Walls in Reykjavik

The sign at the airport said EXIT TO ICELAND. 
I chuckled. We had already walked on the tarmac to a large-bus-with-no-windows & been driven to the terminal. There we tried several times to eat breakfast, but such was not to happen satisfactorily-- you needed an outbound boarding pass to get non-Dunkin-Donuts food!!

This is what it's like to be a traveler. You are/I am constantly in groping mode.

But the walls are a gift. They are immediate & more or less understandable. No need to figure anything out.

Chaos!! well, maybe not so understandable....

I love the tucked away one. This was a construction site where a gallery we wanted to see wasn't! The graffiti on the wall is hidden by wood.

Below a black & white collection.

Then some tags?

And the rest... 

This below is a mosaic.

That's it for now.

The Rising of Vancouver House

In August of 2013 a development permit had gone up on Pacific Avenue regarding the intended development of Vancouver House. I started documenting the neighborhood. I had a front seat on a radical change process.

By September of 2015 all the buildings had been removed, the businesses relocated, & the site was ready for excavation.

These workers understood the historic moment at hand.

So here is the building & the site growing in time-lapsed images.

Most are taken from the north end of the building, the pointy end.

The first is just before the Big Pour. The excavation was complete, going 7 floors down.

The day of the Big Pour (500 cement trucks to empty into the ground in one day): March 19, 2016.

...later...

Built: 7 floors of parking spaces & getting up to street grade.

Floor by floor it grows.

Above you can see the slanted roof of one of 4 triangular buildings is shaping up. The tower is going up behind it.

...& then more of the exterior goes on..

& you can see the north pointy end of the building flattening out as well.

The BIG picture! [That's an inside joke.] Bjarke Ingels is the architect and his firm is Bjarke Ingels Group: BIG

These aren't totally in time order, but this is where things stand more or less right now. The other triangular sites are in various stages of excavation.

The specialized trades are here too: surveyors, quality control man for concrete, the hearing testers keeping tabs on workers, the ProTech surveys who document the whole process & the Putzmeister, who pushes stuff around [I think].

The workers, ah, my romance with the workers.

The short story of the Vancouver House banner:

The house shape, made for one of my pieces in the Telling Stories in 2015 show at the Chinese Cultural Center.  After the show, I hung it on  the south side site banner on Beach Avenue...& a few weeks later I saw it again, for the last time. It was moved into the dumpster.

Then this little sticker appeared....on the banner.

It always cracks me up a bit that this huge project is called "Vancouver House". 

I mean really, a house? Hardly!

This summer: the last large street home I've seen.

The building gets the last word.

I'm not yet sure if I like it, but I have enormous respect for the complexity & enormity of the project.

That's it for now.

BC Coast: Desolation Sound & Princess Louisa Inlet

The rocks, the water, the mountains, & clouds-- sublime!

We saw petroglyph.  I wouldn't have noticed it without the help of our guide.

Pretty amazing!!

The mountains reminded me of Asian paintings with many layers of greys.

Some clouds were to die for.

I was very surprised at how few birds I saw.

Surf scooters below.

Sundry gulls only at the beginning of our outing...

A 'pet' eagle that was called out by our captain. He had chicken in the boat's freezer for this eagle. The eagle knew the boat!!  The chicken is in its talons.

Then there was a small flotilla of red-headed mergansers. I call them the woodpeckers of the sea!  They can be hard to see.

                                One of the waterfalls was called Chatterbox Falls. 

Nearby was a sumptuous rain-forrest tree.

The rocks came in wonderful shapes & colors....

...& some were oystered...

 ....water yumminess....

& a favorite tree....I loved the exposed roots.

That's it for now.