Ho Tam Press Gallery

Over the past week I encountered two works that caught my attention. One was during a critique session at UVic when Nic Vandergugten presented a video installation of Tree Climb the other was over a coffee with Trudi Lynn Smith as we talked about her ongoing project Trouble With Trematodes.

Scanning through the Ikebana section of the university library I came upon this book: Rikka: The Soul of Japanese Flower Arrangement by Fugiwara Yuchiku The book speaks of the origins…

Curly willow or tortured willow, corkscrew willow, Salix matsudana ‘Tortusa’Dianthus caryophyllus, carnation Equisetum, (; horsetail, snake grass, puzzlegrass) Laurus nobilis of the family Lauraceae, laurel Aucuba japonica Aucuba japonica Japanese…

Part of my attraction to the work is that it could not survive, and now only exists in relatively few murky black and white photographs that I peer into in an attempt to reconstruct it in my mind.

Saturday October 17. Reciprocity: The large camera and the studio wall, is one of three ‘open studio’ events that Trudi Lynn Smith and I staged in order to invite dialogue around a project that we had been working on involving photography and the studio space at 562 Fisgard Street.

They haunted me for years before I could finally place them… small, darkly coloured, murky photographs of the night sky.