Muskwa-Kechika photos by Wayne Sawchuk. See the full sized photo essay at The Tyee
A few weeks ago I reported that Nanmac and I walked from Trinity Bellwoods Park to the Toronto Zoo. In fact, our desintation was specifially the grizzly bear pen at the zoo. I wanted to make an urban expedition to bear country (shooting Grizzly Man-style video all the way) in preparation for my August expedition to a large tract of wilderness called the Muskwa-Kechika in Northern B.C. Von Bark and I are going there with my father, Don McKay, for an Artist Exploration Camp, co-organised by poet Donna Kane and photographer/ conservationist Wayne Sawchuk. Donna's website has more details on the camp and bios of all the participants. If you follow this link to a photo essay by Wayne Sawchuk in The Tyee you will see that, unlike the Toronto Zoo, the Muskwa-Kechika is a bona fide wilderness. The animals in this area are not contained for our viewing pleasure, and the grizzly bears just roam around all day doing bear stuff. This means the chances of us actually seeing one are pretty slim, and I'm definitely not hopefull about getting any big fauna on video. No worries, though, cause I am packing the following props.
The ultimate goal of the Artist Exploration Camp is to help draw attention to the Muskwa-Kechika, a unique, vast, mostly undeveloped area (the size of Ireland, they say), that has recently been designated a management area. The whole group of us artist/campers will be collaborating on a touring art exhibition about the region, so watch for us in your town! I will keep you posted.
A while ago I posted preliminary sketches, including the one above, for a video about the ghost of the victim of a grizzly bear attack, trapped forever in the grizzly bear afterlife. Yesterday we shot good ghost footage with actor Brian Marler, using a home-made green screen at Trinity Bellwoods Park. My work plan for the Muskwa-Kechika includes shooting some landscape video for the project to key in later. I also plan to create a digital "Muskwa-Kechika Menagerie" of animal gifs, similar to the windy tree-pig I posted a few days ago. I will also be doing drawings and research for the upcoming Thicket, an evolving series of multi-media installations, created in collaboration with Von Bark, that speculates on the interior consciousness of animals in diorama form. Thicket 1: The Voyage is coming up at Harbourfront Centre in November.
I am pretty excited about this expedition, and I'm very much looking forward to meeting and collaborating with the other participants. There ain't no internet in them thar hills, so L.M. will be holding the blog fort on her own for the month of August.
background notes...
The images above are from previous projects of mine involving the concept of wilderness. The first version of the Miss Mouse "Fight Club" lectures included a section on people who obssess about predators. The mouse herself had a slightly perverse interest in cats. The Killer Whale Victim performance was the story of a lost dog, told from the posthumous POV of a man who had been mauled at Marineland. The Trouble With Oscillation is about a tourist who tires of whale watching expeditions, and goes on a quantum physics vacation instead, seeking the ultimate wilderness 'hit'.
Surely you've been in contact with Troy Hurtubes of Project Grizzly.
He is a scientist and he has defied all the laws of physics.
You like scientists.
actually no. and I didn't see this movie either. But I did read the book, by Robert Franklin Leslie (well, most of it anyway).
"That same night when they first climbed into my lap, they crawled into the roomy down sleeping bag with me. I liked their clean, fresh-straw smell, and their warm little bodies almost compensated for their snoring and abundance of voracious parasites."
"The Bears and I" by Barbara Cartland. I can't believe you didn't finish it.
What the hardest decision of his life?
b/t/w I could sew one of these for Rocco.
Can't frget B.J. and the Bear rollin' down the highway in that Kenworth K100 Aerodyne with Dave Dudley on the 8-track.
If you look deep inside yourself, you know what the hardest decision is because you have seen at least one Disney movie in your life. Get out your hankerchief... "Tears streaming down my cheeks, I was forced to leave the thought of betrayal in the mind of the third bear. With the switch I struck him again and again across the bridge of the nose—the nose that had so often nudged me with affection and admiration. At length he turned, disbelieving, and slowly swam to Mark, who helped him aboard the launch. [Yes these bears hang out in boats and canoes all the time. Mark is the nice guy who has agreed to take the bear to a more remote area where the hunters won't get him.] I heard my friend gun his engine as he turned the prow north. I paddled south with every fibre of my body. Had I ever looked back, I would never have left the northland."
Bon voyage Sally and Von Bark!
hope you don't run into this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/girlreflected/187468797/
or this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/girlreflected/187468797/
especially if eating these
http://leda.lycaeum.org/?ID=10462
or that - very dangerous
If you find one of these will you bring it back for me?
thanks for the goodwishes, mnobody. this is the one I want to see.
I can't get over this line: "the nose that had so often nudged me with affection and admiration." Admiration? Feh. try, "give me some more of that salty fatty sugary foodstuff, you furless, simple slave."
Sally, the best on your quest for charismatic megafauna!
or charismatic mini-fountains.
That's nature, isn't it? Sadly I don't see Pandas.
Will you do be doing any tree drawing?
That chic is wearing the latest in gortex raingear. MEC fashion has come a long way.
Actually, that image is giving me some ideas for my Tree Museum dilemma for 2007. (Not that there was anything wrong with your helpful suggestions about hauling a WW2 tank over there or installing a live racehorse on the site for 2 years.)
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Muskwa-Kechika photos by Wayne Sawchuk. See the full sized photo essay at The Tyee
A few weeks ago I reported that Nanmac and I walked from Trinity Bellwoods Park to the Toronto Zoo. In fact, our desintation was specifially the grizzly bear pen at the zoo. I wanted to make an urban expedition to bear country (shooting Grizzly Man-style video all the way) in preparation for my August expedition to a large tract of wilderness called the Muskwa-Kechika in Northern B.C. Von Bark and I are going there with my father, Don McKay, for an Artist Exploration Camp, co-organised by poet Donna Kane and photographer/ conservationist Wayne Sawchuk. Donna's website has more details on the camp and bios of all the participants. If you follow this link to a photo essay by Wayne Sawchuk in The Tyee you will see that, unlike the Toronto Zoo, the Muskwa-Kechika is a bona fide wilderness. The animals in this area are not contained for our viewing pleasure, and the grizzly bears just roam around all day doing bear stuff. This means the chances of us actually seeing one are pretty slim, and I'm definitely not hopefull about getting any big fauna on video. No worries, though, cause I am packing the following props.
The ultimate goal of the Artist Exploration Camp is to help draw attention to the Muskwa-Kechika, a unique, vast, mostly undeveloped area (the size of Ireland, they say), that has recently been designated a management area. The whole group of us artist/campers will be collaborating on a touring art exhibition about the region, so watch for us in your town! I will keep you posted.
A while ago I posted preliminary sketches, including the one above, for a video about the ghost of the victim of a grizzly bear attack, trapped forever in the grizzly bear afterlife. Yesterday we shot good ghost footage with actor Brian Marler, using a home-made green screen at Trinity Bellwoods Park. My work plan for the Muskwa-Kechika includes shooting some landscape video for the project to key in later. I also plan to create a digital "Muskwa-Kechika Menagerie" of animal gifs, similar to the windy tree-pig I posted a few days ago. I will also be doing drawings and research for the upcoming Thicket, an evolving series of multi-media installations, created in collaboration with Von Bark, that speculates on the interior consciousness of animals in diorama form. Thicket 1: The Voyage is coming up at Harbourfront Centre in November.
I am pretty excited about this expedition, and I'm very much looking forward to meeting and collaborating with the other participants. There ain't no internet in them thar hills, so L.M. will be holding the blog fort on her own for the month of August.
background notes...
The images above are from previous projects of mine involving the concept of wilderness. The first version of the Miss Mouse "Fight Club" lectures included a section on people who obssess about predators. The mouse herself had a slightly perverse interest in cats. The Killer Whale Victim performance was the story of a lost dog, told from the posthumous POV of a man who had been mauled at Marineland. The Trouble With Oscillation is about a tourist who tires of whale watching expeditions, and goes on a quantum physics vacation instead, seeking the ultimate wilderness 'hit'.
- sally mckay 7-26-2006 9:38 pm
Surely you've been in contact with Troy Hurtubes of Project Grizzly.
He is a scientist and he has defied all the laws of physics.
You like scientists.
- L.M. 7-26-2006 11:17 pm
actually no. and I didn't see this movie either. But I did read the book, by Robert Franklin Leslie (well, most of it anyway).
- sally mckay 7-26-2006 11:46 pm
"The Bears and I" by Barbara Cartland. I can't believe you didn't finish it.
What the hardest decision of his life?
- L.M. 7-27-2006 12:05 am
b/t/w I could sew one of these for Rocco.
- L.M. 7-27-2006 12:22 am
Can't frget B.J. and the Bear rollin' down the highway in that Kenworth K100 Aerodyne with Dave Dudley on the 8-track.
- Belle Barth (guest) 7-27-2006 12:56 am
If you look deep inside yourself, you know what the hardest decision is because you have seen at least one Disney movie in your life. Get out your hankerchief...
- sally mckay 7-27-2006 2:07 am
Bon voyage Sally and Von Bark!
hope you don't run into this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/girlreflected/187468797/
or this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/girlreflected/187468797/
especially if eating these
http://leda.lycaeum.org/?ID=10462
- mnobody (guest) 7-27-2006 2:20 am
or that - very dangerous
- L.M. 7-27-2006 2:31 am
If you find one of these will you bring it back for me?
- L.M. 7-27-2006 2:33 am
thanks for the goodwishes, mnobody. this is the one I want to see.
- sally mckay 7-27-2006 5:16 am
I can't get over this line: "the nose that had so often nudged me with affection and admiration." Admiration? Feh. try, "give me some more of that salty fatty sugary foodstuff, you furless, simple slave."
- sally mckay 7-27-2006 5:20 am
Sally, the best on your quest for charismatic megafauna!
- ...g 7-27-2006 8:35 am
or charismatic mini-fountains.
That's nature, isn't it? Sadly I don't see Pandas.
Will you do be doing any tree drawing?
- L.M. 7-28-2006 1:38 am
That chic is wearing the latest in gortex raingear. MEC fashion has come a long way.
- sally mckay 7-28-2006 2:09 am
Actually, that image is giving me some ideas for my Tree Museum dilemma for 2007. (Not that there was anything wrong with your helpful suggestions about hauling a WW2 tank over there or installing a live racehorse on the site for 2 years.)
- L.M. 7-28-2006 2:25 am