, I won’t do it only for patriotic reasons. Tonight, while the chorus sang ‘Oh mia patria, si bella e perduta!’ — I was thinking, if we kill the culture on which the history of Italy is founded, then our country really will be beautiful and lost.”

Fly, thought, on wings of gold

And Garibaldi? He was a central figure in the Italian Risorgimento, since he personally commanded and fought in many military campaigns that led eventually to the formation of a unified Italy.

Musical accompaniment: Like a Barcarolle, featuring Pavarotti with his incredible set of pipes and funky rocker Zucchero: Va Pensiero - Pavarotti @ Zucchero
About the Muti performance: http://oregonexpat.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/drama-at-the-italian-opera/
Original GSV at http://goo.gl/maps/BfCWj

"Pape"

After the subway station was torn apart for renovations and before the new artistic tiles were installed, the writing was on the wall. Indecipherable but for the enigmatic white capitals.

we the curious and hungry for meaning are refused access
we must remain out here inspecting the surface
the faint swirls and incisions and repairs
under the museum white light
alongside strangers

The poet is Ken Babstock, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize for his book, "Methodist Hatchet".

In a recording for the Art Gallery of Ontario, he describes the rivetting tarpaulin wall hangings by the late Betty Goodwin. I thought of Goodwin when I saw the Pape station walls temporarily bared.

Her Tarpaulin Series, created in the 1970s, always leaves me breathless. Like scarred and repaired kimonos, the pieces are concerned with the fragility and ephemeral quality of life. Covering found sheets with gesso and paint and stitching and reworking the surface, she created mysterious collaged wall hangings. Betty Goodwin has said of her use of worn, mended, and weathered tarpaulins that "they retain their own history, to which I add my own history." Folding and re-folding the tarpaulins and infusing them with substances like gesso, she adds her own layer of meaning to their surfaces without denying their unknowable pasts.

http://artmatters.ca/wp/2012/06/listen-to-griffin-poetry-prize-winner-ken-babstocks-art-inspired-poem/

"fotoromanza" for +Artistic Google curated by +Rob Robinson +Chee...

"fotoromanza" for +Artistic Google curated by +Rob Robinson +Chee Yow +Jamal Masood +Patrick Sheeran and me.

Cycling down the road faster than grease on a griddle as the Google Street View Guy records every indiscretion, real or imagined.

Original Google Street View from the idyllic isle of Procida, off Naples: http://goo.gl/maps/j1mXp

Musical accompaniment: Dr. John - "How Come My Dog Don't Bark When You Come 'Round" Dr. John - How Come My Dogs Don't Bark - 10.wmv

"Nautilus" for +William Mazdra who inspires me dailyWhere is there...

"Nautilus" for +William Mazdra who inspires me daily

Where is there room for colour
in this crowd of sounds
that I know as the world?

tell me about your seeing

Excerpt from Adam Sol, "Blind" from his slim volume of poetry: "Crowd of Sounds" at http://goo.gl/JlaFC
Image: Looking up through the staircase at Art Gallery of Ontario where, momentarily, one can remove oneself into a silent world of wonder.

Serendipity.

Sometimes you just turn around and there it is, so you grab your camera and capture it. The serendipity of a sunset in my kitchen window, and the serendipity of finding it in my camera today, weeks after I'd taken the shot.

Blue Dog.

Springtime in the Village. Here is Blue Dog who was wisely hanging out in front of the butcher shop. And the wise butcher noticed and had some goodies to share.

Photographer Tom Hussey used two sets of models who resembled each other 50...

Photographer Tom Hussey used two sets of models who resembled each other 50 years apart to compose these haunting images of Alzheimer's patients who could only remember their younger selves.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2301557/Tom-Hussey-Haunting-photos-Alzheimer-s-patients-younger-selves-mirror.html