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 find myself constantly having the same reflection each Sunday night… can it be Monday already again tomorrow? My days bleed into each other. There are meetings and chats, in and outside of the workplace, short and long, emails, phone calls, and letters, long and short. There are never enough hours in a weekend. Good company and being immersed in activity makes time pass quickly and tasks that need to be completed fall to the wayside - for now - (procrastination, you may always be my middle name). Another week, here I come.
Ebb and flow, ebb and flow.
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Brought together by the YWCA and their Connect to Success program, I met Rocio tonight on Granville Island. It’s a small world - she knew who I was before this because I’d participated in the Connecting the Dots show last Fall, which she’d co-curated with Masha for Culture Days. I love discovering small but significant connections like that. Masha and I met in the pie shop down the street from my house and I’d showed her prints as we ate big slabs of pie. Rocio and I met down the way from Emily Carr University which she attends and I had a giant cookie while she had a cranberry square and tea. I really enjoyed and appreciated Rocio’s honesty and candidness, alongside her kind and encouraging words. It was insightful to hear of her experiences on this day, the day before we’re about to celebrate women across the globe. There’s a lot to be said about someone pursuing their passions, returning to school, and raising a family after years of being in the corporate world. It’s not backwards or wrong and I believe there is merit in whichever path we land on.
That said, I was in the shower recalling “impostor syndrome,” something my dear friend Gail had mentioned just about a year ago, and again in conversation more recently this year. And so when Rocio and I were talking today, I realized that perhaps this is something that afflicts me. Christian has picked up on this, mentioning it multiple times before (unbeknownst to my talk with Gail), and his sense of intuition is so so keen. This is a bit revealing to admit in a venue such as this, but I am putting this out there… I have been working really hard at maintaining an art practice and juggling a basic need to live by finding decent, stable employment. Now that I’m finally in the groove of it all (going into my eighth month), I admit to living with a slight fear that everything I’m trying my best to grow can potentially be easily taken away. By who or what? I don’t exactly know. One of the things I took away from Rocio today was the need as an artist, as a strong, female artist, is to demand and to command a feeling of entitlement, and to feel deserving of one’s successes. There’s something about this growing fire in my belly…
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I finally made myself a photobook. Of course, two days before the expiry date of my voucher, I decided to start work on it. “It” involved combing through years and years of photographs in my archive (thousands, tens of thousands of images even). In the end, I was able to pick out nearly one hundred images - a mixture of street photography and street still life scenes - from early 2005 to mid-2008. This was one of them I’d forgotten I’d taken, but ultimately decided not to include it in the book. Some pictures I had such ties to way back when (like one of a Mexican bride and groom having a photoshoot with their wedding party from San Francisco, or another from Los Angeles of a woman pushing a stroller across the street, with her young son walking too far behind, drinking from a baby bottle), ended up getting cut. It’s funny yet natural how one’s opinion can shift over time over aesthetic or compositional issues.
It’ll be nice to finally hold the publication in my hands and be able to have a printed record of all those years. Next up, I want to sort through everything taken since just before my move to Vancouver (images from Victoria in 2010 - two years ago! - have not all been sorted through). Eventually, I’d like to make another book of the images from Cuba and Singapore (2010 and 2011, respectively), but that, I reckon, will not be for a long, long while. Baby steps…
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From 2007, photographing my major thesis - a happy accident. Revisiting old photos, clearly.
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These are from 2001 and were taken from the Empire State Building, maybe ten days to two weeks before that memorable day in September.
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The view from my third place
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A foggy afternoon in my first neighbourhood (South Granville) in Vancouver.
Last weekend, I moved to the fifth place I’ve lived in in the city now (in Cambie Village). It has to be my favourite place thus far and I’ve not even been here for very long. It is right on the major subway line (north-bound to downtown; south-bound to the airport/Richmond), easy access to work by bus, and is sandwiched by some great shops and restaurants. Last evening was an early Thanksgiving dinner with friends in the neighbourhood - capped off by a trip to the grocery store for 2.5 types of ice cream. Yumm.
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Three views of balloons I made go downstream
I am re-living some old photographs (can you tell?) - these ones being from 2004, when I first started my BFA, what feels like eons ago
