Saturday, May 12, 2012

What is it about those islands?

What is it about those islands off Vancouver, CA? because now all these years later my dear friend and muse, Simone, who I met in '74 Eugene, Oregon...

 (yes the same counter culture capital of the world I spoke of earlier, or will speak of later depending on the order you read this disembodied memoir)...



when I was planting trees with the Hoedads, a legendary collective of feral hippies who replanted logged mountainsides with tiny conifers we carried on our backs in yellow bags, perfectly matching the yellow rain jacket and yellow rain pants we always wore, as you could only plant when it was raining because otherwise the ground was too hard and you couldn't plant when it was snowing either, as the ground was frozen, and so we would be holed up in our black plastic tee pee, way up in the woods, sittin' round the fire, cookin' soup and singin' old country pickin' songs that were popular at the time...

so that same Simone I mentioned at the beginning of this sentence, the very same one who is still my dear friend and muse today, even though she lives on a far away island  just off Vancouver CA, and must ride the very same ferries I rode in '78 with the renegade B ( I don't want to say her real name in case now she is a respectable upstanding member of society and sadly no longer an outlaw), the same ferries that my dear Tibetan friend Tenzing Tsewang rode before he died at his mailbox on Saltspring Island...


that same Simone is the friend who spoke the words (quoted elsewhere in this dismembered memoir) which offered me such great comfort - 'he has ridden on ahead'

she is the one, yes the very same one, who once sent her poetic art missives across the oceans in painted envelopes heavy with stamps, to land in my letter box so I could reply in a similar tone, long before it was fashionable, long before it was co-opted into artsy fartsy blogs like this one, long before people just didn't send letters anymore...

that same girl/woman/artist/poet, now simply and affectionately known as Mon (who paints designs on silk scarves and sends her missives now by ether, not post), lives on one of those islands off Vanvouver CA...


and I am thinking I really must go there one day soon for tea...

Monday, May 7, 2012

Made In Cambodia



I took this photo of a Sallyanne Morgan sculpture (called Made In Cambodia) at an exhibition at Java Cafe, Phnom Penh, earlier in 2012. It's my favorite photo of the year so far.

Irish Sculptor Sallyanne Morgan’s meditative, life-size, sculptures explore the tension between the perceived and the real, combining an observation of current lives and past traditions with an underlying uncertainty for what may yet come.

In the exhibition at there are three different series, all of them with a polished white surface. One features the life-like figures of a woman, a child and a man, each with protective tattoos engraved on them, offering a more literal and private narrative. The second series shows abstracted female torsos with a moving sphere in the middle that suggests a deeper more internal conversation. Finally, the third series of small figures balancing in various positions around a central rod, a metaphoric gesture about adaptation to change.

Sallyanne Morgan studied sculpture at Colaiste Conghaile in Dublin in 1995. She exhibited in Dublin and Cork and worked as a Community Artist around the country. This is her first exhibition in Cambodia.

Ben Thynal’s “My Selfish Family” and Sallyanne Morgan’s “The Illusion of Permanence” opened at Java Gallery and Café (56 Sihanouk Bvd.) on the 10th of January 2012.

This is part of the regular series of exhibitions, launching two at time every 6-7 weeks at Java Café & Gallery. Since 2000, this not-for-profit platform form contemporary visual arts in Cambodia, has hosted over 100 exhibitions and performances, including international collaborations and forums.

Excerpts from a post 6/1/12 by totallyrandomman at:
http://www.expat-advisory.com/articles/southeast-asia/cambodia/reality-clashes-illusion-java-gallery