always ending always beginning

Transition day - unpacking school bags, repacking into bush bags.

Yesterday I finished my first (of three) month-long July intensives for my Masters of Applied Arts at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Even if I had time to post on this blog during that period, I don't think I would have been able to keep up with the amount of learning that happened during that period. Hopefully that learning will become apparent in my work and in my posts.

Tomorrow I head North for three weeks. I'm doing a residency with Parks Canada, the US National Park Service and the Yukon Arts Centre - basically tromping through the bush for two weeks along the Chilkoot Trail and giving a few artist talks. I'll be making a sequential art series that documents the journey - a page a day, pen and ink on watercolour paper. I don't want to call it a graphic novel or a comic, because the way I'll be creating the images is going to be left to chance a little bit. I'll describe that some more next time I have time to post. I'm also getting reference for another project that I'll describe later.

I do plan on posting more steadily in September again, when I'm back from my trip, and I'll try to post when I get the chance. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a month. I'm looking forward to sharing the work I've been doing, and writing about my thoughts. But at the moment, there's no time to write and think! I have to pack all that crap into my backpack and get ready to go.

Here's a link to something I did in late June. It's a pretty accurate document of how I was re-assessing my work at the time, and maybe an indication of how I'm starting to look for other ways of creating narrative works:

http://www.gogomax49.com/JW_Salal1_01.html

I actually think I'm going to continue Salal. There's a bit more to add to the story now, but I haven't had time to do it.