Samples of my textiles with Carnegie Center in the background.photograph 2008 Christine Hatfull
(Note drug deal happening in the alley beside the building.)
Christine Hatfull has spent weeks taking photographs of my work. She has also not been feeling very well but is more of a trooper than I am. Textiles are being thrown in the air and photographed in mid flight. They have lived in Christine's apartment for a few weeks and I like that they are there.
Christine lives in a renovated hotel in the midst of our crawling inner city. Her window looks out at the Carnegie Center which outside is an unofficial drug supermarket and inside a very well used community center. Ambulances crank up sirens to round the corners down there so altered people don't get mowed down. The street there is called Hastings Street and it is a nightmare. Wonderful people live down there in the chaos and clatter. So do some who aren't so wonderful.
I live in a tiny little house with a garden. I can walk to Hastings Street. Sometimes junkies die on my street corner or pee in my flowers. Sometimes they just sit and rest for a minute and bliss out on my trees. My step son is a paramedic in this neighbourhood and thinks it is a miracle that he can pump people full of a substance after they have overdosed and died and have them spring back to life. He doesn't think the devil lives on Hastings Street but still has a calling! He cranks up his siren.
Christine and I share a genetic inheritance to the neighbourhood. Our grandfathers and great grandfathers lived there. Hers was a carpenter and a woodcarver and mine was a preacher.
She can trace her father and grandfather's steps through photographs and I can trace mine through buildings and churches.
Her great was an import from England and mine moved from Newfoundland to save opium addicts and prostitutes. He was sure his wife died because of money and wealth and he gave all of his money away to experience the poverty of Jesus. He just knew the devil lived on Hastings Street and could be chased away with enough will! My grandfather had a disagreement with his father about the devil and ended up living on Hasting Street as a child of 11 until he was hired in the logging camps. Christine's grandfather and father carved many of the beautiful doors in the area.
Christine and I met at the studio building we share. She used to occupy my studio and now she has taken over a small 35 square foot retired washroom which functions in a horizontal and not vertical way. It is loaded with costumes and incredible antiques and her artwork which climbs up the twenty foot ceiling. She spreads up while I spread out!
She is the only other person I know who has family going back generations who didn't grow up here. She is also the only other person I hang out with who has tumours and still makes life plans like I do. We both know New York and Montreal. Her ex worked with Andy Warhol for a little while and she acted as the hairdresser in the cult movie "Liquid Sky". I had a part as a Polish sausage stuffer in the street scene in the Disney movie "Natty Gann". We were both dancers a long time ago. I once got to dance with Janice Joplin. Her cred is higher than mine.
So she is taking photographs of the street and of my cloth on one of them. We will have breakfast and download some of them on Friday.
Christine lives in a renovated hotel in the midst of our crawling inner city. Her window looks out at the Carnegie Center which outside is an unofficial drug supermarket and inside a very well used community center. Ambulances crank up sirens to round the corners down there so altered people don't get mowed down. The street there is called Hastings Street and it is a nightmare. Wonderful people live down there in the chaos and clatter. So do some who aren't so wonderful.
I live in a tiny little house with a garden. I can walk to Hastings Street. Sometimes junkies die on my street corner or pee in my flowers. Sometimes they just sit and rest for a minute and bliss out on my trees. My step son is a paramedic in this neighbourhood and thinks it is a miracle that he can pump people full of a substance after they have overdosed and died and have them spring back to life. He doesn't think the devil lives on Hastings Street but still has a calling! He cranks up his siren.
Christine and I share a genetic inheritance to the neighbourhood. Our grandfathers and great grandfathers lived there. Hers was a carpenter and a woodcarver and mine was a preacher.
She can trace her father and grandfather's steps through photographs and I can trace mine through buildings and churches.
Her great was an import from England and mine moved from Newfoundland to save opium addicts and prostitutes. He was sure his wife died because of money and wealth and he gave all of his money away to experience the poverty of Jesus. He just knew the devil lived on Hastings Street and could be chased away with enough will! My grandfather had a disagreement with his father about the devil and ended up living on Hasting Street as a child of 11 until he was hired in the logging camps. Christine's grandfather and father carved many of the beautiful doors in the area.
Christine and I met at the studio building we share. She used to occupy my studio and now she has taken over a small 35 square foot retired washroom which functions in a horizontal and not vertical way. It is loaded with costumes and incredible antiques and her artwork which climbs up the twenty foot ceiling. She spreads up while I spread out!
She is the only other person I know who has family going back generations who didn't grow up here. She is also the only other person I hang out with who has tumours and still makes life plans like I do. We both know New York and Montreal. Her ex worked with Andy Warhol for a little while and she acted as the hairdresser in the cult movie "Liquid Sky". I had a part as a Polish sausage stuffer in the street scene in the Disney movie "Natty Gann". We were both dancers a long time ago. I once got to dance with Janice Joplin. Her cred is higher than mine.
So she is taking photographs of the street and of my cloth on one of them. We will have breakfast and download some of them on Friday.
2 comments:
How odd, i remember being shushed by the crew as i ambled down a street in the West End, with my son in a sroller (he was making all the noise), when they were filming Natty Gann....
Ha!
My son was also a baby on the set!
Most of our filming was in Yaletown...West End.
They stuffed me in a dress with no panties and 1930's shoes and sent me 3 floors up a fire escape with someone elses 4 year old. The Fire escape started pulling away from the wall, the kid was freaking out and they sent up a tiny, skinny guy to save us.
The cast clapped really loud but I think it might have been the panty thing!
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