Tim and Louise have come and gone and now the St. George's Gallery is officially open minus the credit card machine. The labeling still needs to be done and so does some of the P.R.

I have been struck with the most unusual but annoying problem. The people I lived with for four days at the beginning of my stay in Wells have decided to spend time doing acts of unwanted kindness? Boundary problems abound. They have repeatedly come onto the property of the Church. They planted a garden of sorts. Kinda laid down some railway ties and planted a pansy in a log, spread dirt all over and generally made a mess. They took a number of questionable objects but Church owned property, relaid the lattice in their yard and mine, changed the wood pile around, moved the lawn chairs, and stole a number of the pansies I was just in the process of either killing or planting.

I have a problem addressing the Pansy Liberation Army! The male in the partnership scares me. He has approached me asking for money and has acted completely unpredictably, apparently upset by my lack of gratefulness. When I ask him not to do things he says that I didn't. He tells me what I need to do and how to do it. He also tells me how to fit in around here.

In the meantime I have been trying to set up my gallery. It has been slow going because of delays with the powers that be. All approvals in. All machines for transactions here. Instruction being forwarded. Soon, I hope.

Cory Hardeman and Claire are now also setting up studios in the St, George's Gallery.

Tim and Louise have just left after a weekend of setting up, parties and an amazing Celtic pub night at the Well's Hotel. They hung, packed and carried and scrubbed and painted. They planned and organized and negotiated. They were most appreciated. They left leaving me with real life in Wells. Less spoiled and more lonely. Maybe a little harder than last time.

I am now a consulting artist for the Illuminaires Festival in Vancouver. I am in the midst of planning a huge lantern installation for summer, a small one for winter and a show in February at Numen. I have also been invited to consider collaborating at the National Taiwan Craft Research Institute for this fall. Feeling a little overwhelmed. Setting up galleries and doing art and planning are two very different things. Each seems to come from a completely different part of my being.

My goal was to knock myself out of my comfort zone. Accomplished. I seem to spend a lot of time being uncomfortable and awkward. I saw a stuffed moose yesterday with long gangly limbs and dissonent movement. I completely related.

My sweety came for four days and I felt normal. He left and I felt different again. He is so reassuring and kind to me. He even hand feeds me. He works hard to make this happen for me but I wonder how up to this I really am. Operating in Vancouver is so easy in contrast. Operating in New York is easy compared to this. Operating in Wells is made much easier because the people here are mostly so very lovely.

Now I must go back to the gallery and label some art. Maybe someone with cash will come by today and buy something.

Dead Bugs and New Beginnings.

Naughty Peter has done it again. He always manages to do something delightful unless we are attempting to travel together. Then I am the less delightful of the two.

Naughty sent me an amazing collection of images related to slime and gooey bits from an
io9 article called The Bizarre Conciousness Of Slime Mold.) I am currently living in and running a gallery in Wells, B.C., Canada. The Good Eats Gallery and my apartment are located just before miles and miles of bog. Hence I am obsessed with nasty slimy things and am out belly crawling unless I am overcome by bear terror.

Corey Hardemen is one of the painters in my other gallery on the hill called the St. George's Gallery. She is a biologist and a painter. She also has three little children and is living in a travel trailer for the summer with her blacksmith husband, Michael. Corey and her children are kindred spirits relating to muck and goo. The children can be counted on to drag in some inspiring offal or other.

Life in Wells is going well. I am making friends of all ages and am being included in lots of activities and fun. There is a seriousness here. People are hardworking. Artists, loggers, goldminers, retired people, children and musicians all struggle together to make a living. There are also lots of dancers, actors, historians, costumers and the various people who keep Barkerville running. You make friends if people think you have a commitment to this beautiful little town. People pull together to create a little utopia of sorts. If you don't pull you don't really belong except for the season. I am learning to pull my share.

There is also a kindness here that I didn't expect. Yesterday while sending faxes in the Well's General Store the newest resident arrived. She is one and one half days old and her middle name is heaven spelled backwards. Mean and crusty looking forestry workers, a local artist, a goldminer and the shoppers all came over to greet her. "Welcome to the world and welcome to Wells little one!" How moving is that.

The other children here appear to be cherished. It isn't unusual to have a five year old deliver your sandwich at the restaurant. She is included. The children call out to you when you pass by.
There are only a dozen or so children in the school. The community garden is in the school grounds. People watch the children very carefully.

I have asked the children to tell me when they find something like a dead bird or interesting bug.
A number of them have come into the gallery and spent time looking at the low shelves that now have magnifying glasses. I have decided to set up a little children's gallery and a little play area in the St. George's.

Work is proceeding and I had 50 people in the Good Eats last night. School groups are coming through from places like Terrace, Smithers, Chilliwack and Merrit. Sometimes I run into the street and pull them in because my signage isn't very good yet. Hopefully this weekend the sign gets painted.

Island Mountain Arts is selecting applicants for the workshops this summer and also have a scholarship program. I have been asked to help select the scholarship students tomorrow. I look forward to see who is coming for the summer.

Gallery Set Up

The Good Eats Gallery in Wells is now being officially set up for it's first show this weekend. the show will be an installation of my work called 'metamorphosis' and will feature some of my work related to cocoon and egg forms as well as a collection of textile and sculptural experiments relating to natural surface.

This is the May long weekend celebrating Queen Victoria's Birthday and the town of Bakerville is in full costume for the event. We are living in Wells and it is also celebrating but with an event to rebuild the Sunset Theatre after a snow collapse this winter.

There will be a large benefit tomorrow at the Wells Community Hall and all kinds of musicians are coming into town. The place is buzzing with energy.

Claire, Bill, Ron and Gail delivered Claire's show to Prince George yesterday and the opening is coming up shortly. More about that later.

I have been building, assembling and painting display units for the Good Eats Gallery. The final process on insurance and business set up is well under way and hopefully the credit card machines arrive eventually. Tim usually does this stuff for me and I am doing it on my own and discovering I really can. Screw drivers and drills aren't that hard.

New cadre of skills include reading directions, hammering, screwing on my own, using a level, putting together and running a projector, sign painting, hauling heavy things with a dolly, climbing ladders (no likey), filling out B.C. Government forms, and negotiating with banks. I also have the luxury of eating vegetarian most of the time. The rest of the time seems to be spent eating bacon.

Tourist In Your Own Town

Claire, Bill , Stevie and I worked until very late pulling together Claire's show for the Two River's Gallery in Prince George, British Columbia. My role was simple enough. I reinforced her velcro attachments to hang the work and sewed little rings on the corners of her enormous trees.

I had to go back to the Good Eats Gallery and set up a mess into a real live show for the next morning at 9:00 am. The job was done at 8:45 am. Phew.

The merchants, artists and governers of Wells showed up and gave me the best welcome. They ate a few of my cookies and poked my work with enthusiasm.

They left and I climbed into bed a little worse for wear and slept until 2:30.

Elections happen for the Province of B.C. today. I voted in an early poll last week. Even 1200 miles from home without any fuss or bother.

Today I get to assemble display cases.

The Government approved both gallery names so I can now properly register.

Deadlines

Claire is setting up her spectacular show at the Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George this week and I am booked in to help her reinforce corners for her hanging systems.

Her work is spectacular!!! Enormous trees, personal landscapes, reflections of the natural worlds here and of her personal history. She has worked tirelessly on it for months and has created a show that has brought artists and others to tears with the moving beauty of the work.

I just feel really honored to be able to help her.

My own work will be debuted at the Chamber of Commerce Gallery Tour which is happening on Monday. The Good Eats will be the first gallery open and will also have a preview of the work for the St. George's Gallery.

Spent the last few days wrestling with insurance and bank officials. Things are rolling along but will not have interac and credit card machines for opening. Yeesh!

Gary, the owner of the St. George's Gallery, had not contacted me for weeks and I was getting very frustrated because parts of my business couldn't proceed without some information from him. Turns out that he had a very serious blood clot around the time I came up here and he ended up dying and being revived! He spent the last three weeks in hospital. Thankfully he is doing really well and has absolutely no memory of anything that happened to him. They can't find any permanent damage. His wife Sara, however, is completely traumatized.

Everything is being pulled together for opening on Monday.

Happy Mother's Day all!

The Phone is Ringing

My phone is hooked up at the St. George's Gallery. They were able to hook it up from the office in Quesnel. I am so very thrilled! I am connected to the wide world again.

This morning I spent unpacking the St. George's Gallery and have now started to set up the proper working studio. I couldn't see my breath this morning and only had to put on my mits after being in there for an hour.

Mike Wallace came by and put in the new lock set for me this morning and I can now lock the Church properly. He has been really involved in setting up radio access for the community. He is looking for a transmitter to be able to set up a little radio station for the Wells area. Similar to the radio station we have in Vancouver for the ferries and tourist information but also to broadcast local programming. Any one have ideas?

Breakfast this morning at the Well's Hotel. Lorraine came in looking flustered and pink. She raises sled dogs and was feeding them when a large Grizzly bear decided to try and compete for the food. Grizzlies eat mostly dandelions this time of year. she feeds her dogs frozen meet and the sun was out and melting it. Even her dogs went quiet and she backed up quietly to get back to cabin. She lives five kilometers from here.

I have decided to take the bear aware course this week.

It is so funny people don't really fear bears that much here. I know they are lovely but not cuddly. I can negotiate my way around a knife packing junkie without a problem but have no idea what I would do if the door pushed in again.

How It Works

First you ask the local bank representative in Vancouver how you go about getting a business account for your VISA and INTERAC in a remote area. A little city actually. They, of course, say " No problem!!!!" Just go there and apply from there. So setting up the Galleries will be easy!!!!

HMMMMMMMMMM

So you take the once a week little bus into town after catching it at an ungodly hour of the morning. Then you find said bank only to discover a grumpy and discouraged employee who puts you through the grind only to tell you that they don't have any appointments today. Only after you called and they said it would be fine to drop in.

This happens after you hand over all of your identification which is refused. Why? Because your birth certificate says Quebec and it is different than other birth certificates. There is a little crinkle over the I.D. number sign which interrupts none of the information. You hand over your passport, maybe, and then you discover your B.C. Identification Card expired one week ago!

Do you have an account at the branch or with the bank...no! Because you are trying to set one up and give them your money (which is apparently of no value to them?)

You explain that the little community bus only comes in from Wells once a week and that it will be really hard to get back again before the week is out unless, of course, you walk for a week through the snow and lonely forest perhaps meeting a caribou or a wolf or bear or something.

Rules are rules and appointments are appointments even though you were told it was unlikely that you would even need one.

You wonder if it is the Quebec birth certificate which took you a whole six years to replace last time it went missing. You are , of course, protective of it because you are actually Irish Quebec and it is really hard to navigate through the French system because you were taken from Quebec before school started and you might be able to call people a "Sausage Face" in French but your written French is from high school and you skipped most classes to snog away with some cute boy or other and didn't pay attention until the FLQ crisis when you refused to speak any English and your French still consisted of "Sausage Face" or something!

Needless to say...

You left Quesnel without a bank account, had your present sweetie refuse your collect and desperate long distance call and made a sore foot from stupid boots.

Thankfully you got to have breakfast with the lovely Barbadian Plantation export ,Miss Julia, who is a far distant cousin on the Chauncey side from 1690 something. And the lovely Floyd from Big Country Printers had no problem understanding the instructions that the talented and efficient Bill Horne gave him regarding your new business card, postcard and greeting cards.

Luckily you found a coffee carafe and filter at the Sally Ann and tomorrow morning won't be so bad if you throw some cocoa in the coffee. And go back to bed and try and remember how to call the banker a "Sausage Nose"