Holga part 3: Jessie and Curt's visit to Ontario and beyond

Jessie and Curt’s visit was 16 to 17 August from Pennsylvania. We managed to visit Oakville, Grimsby, Port Dalhousie, hike the Bruce Trail around the escarpment, go for a swim in Lake Eire and eat a scrumptious dinner of home-made lasagna chez moi!

Impressionist photograph of Gairloch gardens



The willow tree and pond with a bird house in blue – another Wizard of Oz-esque photo



Jessie and Curt re-making the mysterious Inukshuks that turned up at Gairloch Garden’s perfectly timed for the beginning of Burning Cold.



Jessie looking happy and beautiful in the warm August sun of Ontario with a backdrop of the shimmering algae from the pond



Og2! <3



On our way to Lake Eire we found this huge field of Sunflowers!



Lake Eire



Jessie and the lake

Holga 2 = trying out medium format again.

(I went onto ebay and bought 10 rolls of the stuff (the stuff being medium format film) for $3.50/roll compared with $8/roll at Henry’s!)

We begin with a wild exposure of Doug Smarch’s Fog Horn installation – it doesn’t look anything like this in real life. It’s less wild and much more dreamy and calm in real life. I think it’s my favourite part of Burning Cold – along with the BGL probably.



Here is the Art Gallery of Hamilton, my second or third home for a few months. See that big window up there? Just beyond there is my Chief Curator office.
I had taken a photo from the window down to street level where I am taking this photo from but clearly that didn’t work to my advantage! I’ll have to try again another time.



Wizard of Oz-esque photo of the heavenly blues in full bloom.



This is where I park every Monday and Tuesday when I’m working in Hamilton. I love the maze like balcony’s and the old brick of these houses.



Lastly, a wild multi-exposure of my drive home from the Burning Cold and Deirdre Logue openings. I just kept hitting the shutter button, without high hopes, and this is what I got.

Holga part 1: Masking the mask

Presenting a new take on 35mm! After talking to the guy who develops the images about the size and strageness of the negatives I made a mask for the “mask” thing in the camera… to try and make the images smaller.
I exposed the film once as per usual and then exposed it again with this mask on. Hence this new exiciting way of taking Holga photographs. I love this effect! Imagine the possibilities as I take my trips to NYC, Pittsburgh and Texas!

Here are two of this old restaurant that is being torn down in Hamilton beach. All broken down, rusted, wrought and beautiful!
As secondary images you will find a James St. N sign and a little bin of china objects for sale, also on James St. North in Hamilton.



Same old restaurant, James St. North apartments with owls perched on each of the three third story windows. How poetic! God Hamilton stop being so ingenius with your architecture!



I really love that Owl building, so I took another photo of it – which ended up overtop of a garden photo from I don’t know where, but I assume Gairloch since I am forever taking photos at Gairloch.



Construction in Hamilton, on James St. North.



The bee plant and a sunlit early morning garden. Look at the passion vine all ablaze form the sun!



Up close and personal with the Clamatis vine and I think a multiple exposure of Windbower by Catherine Widgery – looking up.



I am forever interested and amazed by hydro towers. They are so delicate and nimble piercing the horizon line, I feel like they almost imitate sewing, stitching our scenery together. Underneath the diagonal hydro tower in the ground floor education room being cleaned.



Our dear eggplant plant who came back to life with a hydro tower.



The best for last.
We have returned to the magical wall in Oakville. But this time, also magical, an oil refinery or steel mill not sure which has appeared over top of the wall perfectly inline with the mysterious Eva Hesse-esque wire.

Meet Mr. Brownie

Mom bought me a vintage Kodak Brownie dualflex camera from the Benevolent fund about two years ago. I could never figure out what exactly to do with it. I once took some odd little paper negatives with it and then summer realized you could use paper negatives to make positives. But then one day I decided to rig it up with 120 film which I rolled out and rolled in and rolled in and out again to get it installed in the camera. I think I might splurg and get a metal spool on ebay. Here is my first role of film ever taken with the Brownie. They are poetic and magical with a soft light that other cameras don’t seem to capture.

This is probably the first photo on the film because of the major exposure that happened. There was a minor incident while rolling the film in our out or whichever way when it was on the wrong side of the paper. I like how the information on the backing paper has been burned into the negative.



Meet my garden.

This is probably the second image because I wasn’t convinced that exposing the film once or even twice would do it … so I did it three times… and came up with three perfectly exposed images of the garden all on the same negative…hence this triple exposed blurry wobbly garden photo



On my way into work one day I had a terrible and wonderful experience on the highway involving the Elgar Concerto in E minor as performed by Jacqueline Du Pré and a car that nearly hit me. Once I got to Oakville I saw Elizabeth walking to work down Trafalgar road and we stopped to chatter outside my favourite house. That had these beautiful roses, right out of England, growing over a delicate wrought iron fence with a little mini bench for kids under a tree and an oblong pear tree. I love that house and I think this photo captures some of the magic I find in the garden there. I always stop to smell these roses.



Here is the Oakville Lighthouse



And Oakville Marina



Two of my favourite places in Oakville.

This is my favourite tree at Gairloch Gardens. We used to eat lunch under it in the summer and it seems to be a very defining image of this garden for me and the Canadian landscape. I listened to this tree with someone special.



One day during break Elizabeth and I took a stroll down Lakeshore Rd E and encountered this bakery with yummy looking cookies. I like the reflection of the street over the cookies.

Interior/Exterior

A study of the interiority of exteriors and vice versa in classic Polaroid.

Interior on exterior



Union Station at sunrise in August. What caught my eye was the glimmer of the rising sun off the tracks.


Hidden interior from exterior



A magnificent, romantic, lonely wall in Oakville. Found one evening walking with the summer camp crew back from our celebratory end of summer dinner at Corriander Green. Sarah Q and I stopped to take a photo. I returned three times to get the right photo. I think the best part is that wire hanging, like Eva Hesse in the urban landscape.


Interior comfort longing for exterior adventure



The livingroom of my lovely friend Monique. Second floor of an old house in Roncessvalles, it’s like being in the trees with the birds and squirrels. Birdcage adds to the poetic peculiarity of interior/exterior and I love that cushion made out of an old shirt.


Exterior work from inside the interior



Garden centre at our house. All mom’s tools for gardening, for emaculately beautifying our exterior, hidden in the interior. Those horrible clogs used to be my favourite shoes to wear to school in high school.


Something exterior in the interior



We wanted to go cherry picking but soon realized that it was a lot cheaper to just buy the cherries. And they were red and delicious. Cherries, and sunflowers, in our dining room.


A miniature exterior in a gigantic interior



For Brandy’s potluck I made her a Scottish gingerbread house (even though it was a Swedish house). I put it in the fridge to make sure it didn’t melt and when I showed my mom the photo she said to herself “isn’t she a funny kid, she’s taken a photo of the inside of the fridge!”

That's Miss Chief Curator to you!

my home at the AGH

kitchen collectible

In a house full of objects, full of memory, I love the kitchen.
This is where I eat breakfast, drink tea, cook dinner, read the paper.





black eyed susans in a big blue pitcher



buttons, shells, dishes, pots, leaves, light

instant photo

the best of instant photography, that which makes anyone a photographer, digital. even though i said i wanted to get back to analog and stay away from digital i was inspired by my colleagues to buy a new digital camera.

here are the first fruits of my instant photo labour:

late driving home, traffic jam, friday night, wishing i was still where i had been or already home instead of stuck in between



the light over fields and hydro towers is incomparable to any other time of the day but the morning. driving through the near and far country this morning.



i have been recalling the way my new landscape is divided by our means of communication. there is a certain aesthetic to this division.



sheep graving and watching me watch them



a beautiful house i've always loved, ridge road.

jump started

Mid August I had the amazing fortunateness to have a friend I met in Corsica, who is from Pittsburg make a Canadia land stop over on a road trip.  We then proceeded to jump our way about the province.



jumping along the mouth of the bruce trail



A star at Lake Ontario



Og2 gallery hop / Star jumps at the lake in Gairloch Gardens



Star jumps for Og2 at Gairloch Gardens / high five in the air



Niagara Escarpment jump



Bunches of grapes in vineyard county



Becoming sunflowers in seconds



to end the jumping journey - a Port Dalhousie Twist!

Stay tuned for jumping through Pittsburg!! Coming in November.