Prologue to the Epilogue of a Dog

I've just received my second printing of my book, Prologue to the Epilogue of a Dog. This book is an ode to my dog, Trooper, told through photographs and prose. The first 30 copies were quickly dispersed as Christmas presents and at the Regional Assembly of Text's fabulous Book and Beer Night. I mightn't have made this book if Becky and Brandy of the aforementioned shop hadn't asked me to partake in their annual event. You can purchase a copy here. You can preview the book here.

Robert Bateman's polar bear population exceeds that of Canada's actual polar bear population.

Canada’s polar bear population is estimated to be roughly 16,000; the number of Bateman prints of polar bears in existence (by my own careful calculation) is close to 19,000.

Trooper serves as mascot.

Trooper strikes an uncharacteristic pose for The Paper Hound's window. He doesn't typically look so proud but if your outline was about to be emblazoned on a shop window you might yourself look jaunty.

Trooper the whippet

Profile, 2014, gouache on paper, 11" x 14"

More album art...

Jason Zumpano's latest recording, now available on vinyl here "Custodian marks a much grander stylistic experiment in THE CYRILLIC TYPEWRITER’s discography of cinematic pop enigmaticism. Explained away as a score for an unreleased horror film, Custodian may be a uniquely Ruritarian soundtrack, referencing an origin of unverifiable existence, a plausible, approachable, but ephemeral stranger."

Loscil album art

Check out Loscil's latest recording, Sketches from New Brighton Park. I did a small painting for the cover.

All the Carrie Walkers together.

For the first time, all sixty Carrie Walkers hang out together in a public place.

A bit of North Shore news

A gaggle of us at the Seymour Art Gallery for the opening of Odd Occurrences, curated by Rachel Lafo.

A profile in the Georgia Straight's fall preview.

Had a lovely chat with Robin Laurence and she wrote this up.

At long last... news!

This September in a flurry of overlapping exhibits, I will have work from my Found Drawing series on view at both Simon Fraser University Gallery up on the hill in Burnaby and on the other side of the drink in Deep Cove at the Seymour Art Gallery. Meanwhile, the Surrey Art Gallery will be exhibiting my Carrie Walker series as part of a group show examining the self-portrait. This is the first time the entire series of sixty drawings will be on view. Details for each show...

Opening reception: Saturday, September 8, 2012, 3 - 5pm
Reflexive Animals
Carrie Walker and Heather Passmore
Simon Fraser University Gallery
Academic Quadrangle, Room 3004. 8888 University Drive, Burnaby
September 8 to October 20, 2012
This two person exhibit will include 35 works from my found drawing series.
Note: a print-out of the Reflexive Animals page from the SFU gallery website can be used as a parking pass, just place it on your dashboard.

Opening reception: Tuesday, September 11, 2012, 7 - 9pm
Odd Occurrences: Narrative in the Art of Kristin Bjornerud, Tamara Bond, Tomoyo Ihaya and Carrie Walker
Seymour Art Gallery
4360 Gallant Avenue, North Vancouver
September 6 to October 14, 2012
Artists Talk: September 23, 2pm
Storytelling for adults and children with Naomi Steinberg: September 16, 3pm and October 7, 3pm
This four person show will include 10 works from my found drawing series.

Opening reception: Saturday, September 15, 2012, 7:30 - 9:30 pm
Scenes of Selves, Occasions for Ruses
Surrey Art Gallery
13750  88 Avenue, Surrey
September 15 to December 16, 2012
This group show presents work exploring the limits of self-portraiture. I will be exhibiting for the first time in its entirety all 60 drawings from my Carrie Walker project.

Mulled wine, eggnog, toads!

I will have a few new pieces on view at Trench Gallery this month. Please join me and let's mull over art with some mulled wine. The opening is Saturday, December 10, 2011 from noon to 4pm. The gallery is located at #102 - 148 Alexander St.

18th Annual Art for Life auction

I will have two drawings in the upcoming 18th Annual Art for Life auction. The auction is on Saturday, November 26 from 7pm to 11pm at the Rocky Mountaineer Station at 1755 Cottrell St. Tickets are $90 and include drag queens! art! Bif Naked! canapes! desserts! drinks!

Concerning the labour dispute between Teamsters Local 31 and the Great Canadian Railtour Company there will be no picket lines during this event... click here for more info.

Paper Cats

Okay, at long last, I am officially taking on commissioned cat portraits. I.e.,  your cat meticulously rendered in watercolour on paper where it can not cause any trouble. For more info, please visit... www.papercats.ca. No dogs.

Monomania review in the Georgia Straight...

The Georgia Straight's Robin Laurence had some kind words about my work currently up as part of the Monomania exhibit at Trench Contemporary Art...

Carrie Walker's recent little drawings of exotic animals (a hippo, a gorilla, a snarling African wildcat...), which she has surrealistically imposed upon old, anonymous pencil sketches and watercolours. The found images Walker employs as her grounds are mostly pastoral English landscapes to which she matches her style and medium, hilariously achieving a tension between the original scenes and their highly alien trespassers.

Monomania Exhibit at Trench Gallery

Holy crow, I almost forgot! On right now at Trench Contemporary Art is Monomania: An Organic Archive of the Terminal City Archive from 1949 until Now. A salon style extravaganza of Vancouver-based artists. Read more about the show here. The closing party is on Thursday, August 25, 2011 from 6:30pm til late. Trench is located at #102 -148 Alexander St.

Ocelot Elopes with Baby Budgie

A love affair, a kidnapping, a late night snack?

Living on reclaimed bog...

...makes for some pretty awesome weirdnesses and some darn crooked houses.

Wolverines invade Richfield, PA.

Here are a couple of finished drawings from my Circle Hunt project. The old post office above is in Richfield, Pennsylvannia. The cave below where the beaver is hiding out is in Hinckley Reservation in Hinckley, Ohio.

A few words about the Carrie Walker project...

    Due to a number of e-mails I received in the late 90's at my e-mail address carriewalker@hotmail.com, I knew there were other Carrie Walkers in the world. The e-mails were personal letters to Carrie Walker but they weren't  for me. I would always reply to these e-mails, sometimes honestly, "Sorry, wrong Carrie Walker, try an underslash or something." On other occasions, I would pretend I really was the Carrie Walker they wanted, "I broke it off with Kevin. Florida was a drag, I'll never go back." In response to these masquerades, I would get another e-mail... "this doesn't sound like Carrie."

    I grew up believing my name to be uniquely me and mine. With the advent of the Internet and my subsequent research into other Carrie Walkers, it has become clear that I am not my name. Searching for some sort of commonality between us, I find there aren’t any shared qualities beyond name and gender. There is one aspect of these women that, while not ubiquitous, does predominate - the photos of us are not candid but posed. They are already portraits. Creating an online profile is a process of creating a self-portrait. While each of us may attempt to exert some influence over how we are received via our own websites, Facebook or other online postings, our portraits continue to be painted for us by others. By the bad photos of us our friends post on their online albums, by our employers who want the world to know how we can help them, by the documenters of any committee or convention we’ve participated in.
   
    For this body of work, I have been collecting photos from the Internet of every Carrie Walker I can find. I then crop and enlarge each photo so I have an image of each face approximately life size. From the resulting image, which is often pixelated and distorted from being enlarged, I make a drawing. Upon completion, I immediately post each drawing on my website. Consequently, future Google image searches for “carrie walker” may result in not just the original image but also my drawn version. In this way, the work immediately enters the public realm and engages with an audience which in all likelihood is not looking for an art experience. Both the searcher and the searched become participants in the project. While the work develops a life of its own online, the drawings themselves remain as remnants or documents of the project.

    Will some Carrie Walkers feel their privacy has been invaded by such an action? This is one of many questions I hope to raise. Many people seem to be unconcerned with notions of privacy; posting, apparently without reservation, huge amounts of personal information. Are they aware that to some generations ideas of surveillance are associated with fascistic, totalitarian regimes? Do they see only the advantages of social networking mechanisms? We may presume that the information we post is only of interest to our friends and family or employers but as many people know this information is also being collected by advertisers. What other surreptitious audiences are looking at these elaborate portraits we’ve made of ourselves? Through this series of portraits I hope to draw attention to these notions of privacy, identity and self-portraiture.

And, I gratefully acknowledge the support of the BC Arts Council.

Carrie Walker project completed (for now).

Phew! This series of sixty portraits of women who share my name was completed this morning with this lovely lady. Her username on peekyou.com... imadirtyslut0000001.