Back Forty

A hefty portion of the last entry was wiped clean, so be it. Here is a display of photowork from the woods to fill in the blanks. Nothing to write home about today as I am home. Sick, but home nonetheless. My filled ears are throwing off my game. Craig is in the garage tuning while I soak up the cool wind billowing through the Victor House. Photos are unedited straight off the process counter as per usual, but the color slides are even better! No point in digitalizing slides, they speak for themselves up on the wall. Mounting begins this evening with a slideshow to follow. Stay tuned if you care to.

Bush Soup

Home at last.

How lovely to write from this familiar haunt, the desk. Things are in their place for the most part. Time in the woods was swift. Hard work, many lessons learned. Big winds carving lines in the faces around. With no reflection staring back and no place for vanity, characters began to bloom along with the foliage. 

The daily act of filling the turtle tanks with water brought great joy to my life while working as a planting cook. Weird applications of therapy. When the kitchen became too crowded I would make for the river. No place for planters in the little space beside the water intake. Solace making a lazy brown path around our makeshift home. Delicious water that made great river stock. A great escape from the haggard and tired of the early morning, the familiar walk down the river path to bring the pump to life was welcomed. Watching the foliage grow and grow and grow around our camp on the Wenasaga logging road as the seasons changed hands was comforting. Time changes us, we change with time. Those buds made their way in no time at all. Gone was the snow. Then came the rain. Morale dipped up and down like a lawn bird and it was challenging to rotate the food in such a way that could possibly bring it back up again. Cheese helped. 

What a strange job. 

Got over the hesitation of cooking meat. Mastered the roast beef. Pork shoulder. Stew. Chili. The standard slop fare, you know. Horseradish came into my life with a bang. Thank you for that Leblanc brothers, where ever you may be. Daily those gargantuan twins would bound into my kitchen space (one with pep, the other with bitterness and both with beauty) and beg for the stuff. Planters are easy to please. D'accord. Garlic every day. Ginger by the pound. Pepper pepper pepper. To sit and reflect now seems odd as that life lies only an arms length away. The arrival of photowork always fills in the blanks. The pictures. 

Looking forward to a roll shot from the back of Maya's quad on the last day of the spring contract. That was the day my constant companion--the Kiev--flew from my grip into the lap of the Block just as I caught Stevie throwing spears into the treeline of his piece. What a sight. An odd duck look tucked away with the mind's eye. Pictures revealed themselves through the doorway of the kitchen daily. Pickles. A man named Pickles with cauldrons for eyes hooked my contrast vision daily. Portraits on portraits on portraits of those eyes. There were many characters to learn. The job offered little to no idle time which was fine for the most part. Lisa, bless her, made me laugh daily along with the rest of the clowns. Highballer rookie, Lisa King. Well done woman, proud to know you.

View from my tent at Strecker Farm; Kenora. May/ 2012. Shot with a Voitlander Bessa rangefinder from the 30's.

Desert Boots

Found me some desert boots this morning in a basement of trinkets. They were probably pulled off a dead man somewhere with feet the size of nine. Now I am ready. I can feel the outline of his phantom feet as my own make themselves at home. Some purple foamy sandals would top the list, but beggars can't be choosers. Two pair of work boots? High baller move. The Bush List is pages long, though nothing is really written down to strike through. I think I am ready.

Oh the list of things to be missed! Hand around the back of a neck while driving. Cozy bed, comforts of home. Skin on skin. The flare of fire for a night time cigarette against my favorite face. Things like that.

There is a draw to the woods that I can't really explain. It sits in me like hunger. Dear muscle memory, please carry me through, please knock my reservations down like bowling pins. It has been two years since I planted anything. My shovel feels awkward. My arms are noodles but my legs are strong.

I will be planting for two weeks beside my friend Lisa and cooking for six under the guidance of a stranger named Emily. This entire operation was birthed quickly providing little time to fret over all the things I do not know. Going in blind with desert boots!

If anyone is interested in corresponding with Lisa or myself, you are welcome to write. I will definitely respond. No laptop in the bush this year. Typewriter and ink only. I imagine my cooking schedule will leave minimal room for sleep or relaxation, but I intend to do my best in the correspondence department on slow afternoons.

Looking forward to waking up to Lisa's laughter and birdsong. Yellow light of early morn. Listening to Sonic Youth on the way to the Block, splashing coffee from rough logging roads carving rivers into my filthy body. I am ready.

Here is the HQ address:

PRT Frontier-- Bram's Camp
c/o Meg Kroeker
Box 757, 75 Pollard Rd
Dryden ON
P8N 2Z4

Queen of the Road! See you in July.

ps. In other news, Craig and I took the mopeds out for the inaugural ride of the season. Whoa. Finally tasted the nectar of speed. Now I know what he was talking about. Just as I am getting the hang of riding, it is time to leave. Something to look forward to. Oh the places we will go. There are no words to describe such thrill.

Bathgate of WPG

Gut rot Friday.

The photos in the series below are from a roll shot in a single evening. Perched on a wide sill seven floors up, the southeastern vantage point was striking at magic hour. Feels good to shoot these days. While working through the roll, I thought I was shooting color and was surprised when the camera back revealed the unexpected contrast. Does your eye take in color and contrast differently? Mine does. In this case, color vision translated well.

Ultimately at peace with the decision to leave the very place I thought I was destined for, my mind drifted to the short stint in art school as my body drifted in and out of sleep. The last ten or so rolls received back affirm said choice and show much improvement in exposure. All thanks to Scott's light meter. Thanks McLarens, I owe you big.

World of a difference. This is a small part of Winnipeg from above looking down and out.

No Time Like The Present

Hello all, this here is a photo post. An update of sorts.

Christie, this one's for you.

B I N G O

A 'scope review.

You had to take the test before you got a chance to study more than a couple of the lessons. Does that seem fair? Hell, no. That's the bad news. The good news is that this test was merely a rehearsal for a more important and inclusive exam, which is still some weeks in the future. Here's even better news: The teachings that you will need to master before then are flowing your way, and will continue to do so in abundance. Apply yourself with diligence, Aries. You have a lot to learn, but luckily, you have enough time to get fully prepared. 

Apply oneself with diligence. While a part of me takes these sacred advertisements with a grain of salt, the other side listens close. Time is flying. I reckon this is a repetitive theme in my writing. But it really is. There are one hundred BBQs that need to take place before Lisa and I are set to leave for tree camp in a week and a half!! Andrea. Caycie. Rebecca. Gotta see you women. Liquid dinners; screw the BBQ. 

Worked hard today zipping around a brilliantly clean home. I clean houses to make the rent. There was strong coffee and good supplies. Nice coffee break at the big dining room table with my Auntie Sue. Thought about all kinds of things. Thought about what I have been learning from Craig regarding small motors. A recent date revolved around his BBQ and a motor lesson focusing on the top end. Top End. So many concepts to digest and learn by experience. Exhaust, return, points, ground, carb etc. keep an endless flow of questions coming. Never am I made to feel idiotic, though majority of the queries are ridiculous. I froze while wrenching the other day and had to leave the garage out of shame for my inadequacy at this new trade. Came back, was handed the socket wrench with a smile and pointers for better production. Ohhh boy. But step by step, scrape, slip, snip, wrench, pull, twist and screw, I am learning how my motor runs. Yeah baby.

Tonight I am hoping to hear the handiwork run. We will see. 

Life is very good. 

3MC02N

Tony, King of Victor Street. Ektar 100
Photo. Dale Linklater

When there are windows of time between deliveries at work, I head to the library. The U of Winnipeg library is an interesting place. Orange stacks, weird hallways, surprise levels and that unmistakable reeky smell of history. Good place to think or get lost. New Mexico has been on my mind for many months now and when little reminders of this unknown state reveal themselves at unexpected times, I pen excitedly. Jemez Springs. I would like to behold these for myself. Sandia Mountains. These mountains too.

Meandering the stacks last week I came across this passage by John Steinbeck (in reading his name, a flash of Rags; because you love his mind) from his work Travels with Charley.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike, and all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.


This excerpt resonated deeply when I cracked at random a photography book titled In America by Eve Arnold on my knees deep in those orange stacks. A trip takes us. Indeed. What a time in this life. Tail end of twenty five. The hysteria present at the beginning of this birth year has gone and I have landed in a place new. A place with someone where policing and coercion have no place in the understanding of the other. It is what it is, we are who we are whether we are together or apart. The simplicity of this detail always makes me laugh. Can it be so simple? Yes, I think so. I am beginning to get it, the value of security and sureness. If this reads mysterious, that is not the intent as I am just figuring it out for myself.

Understanding. Light bulb moments.

Had one of those when Craig showed me laughingly how to make a nice clean border with photo paper in the easel (my borders had been wild and sloppy until that moment). Do it like this. Ahhhh oui. Learning how to cut paper in the most practical way. These are the moments I feel very much my father's daughter.

The last four days have been something to say the most and least. I have learned a lot about myself as a printer, as the woman I have always been. Constant self correction. Arms deep in hot water bathing prints with a gentleness usually reserved for the littlest babes, looking and learning wordlessly from Craig working at his own station.

Watch and apply. Dead Meadow droning on. Time slips on like silk in the darkroom. Working on a single print for four hours and then ten minutes on the next. There is no consistency because each negative asks for a different process. Now complete, a body of work is hung and ready. Photographs with meaning hung in a line. I spent so much energy fretting how they would all work together until it was finally understood that is not the point. Each face speaks for itself. The photos chose me in the end.

I hope you like it.

Now that the Hogwash operation is behind us, minds are free to explore new possibilities. Years of work closed like a book. Put those years to bed, they are behind me now. Each face tucked into a special pocket of memory. What is next?

Puch Maxi.

In other news, I have a new friend. A little brother. His name is Dale Louis Thomas. He's ten right now. I shot this of him and he shot this of me a few days ago at Magic Hour with the Kiev while heavy activity went on inside that garage pictured at left.

Vista

Darkroom days.

This routine of brunch and then dipping down to the basement to work until breaking for dinner and going back down to print bigger and bigger until midnight is interesting. Yesterday I printed the first 16x16" photo. Seeing that image appear affirmed my love for medium format. I can only imagine what enlarging 4x5 sheet film would feel like. Nuts, no less. 

Cutting 16x20 sheets in the dark was a bit interesting but eventually I got the hang of it, knowing full well that for four dollars per paper there was no choice but to do it properly. Never waste paper. As the hours rolled on, a good rhythm revealed itself. A strong soundtrack helps. Tragically Hip, Kurt Vile and Sonic Youth have been on heavy rotation. Now it is clear that I have to invest more than five hour blocks in there at a time to find that pace. A twelve hour day felt like four. Good sign.

It's time for brunch. Pete and Repeat. 

Full / MT

Shot a photo of James Francis in his underwear this morning. Legs for days and daze. Big dumb smiles on all of us in the kitchen. Can I shoot your photo? Of course. He hadn't gotten as far as pants when Creme and I arrived at his house. I can appreciate that ease of character. I am not proud of my body, I am comfortable. Amen.

Life is rolling along. Nice Saturday. Woke with a big dopey smile, tucked myself into an arm and inhaled. Slatted light on the wall, gray day of Spring. Breakfast with two men. Fried perogies and farmer sausage to start this Saturday. Coffee black. Cold wind whipping over exposed feet. I left after the first public and affectionate adieu, turning away into the wind with the camera in hand. See ya.

Shot my way uptown, contrast vision. Nothing caught my eye. Sat down by the river port on Waterfront and thought of Simon. Welcome Port of Winnipeg. I shot the sight of that signage and with that, a memory flood. Miss you. Steve. Miss you. What I would give for an easy breakfast with you two Squirrels. Benny. Soon enough. I bet you are eating breakfast in New York together right now. I can see Simon with his own long legs walking around in gitch lit up by a pool of front-of-house light, pissing with the door thrown wide. Laughter standing up. I can appreciate that too.

Made my way home off the beaten track, running the last couple of weeks over in thought. Loud coat covered in burrs. A plastic bag filled with old photographs. Right hand black with paint about to turn gold.

Moped parts came in. Craig handed me the tail pipe and I held it like the awkward cousin holds the new family baby. On the cusp of a new education altogether. Gotta wrap up this workload by Thursday and then take apart and piece together in order to fly over the Disraeli camel back full throttle. Ready or not.

Off to the spray booth. Golden limbs and club collars. Little shingles. But is it Art? Nope just hogwash. Ideas bob along the river. Gotta fish them out with care.

Ode to Le Poulet

Good Friday moon coming up. Missing this kid so much these days I could puke. Dreamed of Leo last night. Watching him walk away with someone I had never met, screaming "he is too small for that" over and over as my body dragged on in slow motion. Nails in the soil for grip. Leonard! If you only knew how much I miss you. I would love nothing more to hold hands with you on the sidewalk. Walking around with your legs dangling on each side of my neck. I got you. Miss you.

Ode to Leonard, photobooth style.