old trivia
Clare Yow is an independent visual artist working in a library in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
She is a fan of nightbirding and shutter depression,
heartthrobs, blueprints, and changes of scenery.
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I’m swimming in books again after a short hiatus. The last time I read this much while I worked on my performance piece in the Fall. I feel like a student again and am even getting feelings of nervousness and anxiety about this work. Eeeeee. The good weather has disappeared again. I am still hoping that this weekend may be decent enough for another site visit. Amid the jittery feelings, I am excited though. It’s been really great telling people about this new project in the works! … Charlotte’s office on Bowen Island, a separate building from the main part of the house. Oh, what a great time that was. Floor to ceiling bookshelves? Yes please.
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Leaving Bowen Island last December
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Bowen Island, 2010
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Someone else’s shelf
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This is a house we saw towards the end of our architectural driving tour of Bowen Island. It sits on a bit of a cliff, facing out towards the water, flanked by those enormous, skinny trees. There were even stairs leading down right to the rocks of the beach below. We stayed on the Island for almost a week before Christmas Eve, house-sitting for Charlotte, an art historian. I was the designated driver for the aptly-named ‘beater truck’ jeep for our time there — a 4x4 with a broken driver’s seat so I could never adjust it to suit me and after a few days of driving my hip actually began to hurt. But the vehicle had its charm and we were grateful that it’d been lent to us.
The day of our driving tour of the island was our last day there and C and I had each become quite enamored with the variety of houses on the island, along with the pipe-dreamy prospect of home ownership there (just think, one would get the island-cottage, small-town lifestyle, and yet would still be a mere twenty-minutes away from the mainland)…
We’d spent hours that day snaking along the roads on the island, slowing to look at architecture amidst the rain. The only major time we got out was to park the car, walk with our sandwiches up a small mountain, and admire the view. We were wet and cold and decided not to leave the car again. Our however-many-days spent on the island was a nice taste of the simple pleasures of a quiet life. Both buildings on the property were filled with books and held remnants of childhoods (there is even a small room for doing puppet shows!). It was like being in a weird dream-space of sorts. On our last night there - while watering the plants in one of the girls’ rooms which we hadn’t been using - we discovered a posterboard that Charlotte and her husband had created for visitors of the People, Plants, and Places tour they participated in this summer. It was quite lovely to read about the history of their property and a little about about their family life. I think that’s the strange thing about house-sitting for someone, especially people you hardly know, because you’re forced to formulate a vision of them and then just keep speculating.
