Author: Bill

Mount Baker with foreground figure, by Helen Andersen. 1986
I am working through slides of Helen Andersen works whose whereabouts we no longer know. Among the dust speckled images was this little gem, probably a small work on paper.
That’s Mount Baker at the top, an extinct volcano that Helen often included in her landscapes. Surely that is Helen herself at the bottom, witnessing the scene that stands before her. She did a great many pieces with air brush, which she wielded in her own unique way. Here, she has made abstracted patterns out of the waves and planted farm fields that surrounded her home in Saanichton, on Vancouver Island.

Old Woman Wearing A Labret, by Helen Andersen. Medium: Gouache on paper. Image size: approx. 18″ x 17″
Helen’s pictures of aboriginal female elders are always strong and striking. This one actually shocks a bit, until you’ve lived with her a while. Then she becomes quite likeable and alive.
Just framed today, she looks her best in a generous mat and a simple, bold frame. She’s BIG. The face is much larger than life size and the frame is over 2 feet square.
BTW, the labret is a wooden plug that women wore, inserted into the lower lip. You may have taken that white shape for lower teeth, but no. That’s the labret. Helen’s title makes no mention of the nose ring.

After a flubbed introduction that caused downfall of an Apple exec and a rare apology from the CEO, Apple pressed on and got their Map app right. At least, I have found it accurate and useful in my first few tests. The most obvious change is the way satellite views of my city are rendered in 3D. It’s quite engaging to fly over and around buildings as if you are in a helicopter.

The detailed view (above) shows a friend’s street in pretty good detail. When Google recorded his house for StreetView, a diaper truck happened to be going by, obscuring his front door. Apple has had better luck.
One critic said he thought Apple’s 3D view was fun once, but not as useful as StreetView, because he was usually at street level, not up in the sky. True enough and I agree that StreetView is very useful if you are looking for store fronts, access to parking lots, etc. But I don’t agree that Apple’s approach is pointless. It’s great for getting the “lay of the land” and a sense of how things fit together. It also has potential if you want to know which lane to use when you approach a highway onramp.
I wondered if I could have answered my question about a staircase to a footbridge that crosses the Don River. Answer: Yes. I could see exactly how the stairs went up from the bike path. Better than Google Maps on that one.
Now I have to figure out how to embed Apple Maps into web pages and emails, the way you can with Google’s offering.

A few early bugs have been fixed and the latest OS X is said to be very trouble-free, so I took the plunge. It’s free, BTW.
Before I installed Mavericks, I updated all my existing software and let Disk Utility repair permissions. Time Machine had everything backed up. The installation went smoothly. No problems at all.
Now it’s time to see how well Maps work (as good as Google maps?), to try out the built-in dictation software and to see if I like the new Finder Tabs. The very first thing I noticed was that nothing looked particularly new. I like that. I didn’t want to face a steep learning curve. Some nice new features (that I can take or leave) and optimized, smoother performance are all I really want.

For months, Google has been trying to suck me into participation in its Google Plus social media thingy. I eluded their efforts until today, when they tricked me (or coerced me?) and linked my Youtube account to all the rest of their customer tracking “services”. As you may have guessed, I’ve had enough.
I cancelled all my Googly accounty stuff. I can still use Google’s search algorithm… and that’s the most useful thing Google does. If I use it through DuckDuckGo, my search history won’t even be tracked and stored.
I can’t upload videos to Youtube anymore, or comment on Youtube videos uploaded by others, but I can still watch them. A few of my Youtube videos that are embedded here are blog posts will go dark, but maybe I’ll upload them to Vimeo.
Here are links to the first ones I’ve moved:
Chrissy and Barry’s Wedding
The Jig
The Biblio-Mat

We just received notice of an upcoming, first-ever Forum on the Future of Our Public Library – Sunday, November 24th – 2 pm to 4pm – Council Chamber – City Hall.
– See more at: http://ourpubliclibrary.to/#event

Alnoor Savani, owner of the Lahore Tikka House on Gerrard Street East has died of heart failure at the age of 48. He spent years building his famous restaurant in stages, completing more construction whenever he had enough funds.
Over the years, we’ve watched his restaurant take shape, ever so slowly, but ever so steadily. Early on, customers filled tables in the outdoor parking lot, dining under improvised canopies. Even then, the place was very popular. Gradually, the place grew into a handsome two-storey landmark with an outdoor patio on top. It was our friend Neda’s absolute favourite place to eat on the Little India Strip… and Neda is a serious foodie.
How sad that Danica and I never got around to having a meal there. We always seemed to be waiting for the construction to be finished… and now that it is, the founder is gone. The best we can do now is go and dine there in tribute to one man’s persistence and entrepreneurship.

The Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria show opened on Thursday and I just received a snapshot of the installation from our friend Ulli Walker. Ulli and Christine Ross (CACGV board member) took care of transporting the piece from Pat Ekland’s home to the gallery. Thank you both. Looks great! And thank you, Pat, for parting with it for a couple of weeks.

Things like this always make me question whether or not we should depend on numbers to give us a picture of reality.
Try 259 x your age x 39 =…

There have been questions about what we are doing with all of the Helen Andersen art we have been framing. Were we preparing the works for a show? Perhaps the one being planned for next year in Victoria? Not really. This is how we’ve put some of them up on our own walls, and we love it.

Keen observers will note that the groupings are not exclusively filled with Andersen pictures. There’s a Tony Onley print in there, a hall mirror, an anonymous canvas of grandmother Sophie as a young woman, for example.
That’s the plan. Helen’s art will outnumber everyone else’s, but we’ll try to maintain a mix in other rooms, too. Oh yes, other rooms. We still have lots more to hang and thanks to grouping, lots of space still to use. I hope we are managing to avoid looking like an auction house. Not everything can go on display, but we’ll be able to rotate pieces and look with fresh eyes.