Forgery League

From time to time, the four of us in this house get together with a friend or two for coffee or dinner and talk about Stuff - tonight it was a long conversation about spirituality and purpose and big things like that. Afterward, we wandered up Augusta St into Kensington Market, and sat for a while in Bellevue Square Park, chatting and watching the action: two rambunctious dogs, a grizzled guy with a staff who seemed to be putting hexes on people…

And then I looked up at the light standard next to our picnic bench, and saw that it had strings.

Someone had drilled holes in the aluminum pole, bolted on a makeshift bridge, and strung it like an upright bass. Above the nut (if it can be called that) was inscribed “The Kensington Bass”, and below, the artist’s name (though I understand he’s a bit secretive about it now). It was tunable, and in pretty good tune. It’s been there, according to the inscription, since June. I amused myself playing all the Soul Coughing songs I could remember. A bit hard to play for my hands, used to playing electric… but still, how delightful!

Sunday we did a video shoot for some folks making a documentary for and about the Riverdale Art Walk, a neighbourhood art festival across the river. Our beat was the stretch of Queen between Carlaw and Leslie, where we were to drop into the shops, galleries and restaurants that were the art venues.

I went along expecting just to be responsible for audio and holding the microphone boom, but it turned out we were it for our team - meaning that I was gonna have to do the interviewing. Ack!

The good news was that, although my most recent interviewing experiences were a) awful and b) about five years ago, I did well. Artists are wonderful to talk to about their work - at least, the down-to-earth, largely self-taught ones we met along the way. One of our favorites was Annette Hansen, a Danish-born (and Danish-trained) ceramic artist who’s become fascinated with concrete and other construction materials - we had fun discussing the demolition of the Gardiner Expressway just south of Riverdale. Her sculptures are generally very spare and restrained in a rather Japanese or Euro-modern sort of way, with slabs of textured concrete accented with ceramic, metal and other materials (she’s big on rebar).

Also met Randal Lee, whose work we’d seen not only at the Free Times Cafe (where J and I have played on numerous occasions) but at our friend Karen’s hair salon. He’s having an opening there Thursday, and we’ll have to put in an appearance now. :D Also showing at the same gallery was Bernice Landry, who as it happens writes screenplays. She and Sean are meeting tonight to talk shop.

The bad news was that after the interview with Annette we discovered that our tripod was missing - our best guess is that we left it outside while loading into the crammed little shop, and that someone walked off with it. With head, it’s about $700 - and we had a shoot the following night, so Sean had to go buy another with more of that Money We Don’t Have. Yes, we are insured, but it’s production insurance, meant for, say, death or conflagration - so our deductable is even higher than that. So much for the supposed down payment on that supposed house we’ve been talking about. :D

We remain determined not to get worked up about money. It’s been tough at times, though.