MONDAY ARTPOST 0919-2022

MONDAY
ARTPOST
0919-2022
ISSN1918-6991
MONDAYARTPOST.COM
Columns by Artists and Writers
Bob Black / bq / Cem Turgay /
Fiona Smyth / Gary Michael Dault /
Holly Lee / Kai Chan / Ngan Chun-tung
/ Shelley Savor / Tamara Chatterjee
/ Wilson Tsang / + A Path in the
Garden: A Conversation between
Yam Lau and Susan Rowe Harrison
MONDAY ARTPOST published on Mondays. Columns by Artists and Writers. All Right Reserved. Published since 2002.
An Ocean and Pounds publication. ISSN 1918-6991. email to: mail@oceanpounds.com

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Poem a Week
Gary Michael Dault
A Walk in the Woods
(Remembering Earle Birney)
at first mollified
by the wilderness
across a drubbing
of stones
we walked the woods
in an ornamental sunlight
the line of the trees
wrapped everywhere like a grey
muffler, its eyelets
blinking out solitude
our eyes
sharp with pine,
we allowed ourselves
an uphill alliance
with thin stretches of sky
until its endless blueness
fixed us like rain
what was hurtful before
condensed into innocence:
the wound of a fire
a moment or two of resinous sleep
before rejoining
the insolence of forest

Caffeine Reveries
Shelley Savor
Rain Shelter

Everything went quiet for a while, things were alternately restful and terrifying,
pandemics can do that to communities. It was easy to notice nature, the skies were
clearer, wildlife took over the streets, the earth was breathing easier, all while a
deadly virus loomed. There is always a threat to disturb the balance of things,
however the threat is caused.
The weight of worry was heavy, so I looked up. Constantly moving shapes and
colours; blue, grey, rain, snow - clouds are busy. The sky continually inhaling and
exhaling.
I looked down. Dirt, soil, mud, leaves, mushrooms, the universe of mycelium
beneath our feet silently keeping the earth alive. The earth breathing.
Mushrooms and clouds holding everything together.
These sculptures, drawings and collages were made over the past few years during
the pandemic. Nature provided an inspiring refuge from anxiety.
Threats of global warming, nuclear annihilation, pollution, viruses, war - us humans
have a bad track record. Look up, look down, breathe in, breathe out.
Mushrooms and clouds (but no mushroom clouds).
(Shelley Savor)

Mushrooms and Clouds (but
no Mushroom Clouds)
Paperback Edition
56 pages, 8”x10”, perfect bound.
Published by OCEAN POUNDS.
Order paperback edition at BLURB (CAN$35):
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ebook (US$5.00), pdf download. Bonus: access code for read-on-line edition
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This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Mushrooms and
Clouds (but no Mushroom Clouds), held at 50 Gladstone Avenue artsalon in
Toronto, October 1-29, 2022.

ART LOGBOOK
Holly Lee
1.Extinct and Endangered: Insects in Peril
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/extinct-endangered-insects
(YouTube 7:07)
2. Watch Levon Biss’s TED talk on the Microsculpture series
Scroll down to Ted talk (vimeo 7:40)
https://levonbissstudio.com/

Leaving Taichung
Station
Bob Black
Cicadas in the Garden
i
and
in the morning, our tongues opened to the sun
awoke and tumbling, we tripped over our shadows in the corner of the kitchen
love providential
and the sun as loud as the artillery explosions constellating the countryside
and the sound of your heart at run
“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream.”
Nostalgia that twinned-way heart journey,
breaking and healing over the train clacking
of touch and story
and hope horizontal sifting slightly, left
Twinned and beleaguered your beloved
as near this long-lost coming toward,
rhyming, always rhyming
“It seems to me you are trying to crack open a dream.”
a dolphin chirping next to a boat, suddenly
a dorsal rainbow over a cruise ship locked in a Charleston dock,
Pollyanna tucked in for the night, thin out from the carnival’s dancing
and in the morning, cicadas in the garden singing
bright bars of tune-measure that fall upon us like timbre tiptoed and light
the thin, cinnamon light.

ii
and
there you go rhyming once again the scribbles of life
humming yourself into stanza and meter, even amid grief
that line that encircles the kitchen shadows and holds each of us in place,
the outline that brings the color taken and chalked behind your stepping
passing palimpsests lit up on the wall of the bedroom at night, the passing
traffic and transportation lights swaying up the corner
rapping up the quotidian and softened bodies in the grind of night--
the absences, their infinite shells, the jewel in the net, the lotus and the lore
the lair filled by dragon stone and dream
her demands and his awkward commands
and in the morning all that which slid under our eyes and coiled our heads left written
on our heart-bones all along
and
“I am waiting.”
So we write that upon the scars of the river and the apples into bottles strung from a tree on the hill
turned recalled memory into Calvados, fallen upon the shy shadows imprinted in the waiting grass,
underneath us, here
tsundoku
our names tributaries in the country of the country of the landscape at night
iii
and again, recall
our tongues open to the sun, long round the red and rung mountainous air, a tram gambols at the
pace of loss and you turn toward the east where the peninsula buckles from your pivot
the lighthouse and sentry still in their encampment over the Cape, the birds song your name over
the dunes of Hatteras, beaking rhyme and rotor and we stood among the away
and trading tempers takes us wingward, along and alone the Ambergris hour the trains distant
the cicadas in the garden singing long and our tongues open to the light
touching us once again at angles
peculiar and unlocked, our hearts held just long enough
and the chorus of the grass and your small hands untying secrets of our life unscramble and
upright.
for: Chiwan Choi

Greenwood
Kai Chan
drawing
ink, pastel on paper

From the Notebooks
(2010-2022)
Gary Michael Dault
Number 155: Studies of Cezanne and Renoir (May 21, 2012)

TANGENTS
Wilson Tsang
gazes

Open/Endedness
bq 不 清
無 題
UNTITLED
既 然 我 已 經 花 了 足 夠 的 時 間 以
最 終 無 法 完 全 任 何 事 情 , 那 我 還 有 什 麼
工 作 可 以 做 呢 ? 在 紙 張 上
三 角 形 重 複 又 重 複 地
被 速 繪 , 以 至 有 一 天 它 們 能 成 為
高 山 。 以 往 富 士 山 極 具 代 表 性 , 可 是 它
並 沒 有 在 群 山 之 中 最 高 的 額 菲 爾 士 峰
著 名 。 它 熱 愛 天 空
和 渴 望 了 解 斑 頭 雁 的 秘 密 。
Now that I have spent enough time to
End up not completing anything, what else
Is there left to do? On paper,
Triangles had been sketched over and
Over again, so one day they might become
Mountains. Mount Fuji was iconic, but it wasn’t
As well known as Everest, the tallest
Among all of them, who longed for the sky,
And the secrets of bar-headed geese.
這 將 會 又 是 一 個 緩 慢 的 過 程 , 不 同 的 是
這 次 你 將 被 迫 不 用 圓 規 以 遊 蕩 出 一 個 完 美 的
圓 形 , 而 所 有 人 最 終 還 是 會 抱 怨
It will again be a slow process except this time
You will be forced to dawdle a perfect circle without a
Compass and yet everyone will end up whining,
「 這 怎 像 一 個 圓 形 !」
“It doesn’t look like a circle!”
也 許 我 的 手 指 不 懂
靈 巧 地 活 用 鉛 筆 , 但 我 更 傾 向
認 為 其 問 題 出 自 他 們 觀 點 的 錯 位
不 懂 得 像 這 些 候 鳥 那 樣 明 白
偶 爾 遠 走 恰 好 的 距 離 才 能 夠
在 這 個 清 涼 的 秋 夜 從 高 處 看 看 這 個 世 界
也 看 看 月 球
Perhaps it has to do with my poor
Dexterity with pencils, but I prefer to
Think that it is their misplaced perspectives,
Not viewing this world from above
like these migratory birds, who know to go
Just far enough sometimes, to also see the moon
In this cool autumn night.

CHEEZ
Fiona Smyth

ProTesT
Cem Turgay

Travelling Palm
Snapshots
Tamara Chatterjee
Canada (September, 2022) – Between budgets
and bylaws; rushing around to grab lunch, a
passing glimpse caught my eye. A moment
of temporary suspension, of reflection, of
realization. The scatter of multiple timelines
and numerous projects ceased for a brief
interlude. She smiled – I smiled, she resumed
her task and I returned to contemplating
lunch while admiring the circus skilled
performance.

Yesterday Hong Kong
Ngan Chun Tung
Queen’s Road West (1953)
8x10 inch, gelatin siver photograph printed in the nineties
Edition 2/50, signed and titled on verso
From the collection of Lee Ka-sing and Holly Lee

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A Path in the Garden:
A Conversation between
Yam Lau and Susan
Rowe Harrison
Weather Report: Susan Rowe Harrison
September 17 – December 17, 2022
YYZ Artists’ Outlet
140-401 Richmond St. West
Toronto
Hours: Wed to Sat, 12 to 5 pm.
https://www.yyzartistsoutlet.org

A Path in the Garden: A Conversation between Yam Lau and Susan Rowe Harrison
model, garden, mirror
Yam Lau: Let us recall the lovely afternoon when we viewed the delicate model you made for the
present exhibition at the YYZ Artists’ Outlet. You had casually placed the model (of a garden?) in a
garden, amidst the plants at the Spring Wind Buddhist Farm in upstate New York. Our conversation
unfolded around this scenario. Incidentally, I find gardens enchanting because they are models
of sorts. The garden is where the micro and macro entangle, and the question of scale is made
inherently dynamic. This aspect of the garden presents an endless fascination, and it is especially
inspiring for artistic creation. I think of the art of Bonsai. Placing these concerns alongside the
themes of ecology and transformation in your work, I would like to juxtapose your model with a
powerful Buddhist metaphor, the Jewel net of Indra. In Indra’s net, the question of dimensionality and
universal interdependence are cogently integrated. I think of this metaphor, with all its splendour,
as a conceptual garden of some sort, a garden of deep ecology, insubstantiality, and infinite
transformation. I wonder if you would reflect on this juxtaposition a bit.
Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net that has been hung by
some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance
with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of
the net, and since the net itself is infinite in all dimensions, the jewels are infinite in number. There

hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now
arbitrarily select one of
these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there
are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels
reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting
process occurring.
Susan Rowe Harrison: Yam, I like this metaphor very much. While we don’t see the mirror in the
model in the garden, the mirror (on the model’s floor) completes the analogy; the garden is reflected
into infinity or some expression of infinity. And I love the model placed in the garden where the
concept of the garden becomes the garden, and the garden becomes the concept of the garden
growing into one another. This is the idea of universal interdependence—we don’t have the model of
the garden and the garden; the garden model is the garden. We don’t have the garden and nature–the
garden is nature. And, in nature–we do not have “us” and the environment. We are the environment.
To not take care of nature is to not take care of us. The garden is a glittering jewel in the net of
infinity.
The idea for the mirror came from Monet’s garden–that image you always see when you search for his
garden online–the plants and the bridge all reflected in the pond below. I wanted a “reflecting pool”
so that the “nature” in my installation would be reflected in the space, as would we—implicating us
in a garden that portrays an ecosystem as it grows and falls apart–to see ourselves in it.
YL: “the garden model is the garden…”. this is beautiful. I can relate to your love of (Monet’s) pond
and its reflective qualities. The pond is a quiet agent. It receives and binds the distinct elements
within the environment on its illusive surface. The pond releases the weight from things, allowing
their virtual imprints to trace temporarily on its surface. I imagine the efficacy of the mirrored flooras-pond
in the YYZ installation. The fictional garden on the wall will be projected into yet another
fictional, perhaps virtual dimension in the mirror/pond. I imagine these two registers, the fictional
and the virtual, are probably reversible. Enfolded in a supplementary dynamic, one cannot claim
more reality than the other.
Here in The Buddhist farm, the night is populated by fireflies. I enjoy their company while sitting
under the stars. They bring the stars near; I imagine the stars are the fireflies, the fireflies are stars.
They became reversible realities. I would like to share a story by the Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi.
Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents
and purposes, a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was
Zhuangzi. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether
I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a
man. Between a man and a butterfly, there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the
transformation of material things.”
From the graphical to the environmental
YL: In our discussion, we agreed that climate change and related calamities need not conclude
in total destruction. While species extinction, including the human species, presents imminent
challenges, the narrative in your graphical garden suggests a different frame of reference than the
anthropocene, a term you indicated as limiting. It appears that your “garden” is a perpetually selfgenerating
process, one that demonstrates agency and finds expressions in the unforeseen.
SRH: I don’t feel that this process will be purely dystopian. In terms of plant life, some plants will
spectacularly thrive early–too prematurely for the species that depend on them–some will die off,
and some will mutate and change–rupturing this web of interdependency. But how will this process
change things–will the earth adapt, and what will this look like? How do you move the viewer to
care? The beauty of the work is the hook. Or the hope?
from the book form to architectural form
YL: We spoke about the book works by Bruno Munari. I think your model could be a kind of
“children” book, with the “pages as planes” folded into an architectural enclosure. The scale of
these pages can be comfortably handled by hand. I think you can make a book work out of it. By
“children”, I refer not so much to a specific developmental stage as to the tribe of tender, curious,
and innocent souls at every stage of life. I expect the large installation will preserve these beautiful
and magical qualities but differently. I like the inherent scalability of this work.
SRH: I love Bruno Munari’s books, though I am not familiar with all of them. I’m a big fan of his book
Square Circle and Triangle. We both share an interest in visual communication and solid graphic
form.
I can see the comparison between my model and a children’s book or illustration. Especially since it
is small enough to hold in your hands and it looks like a crude mock-up for a book, but I don’t see it
that way. Primarily because I made it as a scale model of Z gallery at YYZ, I see it in service to the
installation. It is a playground for the work I am making and an efficient way to plan an exhibit.
This form allowed me to work on the corners of the installation, which I didn’t want to go
unconsidered. The corners can connect or break up images, changing the rhythm of the artwork in the
space. I often find the nooks and crannies filled with potential. The details are crucial to the whole
story.
I think the installation, once completed, will feel close to the model, but I want anyone who sees it to
become a part of it–which is where I think the scale comes in. You are in the artwork’s environment
rather than holding it in your hands–you live in it rather than carry it–It is a metaphor for the state of
our environment. I hope that the work retains its magical qualities but also its scary ones.
YL: These are interesting thoughts on edges and corners. Corners are architectural folds. They
facilitate transitions and interruptions. I imagine the installation at YYZ as a continuous sequence
of images surrounding the space. But it can also be experienced as composed of individual tableaus
whose edges align with sections of the architecture. The two orientations act simultaneously on the

space and the viewer. The corners, by default, naturally introduce changes and interruptions to the
sequence.
SRH: The corners are challenging. Where do you put images so that they retain their importance?
I want the walls to appear continuous, but the corners assert themselves. Not acting on them is a
missed opportunity. I continue the story across the folds on to the next panel and work with the bends
and turns to continue the image or start a new one or, both.
In a sense, there is no beginning or end to the work. I imagined it beginning on the super-lush and
colorful panel and ending on the colorless one where everything in the world dries up, but it could
start there. This is where the viewer can control the story. This is where it is not a book.
Scale and perspective
YL: The play of scale and perspective between the model and the installation is fascinating. For the
installation, the plants become giant and their scale architectural. They project a sense of wonder
with their enormous graphical presence. They dwarf the viewer and invite her to assume the position
of an insect, a cohabitant with the plants. This conceit is used in Chinese Bonsai presentation.
Miniature figurines in classical costumes are placed in the bonsai pot. They serve as proxies of
sorts. They invite the connoisseur to project herself (through them) into a dreamlike world of varied
dimensionalities. I feel the bonsai is transformed from being a “scale model” to a world of wonder. It
is both small and large. Looking at a bonsai, I know we occupy the same space. But I also know we
are not in the same world. It requires imagination to get there. These proxy figurines facilitate that
projection and transportation.
Can you talk about cutting the vinyl for the model and cutting directly in a large scale for the
installation? I am curious to see how the scale of your body and the difference in physicality are
registered in the cut edges in both cases.
But there is also so much flexibility—this does not have to be exactly like the model. The model—
the study—can be a trap, so I let go a little. I try to make it right for the work. I don’t want to miss the
beautiful accidents that can happen. When your pencil or X-ACTO knife slips, you feel different one
day; you install the parts in reverse, there is an electrical outlet in the way, or you correct something
that you never liked in the first place. When I struggle with the size of the pieces and getting the
shapes right, I use a projector and draw the forms on the wall. I know I can digitize the model, use
a mechanical plotter/cutter, or work with a graphic studio, but I don’t. I am never as happy with the
results.
YL: Thank you Susan, for this conversation. It is like a path into the garden. There is much in the
work that is like you. The garden perhaps, is in the heart.
SRH: Thank you Yam. I had fun.
-----
YAM LAU is an artist and writer based in Toronto; he is currently an Associate Professor at York
University. Lau’s creative work explores new expressions and qualities of space, time and the image.
SUSAN ROWE HARRISON utilizes painting, drawing, ceramics, and large-scale site-based work to
explore her fascination for natural environments and our relationship to them. Rowe Harrison studied
painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (1990-1991). She
currently lives and works in New York.
SRH: Yam, cutting the vinyl for the model is very different. It is the concept process, so it is much
freer. The model was my place to figure out how to communicate my idea–how to depict climate
change. What would it look like? How would I make it?
Working small is less physical than working large–I can sit in a chair and don’t have endless steps up
and down a ladder–there is no reaching or working with large swaths of unwieldy and sticky material.
It is physically easier and I can work faster.
Line quality and edges have always been important to me, and this is much easier to achieve on a
smaller scale. When I move to a large scale, I create ratios of the model to actual space to estimate
the general size of the elements of my final artwork. I cut the vinyl to size and, tape it to the wall so
that I can draw while looking at reference drawings or the model itself. As I scale up, I don’t want to
lose the litheness, the movement, or the dried-up, frozen quality. But to do this is on a large scale is
more complicated. There is a dance to creating–you use your entire body to stretch and reach to draw
at your height or larger. That movement in the work creates palpable energy—its spirit.

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