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Archive for the ‘Bruce Byfield’ Category

The superior Bukwus

Posted in art, art appreciation, art buying, Beau Dick, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Douglas Reynolds Gallery, First Nations art, Kwakwaka'wakw, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 16, 2009| 5 Comments »

After six months of layaway payments, today we finally brought home our Beau Dick Bukwus mask from the Douglas Reynolds Gallery. Bukwus, the wild man of the woods, is second only to Tsonokwa among Dick’s favorite subjects, but this goblin-like rendering is by far my favorite among his treatments of the subject.

The mask is several years old, but was kept for a while by Douglas Reynolds, who put it back in the gallery only because he had limited room and other masks by Dick that were personal gifts. This bit of history alone would be an endorsement of the work, if my own taste wasn’t enough. In terms of craft, it is close to a unique piece, using a technique that Dick has used in less than half a dozen masks.

This technique is to overlay the wood with leather, using a layer of cloth to create wrinkles on the face, then moistening the leather so it dries cracked and with a broken surface. The result is a close approximation of a man who has been living rough, and whose face is pocked by cuts and sores and the lines of hard usage. In other words, it is perfect for the Bukwus.

(Whether another face is carved on the mask, hidden by the leather, I don’t know. But, suddenly, it occurs to me to wonder, although I can never know without destroying the mask).

Another unusual piece of technique is that the eye holes are drilled deep, through nearly three inches of wood, and rimmed with copper that makes them come alive when the light captures them.

Even more interestingly, the nose is a piece of copper, as though the Bukwus has ripped off his own nose, and found a crude replacement. The sinuses, which are exposed by the lack of a true nose, are stuffed with cedar shavings, just (I am told) as a corpse’s would once have been among the Kwakwaka’wakw. Is the Bukwus dead? Or has he been left for dead? Or is he simply dead to his family and past? Could he be some collector of the dead?

You can take your pick among the possibilities, but all of them are potentially ominous. Add a manic grin with an under-bite, pointed ears, eyebrows that are as long as the hair on top of the head, and a red-black color that suggests a layer of filth and open sores, and the result is an intensely eerie bit of the supernatural, even if you know nothing about the Bukwus.

In fact, it is so intense that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Dick had his own manic delight in his creation and laughed as he finished it. It is close to being over the top, yet stops short of being so, creating an ambiguous figure that, the longer you stare, the less certain you are whether you should be uneasy or laughing yourself.

This ambiguity makes the mask one that should not be hung in the bed room – and definitely not where you can see it when you wake up. Instead, we hung it at the top of the stairs leading up from our front door. If we are ever woken by a scream on the stairs, we will know that somebody broke in and got their first look at Dick’s creation. It’s a magnificent piece, but not something you want to take you by surprise in the dark.
beau-dick-bukwus

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Patrick Amos’ “Supernatural Wolf Transforming into Killer Whale”

Posted in art, art appreciation, art buying, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Northwest Coast Art, Nuu Chah Nulth, Patrick Amos, Personal, Quintana Galleries, Uncategorized, West Coast art, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 15, 2009| 2 Comments »

Patrick Amos is one of the leading Nuu Chah Nulth artists. From the first time I saw his work, I knew it was only a matter of time before I bought something by him. However, until I was browsing the Quintana Galleries web site about six weeks ago, I hadn’t found the right piece. There, I saw his acrylic on paper “Supernatural Wolf Transforming into Killer Whale,” which appealed in so many different ways that I immediately contacted the gallery before anyone else could snap it up.

I assume (but haven’t been able to verify yet) that the piece refers to a myth apparently shared by both the Nuu Chah Nulth and Haida nations of a great wolf that was such a savage and wasteful hunter that shamans transformed it into a killer whale so that it would not de-populate the animals of the land. This is a story that I have never seen depicted in art before, which gives the piece an immediate interest for me – I mean, Raven stealing the light is a powerful story, but it’s as common in Northwest Coast art as Madonnas and crucifixions are in European Renaissance art. I simply like to see my imagination stirred by a story less often told.

However, “Supernatural Wolf” is also an office in the important Wolf Society, although why one should be transforming into an orca isn’t clear to me.

At any rate, transformation is a subject that often brings out the best in many Northwest Coast Artists, and this piece is no exception. Amos’ acrylic shows the wolf twisted in the throes of transformation – throes that seem all the more agonizing as it struggles in the confines of the circle.

At the moment depicted, the most obvious sign of the transformation is the dorsal fin on the wolf’s back that it is evidently twisting to see (and maybe bite). However, at a second look, the wolf’s head is also sprouting the fin that is one of the killer whale’s distinguishing features in Northwest Coast Art. Moreover, if you look closely, one front leg may be changing into a flipper, while the other, with toes that seem elongated compared to the hind foot beside it, seems to have just started to change. The tail, too, is presented in a three-quarters view that makes it look flat, and more an orca’s flukes than a wolf’s brush.

An additional indication of change may be the irregular and asymmetrical shapes that make up the wolf’s legs. They give a strong contrast to the wolf’s body, which exists only in outline, except for the two stars that perhaps suggest the wolf’s spirit, remaining unchanged despite the physical transformations that arre happening.

For me, the piece is all the more effective because it is in stark white and black. Not everybody appreciates black and white or grayscale these days, which may be why the piece languished in the gallery for a while. Personally, though, I have always felt that, with the right subject, a lack of primary colors makes for boldness and drama, which is certainly the case here.

One additional note: The small mark in the lower right is a finger print, presumably Pat Amos’. The gallery was apologetic about this flaw, but I was more philosophical. Your eye is hardly drawn to it, after all. Besides, if I ever wanted to establish provenance, I shouldn’t have any trouble (to which the employee I was dealing with replied that you could have no doubt that Amos had a hand in the work).

pat-amos

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Two ways of buying art

Posted in art, art appreciation, art buying, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Sean Aster, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 6, 2009| 13 Comments »

When I was up at the Fred Diesing School Student Art Exhibition a couple of weeks ago, one of the main attractions was the paintings of Sean Aster. I bought one myself, and joked that I had traveled north just to see how he was coming on the commission we’d arranged a couple of months ago. However, the way that the reactions to his work changed over the afternoon taught me something about the way that people view and buy art.

Before the graduation ceremony, when people were gathering in the studio, very few of us gave Aster’s work any particular attention. However, during the ceremony, Aster won two scholarships, including one that master carver and senior advisor to the school Dempsey Bob gave out himself. Twenty minutes later, staff could barely put up the little red stickers indicating a sale fast enough. Suddenly, everybody wanted one of his works.

This change had nothing to do with the quality of the works. Aster is a promising artist, especially for someone still in his twenties, and his work deserved the awards and the attention he got. But his work was no finer after the ceremony than before. Nor were people necessarily buying the biggest or most original pieces.

All that had changed was that the school instructors had got up and said very publicly, in several different ways, that he was a young artist with a future. Apparently, most of the guests had missed the fact before, until recognized authorities had emphasized it to them. Those of us who had recognized his skill by ourselves were morbidly amused (to say nothing of pleased with ourselves that we had arrived at our conclusion unaided).

A week later, I repeated the story to a Vancouver director of a Northwest Coast Art gallery. He didn’t get what I was saying. How else, he asked me, would people have known what to buy?

Listening to his question, I realized, more strongly than ever before, that there were two reasons for buying art.

The first, and perhaps the most common, is based on reputation, and, much of the time, on the hopes of a profitable investment. Beyond a very limited extent, it has nothing to do with an artist’s ability. For example, it is no reflection on the ability of either artist than an original canvas by Robert Davidson can sell for seventeen times the price of one by his current apprentice David Robert Boxley; Davidson sells for so much more because of his reputation, not because he is seventeen times the artist that Boxley is (although, quite obviously, he is his elder in their craft). This was the sort of collector I saw buying Aster in Terrace – for the afternoon, at least, Aster was the one with the reputation.

The second reason to buy art is because it moves you, or because it is well-composed. This reason owes nothing to reputation; those who buy for this reason will buy a $100 sketch from an unknown as happily as a $10,000 one from a master artist if it has the right qualities, and let the potential investment take care of itself.

These two types of buyers can talk amiably, and may even wish to buy the same piece. However, the motives for buying are really quite different, and quite irreconcilable. Secretly, an enthusiast like me can’t help thinking that those whose buying decisions are based on reputation are unimaginative, even a little crass, and buying for entirely the wrong reasons. In turn, though, I don’t doubt that the reputation-buyers dismiss us enthusiasts as arrogant in our naivety.

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Nine Myths Would-Be Writers Need to Unlearn

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Personal, writer's block, writing, tagged , , , , on May 4, 2009| 1 Comment »

Writing requires fewer expenses than any art except singing, and everyone who finishes grade school learns a few rudiments. For these reasons, it has never lacked wannabes. I’ve heard the claim that if you ask random strangers in Los Angeles how their screenplays are going, you have just bought yourself ten minutes of boredom – and, considering my experiences at science fiction conventions, I can believe it (except that, there, what you shouldn’t ask about are stories). But most of the wannabes never get where they would like to be, usually because they run afoul of one of the following myths:

  • You need to be inspired to write: You can have many Eureka! moments as you write, and a new love or a lost one may urge you to new heights. But if you wait for inspiration before you start to write, then you will never write six days out of seven. Like most forms of mental and physical exercise, writing is something that gets easier if you practice and keep in practice. As Peter S. Beagle said, “If the Muse shows up late to work, you start without her.”
  • Writing done when you are inspired is better than writing you do at any other time: Although you may feel better about your work when inspired, what you produce is usually no better or worse than what you write when every word comes out like a kidney stone you are passing. If you don’t believe me, save one piece you write when inspired and one written when the words come hard, and compare them a week later. Neither is likely to be much better than the other. And, if one is better, it may be the hard-won words, not the inspired ones.
  • Writing block can keep you from writing: In my experience, writer’s block is generally a luxury enjoyed by amateurs. Professionals have no time to have one. The best cure for writers’ block is a deadline. When you have to write, you have no time to play games with yourself. Real writers often have problems that they need to work out, but they view the problems as part of the process, not as an opportunity for self-dramatizing. In the few cases where writer’s block is more than that, a sleep, violent exercise, working on something else, or any other change of pace usually cures it.
  • Talking about your writing is a good idea: Not for anyone I’ve ever met. You will only bore others, and waste energy that you could use for writing in talking. If you prefer talking about your work rather than doing it, then chances are you are more in love with the idea of being a writer than with actually writing. At least, that’s how most practicing writers will view you – and most of the time they will be right.
  • Developing style is the most important thing you can do: An awareness of style is essential as you learn to write. But your own style? Don’t waste time worrying about it. It will come along without any special effort as you focus on clarity, conciseness, accuracy, and otherwise learning how to get down something like what you mean.
  • Style is hard: Even relatively inexperienced writers can learn to polish a phrase or two. By contrast, how to structure and pace your work takes much longer to learn. That’s one reason why, although many poets have done brilliant work before they were twenty-five, very few novelists produce anything memorable before they’re thirty.
  • If you’re talented, you’ll be discovered sooner or later: Possibly. But getting to know publishers, editors, and other writers works even better. Knowing you probably won’t mean that they’ll take an unpublishable work from you, but it does mean that they are more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt in borderline cases – and let you in on the industry news.
  • A work that’s rejected is no good: Often, yes. Most times, even. But works are often accepted and rejected for reasons that have nothing to with their quality. Maybe the editor is overstocked with submissions. Maybe the publisher just did a novel featuring a family much like the one in yours. The rumor is that Stephen King got his start because his publisher was looking for more works that would interest women, and Carrie opens in a high school girls’ locker room. Your rejection might be random as King’s acceptance, so try again. But collect four or five rejections on the same work and maybe you need to start thinking about revisions.
  • There’s nothing wrong with being self-published: Many good and even great books have been rejected before being published, and we’ll never know how many others disappeared before their writers got discouraged. However, the odds are that the number is far fewer than the number of self-published books that succeeded. An editor’s job is to detect salable writing, and, while one or two can make a mistake, five or six are less likely to. The prejudice against self-publishing is not irrational; it’s based on experience. If you really can’t sell your work and want to publish it, you can get free blogs on line at any number of places far more cheaply than you can publish a book or win a contest promising publication. Oh, and calling your vanity publishing an Indie Book won’t make anything said here less true, either.

Harsh words? Maybe. But who said that writing was about your ego? It’s about working to do the best job you can in the time that you have. Anything beyond that is playacting about being a writer – and if you have time to pretend to be one, you won’t have time to actually become one.

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The Freda Diesing School Student Art Exhibition, 2009

Posted in art, art appreciation, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Charles Richard Wesley, First Nations art, Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art, John Wilson, Latham Mack, Personal, Shawn Aster, Sophie Beaton, Todd Stephens, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 2, 2009| 7 Comments »

“How does this compare to a show down south?” John Wilson asked me last week, shortly after I arrived at the Freda Diesing School Student Art Exhibition in Terrace. He seemed surprised when I told him that a 23 person show with some 75 pieces almost never happened, but it’s true. The annual show is one of the largest annual exhibits of modern Northwest Coast Art anywhere.

The show lasted only two days, with a private viewing for friends and family on Friday and a public viewing on Saturday. The location is the Freda Diesing Studio on the Terrace campus of Northwest Community College, a well-lit building with a large lower floor ordinarily occupied by work benches and a loft for a more conventional class room setting:

fd-studio1

Just inside the door, above the table with the show catalog and price list were a few prints by Freda Diesing herself, including a self-portrait mask:

fd-self-portrait

These works were not for sale, but stood as tutelary spirits of the show – or, more precisely, as the standards to which the students should aspire.

Several months ago, I reviewed the school’s mid-term show via a collection of pictures sent to me by John Wilson. That show was mostly painting and sketches, the first year class in particular having not begun its study of carving at the time. By contrast, the year-end show had a few two-dimensional pieces, but consisted largely of paddles, spoons, and masks.

Painted paddles are closer to two dimensional than three dimensional works, so I was not surprised when two of the best-designed paddles were from Shawn Aster and Latham Mack, two artists who were among the standouts at the earlier shows and scholarship winners at the graduation ceremonies that accompanied the private viewing:

shawn-aster-paddle

latham-mack-paddle

However, making the transition from the two-dimensional craft of painting to the three-dimensional one of carving does not always comes easily, and many students are still making it. Latham Mack, for instance (who as a Nuxalk, is learning his second style of carving), is well on the way, using the same blue that I am starting to recognize as characteristic of his two-dimensional designs:
latham-mack

By contrast, a mask by Shawn Aster shows a sense of surfaces, but seems more tentative, with a shallowness in the carving and a thinness of line that makes you only appreciate the mask up close, as seen in this (unfortunately cropped) picture:

shawn-aster-mask

A similar lack of ease in three dimensions is true of Todd Stephens, another scholarship winner from whom I’ve bought several paintings:

todd-stephens

Other students showed similar learning curves – and, as might be expected in a student show – a certain tendency to conformity – although Norman McLean, Sr., in a triumph of social sensibility over aesthetics did do a bright pink mask, as well as a spoon with a more discrete pink ribbon around the handle as fund-raisers for breast cancer. Still, there were some interesting pieces here and there.

Sophia Patricia Beaton, another scholarship winner, had only one piece in the show, but the wavy hair and the obviously feminine face and the labret were original enough to make me wonder what the rest of her work might be like:

sophia-beaton

I also noticed James Weget-McNeil’s frog mask, which, although in a very different style, reminded me of some of the faux-artifacts that Beau Dick has been carving recently:

james-weget-mcneil1

However, much of the interesting carving came from mature students with more experience.

Charles Richard Wesley, whose work I noticed in the mid-term show, came up with two interestingly intricate masks:

charles-richard-wesley

I also appreciated John Wilson’s work, which he says represents an advance in finishing details over his earlier work – pointing, for example, an indentation of the eye sockets at the top of the nose:

john-wilson

These are just some of the pieces in the show, but, aside from the bowls (something needing to be left out), they give an idea of the variety to be seen at the show. I appreciate the chance to see students learning and mastering their craft, and while some flaws and weaknesses are apparent, there are just as many examples of solid and skilled works.

In fact, I could have come away from the show considerably poorer. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on my shifting perspective, most of the pieces I considered buying were marked NFS, many earmarked for a show at the Spirit Wrestler Gallery in Vancouver later this month.

But buying is only one reason to attend such a show. A far better reason is spend a few hours surrounded by efforts of art – and that, so far as I am concerned, is more than enough reason for me to want to attend next year’s show.

My thanks to Stan Bevan for seeing that I got an invitation. That small kindness gave me an enriching day.

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North to Terrace

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art, Terrace, tagged , , , , , , on April 28, 2009| 1 Comment »

“Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things!” Bilbo Baggins says about adventures in The Hobbit. “Make you late for dinner!” Working out of our townhouse, I sympathize with that view. But, as with Bilbo, there must be something Tookish in me lying in wait. When I was invited to go to Terrace for the end of the year show at the Fred Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art, I was determined to go. To fly 1350 kilometers only to return the next day seemed more than a little quixotic, especially when I didn’t feel I could really afford the trip and had never met anyone there, but the whole idea seemed irresistible. For someone who had never been farther north than 100 Mile House, it seemed a small adventure, all the more interesting because I was moving way out of my comfort zone.

I flew out of the South Terminal of the Vancouver Airport, a relic of quieter days that services the coast and the remoter areas of British Columbia. After looping around the city, with me peering out eagerly to spot the Metrotown Towers, Swangard Stadium, Cleveland Dam and other visible landmarks, we headed north. The mountains grew progressively taller and more snowcapped, and I tried not to be disappointed that all I could see of the coast was the occasional inlet masquerading as a river at first glance.

I won a T-shirt in an on-board raffle, and hoped it was an indicator of how my luck was running.

As we circled Terrace and descended to the airport, I could see signs of logging that showed that I was flying into a resource extraction community. From the air, I could see that the evergreens flanking the highway were often only one hundred meters thick, and that the town, whatever its other virtues, was a stranger to zoning in most areas.

At every other airport I’ve ever visited, taxis are always awaiting incoming flights. But not at the Terrace-Kitimat Airport. Rather sheepishly, I retraced my steps and hunted for the direct phone for the taxi.

After twenty minutes, an Indian driver – that is, someone from India, not a First Nation – picked me up and took me directly to the college. We crossed the Skeena, brown with the spring runoff, and through the mixture of stores and industrial sites that forms the downtown, and up a hill to a suburb where small houses mixed with hobby farms of a few acres and pasturage for a cow or horse or two.

Semi-rural British Columbia, I thought, reminded of places in Surrey and Langley and the Sunshine Coast. I decided I could deal with it.

All the same, the college seemed incongruous when it suddenly appeared. Paying off the driver, I found my way to the cafeteria to fortify myself and ask directions if I needed to.

A bagel and orange juice revived me, and I headed across the parking lot in the middle of the college. A few inquiries confirmed that the building with the high roof and large windows was the Freda Diesing School, just as I had thought. Trundling my carry-on, I stepped inside.

Almost instantly, I was greeted by Jennifer Davidson, Henry Green, and Peter Jackson, at least one of whom must have a stronger ability to recognize people from their photos than I’ve ever managed. Then I started meeting people – Bill McMillian, carver and teacher Stan Bevan, and students with whom I’d been in contact with online but never met, including John Wilson, Latham Mack, Sean Aster, and Todd Stephens, to say nothing of ex-students like Dean Heron. The sheer number of people to meet was overwhelming, and their friendliness left me exhilarated. Really, a stranger couldn’t have asked for a better welcome to a group with such close internal connections.

I just barely had time to go around the show (which deserves a blog of its own) snapping pictures like mad before it was time to trek across campus for the graduation ceremony. While we were milling about, Jennifer Davidson took the opportunity to photograph the copper bracelet that Henry Green did for me eighteen months ago, and Henry threated to straighten it out, evoking a squeal of dismay from me.

After rampaging through the buffet, the crowd sat through the usual round of thanks at graduation ceremonies. Mercifully we were spared long speeches, although I did notice most of the students gradually sitting lower and lower in their chairs. But an end came at last, with the most deserving students receiving awards and all of them praised for their dedication.

Two drummers, one of whom was a student, were supposed to lead a procession back to the studio, but the riff-raff like me at the back lingered so long that we missed most of it. I had a chance to look at the exhibits more carefully, and saw the sketches for one piece that I hope to eventually buy, and all too soon the show was over.

John Wilson drove me downtown, where I found a hotel and we headed out for Chinese food. A sign that we were in the north was that one of the offerings at the restaurant was salmon in black bean sauce.

I had hoped to meet sculptor Ron Telek, but he was busy with family matters, and we had to make do with a quick phone call late at night. I found myself wishing that I had booked another day, both to see Ron and to see more of the town, but, as things were, I fell asleep exhausted and buoyed by the friendly welcome I had received.

The next morning, I was at the airport before most of the staff (Memo: in small towns, the rule of arriving two hours before a flight doesn’t apply). Tired but satisfied, I flew south, putting adventures behind me for a while. But now that I’ve ventured north once, I’m sure I’ll be coming back again. Terrace may be more distant from my townhouse than Calgary, but in many ways it feels more like home.

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Flying like a dog, with my head out the window

Posted in Bruce Byfield, flying, Personal, travel, Uncategorized on April 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The prospect of flying reduces me to the state of a kid on Christmas Eve. And that’s not just a metaphor, either. The night before I fly, I’m lucky to get five hours asleep. By halfway through the night, I’m awake and almost twitching with excitement. Usually, I get up earlier than I planned, and reach the airport sooner than I intended, too. Whether I’m leaving home or returning, my anticipation is the same.

By the time the plan starts bumping along the runway, my excitement is at a pitch. I love the way that the plane accelerates, then seems all at once to leap forward into the air. At the exact moment of takeoff, the plan seems to quiver with its own excitement, and its ascent seems act of will rather than physics.

Whenever possible, I book a window seat. If the windows opened, I would undoubtedly hang out one like a dog – never mind that I’m at 39,000 feet. Something about seeing the earth spread out beneath me like a diorama is endlessly fascinating to me, no matter how often I fly. Perhaps the slight feeling of giddiness that accompanies the sight adds to the excitement, the feeling that I could step from cloud to cloud to get a better view.

The view from a plane always reminds me of the Challenger map of British Columbia that could be viewed from several different levels at the annual PNE fair. However, the view from the plaen is even better. I remember the trips I used to take from Vancouver to Berkeley, and watching the gradual shift of the vegetation from rain forest greens to semi-desert browns.

On other trips across the continent, I remember the American mid-west as an endless stretch of quarter section farms that varied only in where the home section was on the farm. Every now and then, I’d pass over towns, every one of which seemed to have an oversized cement football stadium. On those same trips, I caught my first glimpse of the Mississippi. And, on one memorable occasional flying to Phoenix, the pilot diverted the flight to give us a view of the Grand Canyon in the early morning light.

Last week, I flew to Calgary just at sunset. At first, most of what I could see out the plane window was blue-purple mountains and forests surrounded by fading patches of snow, and surprisingly few lights. Then, as the dark settled down, the pattern on the ground below became more abstract, the division between the landscape and the snow blurring. Eventually, it settled into a pointillism of snow on a dark background. Gradually, lights appeared as we approached Calgary, springing up in greater and greater numbers until all I could see was a chaotic array of lights. I had a book open, but I spent so much time lost in what I saw below me that the flight attendants had to call me twice to ask if I wanted a snack and a drink.

Descents are a gradual, reluctant return to reality from the mesmerism produced by the view out the window. If I am outward bound, my thoughts leap forward to what I expect from the trip; if I am returning home, I start anticipating breathing air that has the proper amount of moisture in it.

The actual moment that the wheels touch the runway seem another act of will, an act of controlled violence, even with the most skilled of pilots. As the plane slows, it seems to fall asleep. By the time it reaches the gate, I am ready to burst out of its corpse and back into mundane reality.

I keep telling myself that such reactions are out of place in someone who can no longer pretend to be young. Enough travel, and I’ll grow out of them. However, I haven’t fallen into sedateness yet. Each time I fly, I am excited as the first time, and I don’t doubt that I’ll be just as excited the next time I fly.

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The Calgary Open Source Systems Festival (COSSFest 2009)

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Calgary, Free Software, opensource, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 20, 2009| 1 Comment »

I am just back from COSSFest, a free software event held in Calgary, Canada. You can read about the conference on my Linux Pro Magazine blog at:

http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/online/blogs/off_the_beat_bruce_byfield_s_blog/the_calgary_open_source_symposium_festival_cossfest_2009

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First impressions of Calgary

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Calgary, Canada, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 19, 2009| Leave a Comment »

So what impressions does a life-long Vancouverite have of Calgary after a two day visit? Necessarily, a fragmented one. Two days is far too short a time to know any region well, and I spent much of my time in a conference hotel. I did venture out a few times, but karaoke bars and mid-level restaurants are much the same anywhere in the industrialized world. Still, I can no more stop myself gathering impressions than I can from breathing.

The first thing that struck me as I left the airport were the horizons. Unless you are in some place in the Fraser River delta like Richmond, the Vancouver area is bounded by mountains. Calgary, though, is not like that. The horizons seem impossibly long, the numerous hills never seeming tall enough to tailor them to a decent length. Off to the west, you can the jagged profile of the Rockies from many perspectives, but, otherwise, the horizons stretch in all directions, producing a stirring of agoraphobia in me.

The next impression was the air. It’s drier than on the coast, so that my mouth always felt dry, and perhaps a little dusty as well. It felt thinner than the air I’m used to as well – and, after all, I was several thousand feet higher than at home, a fact that made running harder for me than it would be at home. Over the couple of days of my stay, the wind always seemed to blowing, gusting much more regularly than I was used to. Once or twice, when the sun came out, I could feel an unaccustomed amount of ultra-violet on my skin, and the light seemed pale.

Since I’ve grown up in a rain forest (or, at least, where one used to be), the land looked dry and barren. Where I am used to infinite shades of green, Calgary had only one or two dark greens in the form of some evergreens. Everywhere else, the grass and weeds were a wan and tired brown, even though spring could hardly have been said to arrive, and the result was that the whole landscape seem washed out and barren to me. If I focused, I could see that the varieties of brown were just as numerous as the greens I knew, but they seemed faintly depressing to me. The birds were species that I largely couldn’t identify, includng a black and white species with a long tail that seemed to prefer huddling at the bottom of bushs and shrubs.

I did, however, see some seagulls, much to my surprise. They seemed as alien to the land as I was feeling.

I was in the northeast section of Calgary, which I am told is the rougher section of town, and has a larger proportion of immigrants than the rest of the city. And it’s true that when I went to a pho palace, most of the other diners were Vietnamese. Even so, the crowds seem strangely European to my Vancouver eye, making them seem not quite right in a way that puzzled me until I figured it out. I did see a few people of Chinese descent, but almost none of Indian. The majority were European, which is something I haven’t lived with since I was a child. I heard more French that I’m used to hearing (and saw more poutine being sold in restaurants and bars), and Russian and Polish once or twice, but the dominant voices were English Canadian, with an accent subtly different from Vancouver’s, whose characteristics I can’t quite articulate.

(I’m not suggesting that there is anything wrong with Calgary’s population mix – just that it was different from what I’m used to.)

I can’t speak about the rest of Calgary, but the northeast is one of those places that have sprung up on the edges of far too many cities in the last few decades: strip development which has been built in haste, only to decay in leisure, without a hint of urban planning or zoning. I saw chiropractor’s offices next to auto dealers, and light industry next to shopping malls. Here and there, a few large buildings were empty, no doubt victims of the recession. It’s not a place where people walk, although the C-Train rapid transit system ran through the middle of the small area that I spent my time in. It reminded me of parts of Richmond, or possibly Maple Ridge at home.

However, one thing made the strip development even uglier than that around Vancouver. Around Vancouver, space is at a premium, because the city is jammed up against the coast mountains, and starting to fill up. Under these conditions, even strip development around Vancouver is starting to go up. By contrast, in Calgary’s northeast, space is not an issue, and the sprawl is mostly low-rise and less orderly. It seems a wasteful and careless use of space, to someone used to Vancouver.

What else? Some random impressions: Most of the chain stores and brand names were the same as in Vancouver, although I saw one or two unfamiliar ones. Highways are called “trails,” in tribute to the old settler roads, and the airport has several sculptures with cowboy themes. Boots and cowboy hats suggest that the stereotypes of Calgary still have some basis in fact, but tend to be worn regularly only by men over sixty. People’s complexions seemed drier than they would be in Vancouver. The water, while it had a slight mineral tang, was generally drinkable from the tap, although I took care not to drink to much of it, just in case my intestinal fauna might revolt against it. There were more smokers, with the smell of their habit lingering around them, although the no-smoking laws seem as strict as in Vancouver.

I wish I could have fleshed out these impressions with visits to the rest of Calgary. Since I’ve already been invited back to COSSFest next year, maybe I’ll take an extra day or so and learn more. For now, I can say that Calgary is neither a city I warm to, like San Francisco or San Diego, nor a city that repels, like Indianapolis. As for whether I could learn to appreciate the prairie after living so many years in the rain forest, who knows? Maybe my impressions will tip one way or the other whenever I get a chance to see more.

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The ambiguity of hotel rooms

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Calgary, hotel rooms, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »

It is 10:30PM, and I’m sitting in my hotel room in Calgary. Half an hour ago, I left Bootlegger’s in the north-east corner of the city, where I drank more cider than was good for me and where I watched Aaron Seigo of KDE doing karaoke with “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues,” and mugging with local developer David Crosby to “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman.” I would have stayed longer to cap off an ejoyable day at COSSFest, except that I have one more talk and panel tomorrow, and I want to get a workout in the morning. So, here I am in my room, reflecting on the love-hate relationship I have with hotel rooms.

On the one hand, a hotel room represents a holiday. So long as I’m staying here, I have none of my normal responsibilities, all the more so because I am travelling alone. I have none of my normal work; although I suppose that the talks I’m giving are part of it, they are such a change that I don’t really associate them with my usual routine. I have no meals to cook, no garbage to take out, and I can be as tidy or as messy as I want to (which means that I usually start by putting everything away, and end gradually strewing my belongings in piles around the room). For a few days, I am living without responsibilities, and, while I don’t regret any of my personal obligations, being free of them still evokes a sudden sense of freedom.

On the other hand, I keep thinking of Harlan Ellison’s comment on hotel rooms: “Why did you come so far to be alone?” The truth is, whenever I am traveling solo, I sooner or later start to feel isolated. Don’t get me wrong – the people at the conference are all interesting people, free and open source software geeks of a sort I understand and deal with regularly. But I am away from my partner and my pets, and I am not meeting up with some of the people I might have in Calgary. So, at the same time I feel liberated, I also feel mildly melancholy.

It’s not, you understand, existentially melancholy, or self-absorbed. It’s more the wistful, thoughtful sort – the kind that drives me to write a blog entry about it in order to describe and understand it.

Besides, the older I get, the more I get interested in complicated emotional states, whether in me or in someone else. Or maybe I’ve just had enough to drink to be in a pseudo-profound mood that I’ll disavow in the morning.

Probably, though, it’s more than that. Ultimately, there is a vast indifference in hotel rooms. I am only camping in this room very briefly, and nothing and no one in the hotel cares if I linger or go. The paintings on the wall and the furniture are blandly unobtrusive, and there is a ridiculous extra bed in the room to remind me that the place was neither designed or decorated with me in mind.

This impersonality is at the core of both the feelings my hotel stay provokes, and makes the ambiguity that much more precarious. Probably, it is just as well that I am only here for another thirty-six hours, or else I would fall into one mood or the other, and neither, I think, is particularly healthy.

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