jeromemartin.ca

BookCamp Vancouver

We are in Victoria, BC, visiting with friends, doing some work, trying new restaurants, and enjoying being away from home. It's been a very relaxing trip.

Tomorrow I'll attend BookCamp Vancouver , an unconference which will focus on exploring new ideas in books, publishing and the future of reading.Those of us involved in book publishing are experiencing a combination of panic and excitement as we look at the future. This gathering will look at open source publishing, the future of the book, e-books, new concepts of what books are and could be, and using social media and the internet in general. It will also give us a chance to talk with publishing people, young and old, from across Canada.

The front page of the BookCamp site lists the presentations for tomorrow. Many of the 200 people who are attending will be sharing their experiences on Twitter (#bcvan09) and Facebook. I expect that the conversations will continue long after we leave the unconference.

I'll be writing about BookCamp on this blog and on twitter (@pjmartin) tomorrow.

Conferences

London: Photographs by Jerome Martin

Spotted Cow Press has recently published London: Photographs by Jerome Martin, an enhanced e-book which includes text and audio in addition to photographs. It is available on the Spotted Cow Press website as a free download.

I love paper photography books and will continue to publish on paper and online. However, publishing books electronically allows us to create more of them and to include audio and video as well as the option to search for key words. They are also inexpensive to produce.

This book, published with a Creative Commons license, is a gift; feel free to pass it along to friends.

Lewis Hyde said in the introduction to his book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property that '...works of art exist simultaneously in two " economies." a market economy and a gift economy. Only one of these is essential, however: a work of art can survive without the market, but where there is no gift there is no art.'

Thanks to my colleague Lu Ziola who designed this book with style and vision. She also designed Golden Prairie, the book about the town in which I lived as a young person.

I hope that you enjoy visiting London with me. I would be delighted if you were to respond to the book with questions or comments.

Spotted Cow Press, Writing

Edmonton and The Art Gallery of Alberta

I spend a lot of my business and personal travel time visiting art galleries and public art in various cities in North America and abroad. I have posted photographs and comments from these trips but have seldom focused on my home city, Edmonton, Alberta.

I was downtown for a meeting this morning and had enough time to get reasonably close to the Art Gallery of Alberta (formerly the Edmonton Art Gallery) which is being renovated and renewed. The gallery (designed by Randall Stout Architects) will be new and bold, contemporary, perhaps even startling to some. It's located in the Arts District near City Hall, The Citadel Theatre, The Francis Winspear Centre for Music ,and the Edmonton Public Library.

The photos were made with my trusty iPhone: low on pixels but very, very handy.

Walk through a model of this unique building and watch its progress on a live webcam.

Edmonton continues to grow and mature as a cultural centre. It's Festival City, a centre for theatre, music and art. Edmontonians tell their stories about their art, their work and their lives on the new website Edmonton Stories.

While I won't be able to attend all the festivals this summer I will be at The Works Art & Design Festival, the Edmonton International Jazz Festival and the Edmonton Folk Music Festival: and I plan to save some time for my own work.

Join us if you can. Edmonton is just a three hour flight from Chicago or a five hour drive from Saskatoon.

Architecture, art and art galleries, Edmonton

Public Art in Chicago

We've enjoyed seeing outdoor sculptures and other public art in Chicago. Yesterday we visited Millennium Park, home of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion designed by Frank Gehry.

I joined the other photographers who also could not resist photographing Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor with small and large digital cameras. I use both film and digital but have not seen anyone else use a film camera on this trip.

art and art galleries

Visiting Frank Lloyd Wright

I've been a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright and his work for years but until yesterday had seen only one of the houses he designed. We took a self-directed walking tour in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, and saw many of his houses as well as his home and studio. I was thrilled to see several of these homes on the same street and also to see the evolution of his work in just a few blocks.

The Arthur B. Heurtley house (1902) (below) is one of my favourites.

The Nathan G. Moore house (1895, 1923) is considered to be one of the finest examples of Wright's style during the period 1894-96.

I'll chat more about Wright in subsequent postings.

Architecture

Spring Arrives in Chicago

This is the first day of spring for Chicago and for me. I've waited months and months for this.

It's my kind of town.

Art and Architecture in Chicago

Day two in Chicago.

Our daughter Heidi and son-in-law Dale joined us today. They know Chicago well and we're looking forward to several days with them.

We enjoyed authentic Nuevo Latino cuisine at Carnivale at noon, then visited the Museum of Contemporary Art which is featuring Buckminster Fuller: Starting With The Universe.

One may not photograph within the gallery, but the photographing the views from its windows is allowed.

Over the Rainbow, Chicago Is...

We arrived in Chicago this afternoon and took a train from O'Hare, one of the busiest airports in the world, to downtown Chicago where we're staying in a fine hotel. Our room has a view of the lake. And, yes, my friends it's not the ocean and one cannot get a suntan on the deck: but Chicago is a fine town and I'm enjoying it and the chance to see our daughter and son-in-law for a few days.

We'll be visiting galleries and interesting restaurants, and I'm sure we'll enjoy some Chicago music as well.

The music started earlier today at O'Hare. An alto sax man greeted us with a jazzy version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Judy Garland would have liked it and Charlie Parker would have smiled and said that this fellow had talent and just needed a break.

There were other freelance train and subway musicians entertaining today: an elderly man playing a dance tune from the early 1920s on a Chinese stringed instrument; a rap singer with a great repertoire and a compact PA system; and an African American percussionist and singer playing a conga drum and singing to and about the people passing by. Thus far no one has asked me to sing along.

People stopped and asked if we needed help as we perused our maps on street corners and on the trains. The hotel manager left a message thanking us for making the Hilton Suites Hotel our temporary home while we are in Chicago and giving us his office and cell number just in case we needed anything or wanted to chat with him.

We've been here just a few hours and I'm pleased to say that we're staying six nights.

Stay tuned. This could be fun.

The Colours of Saskatchewan IV

On the Road

I'm leaving Eastend and the Wallace Stegner House after a delightful and productive two weeks.

Eastend has attracted writers, painters, sculptors and other artists from Canada and many other countries during the last several years. This is a very creative community nestled at the edge of the Cypress Hills. I'll miss Eastend and The Hills: but I'll be back soon.

My thanks to the Eastend Arts Council and all the other people who have made my stay so pleasant.