May 2010

Does MOV have a more enthusiastic supporter than Vancouver is Awesome? Doubtful. Since our relaunch last summer, the editors of the lively, relentlessly cheery blog-turned-not-for-profit-society have gone out of their way to support the Museum’s new direction and our feature exhibitions and programs.

We’re not so special. Vancouver is Awesome (V.I.A.) has a mandate to “study, promote, and preserve” the city’s artistic and cultural scene and to do it with a “positive spin.” On a given day you might find a review of a new artist-run project space like 304-days, coverage of a local musician’s album launch party, and a post about where to fill up your bicycle tires for free. The site is the brainchild of editor and founder Bob Kronbauer, a newish Vancouverite with a background in graphic design, documentary filmmaking, and fine-art photography (his first book, Beach Glass, is a collection of images taken in L.A. over a three-year period. He’s now working on a Vancouver version). The man is tireless.

We’ve wanted to collaborate with Bob and his team for some time now; tomorrow night, it’s happening. Through a new initiative we’re calling “MOV Programmers in Residence,” we’re hosting A Night at MOV with Conor Holler. Using a live talk show format, Holler will interview local talents Grant Lawrence of CBC Radio 3 fame, Charles Demers, author of the recently published book Vancouver Special, and a musical performance by Dan Mangan. Doors and bar open at 7 p.m.; show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are available for $25 here or at the door for $30.

Needless to say, we’re thrilled to be a part of V.I.A.’s foray into programming and hope it leads to other projects that celebrate what makes this city great. Join us.

Our weekly round up of local news, events, and cultural happenings we’re tracking. Off we go…

One more whale skeleton and we’ve got a trend. The soon-to-open Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC has devoted their atrium to a blue-whale skeleton. On Saturday, Ottawa’s Museum of Nature will unveil an exhibit of a juvenile blue-whale skeleton, on view for the first time since it was donated in 1975. The museum has undergone an extensive six-year, $250-million overhaul that was part renovation (a view of the show-stealing staircases inside their ‘lantern’ addition is pictured left), part restoration, and aimed at showcasing Canada’s rich natural heritage. “Probably the only thing Canadians agree on is their pride in the physical beauty and remarkable nature of the natural environment of the country,” says Joanne DiCosimo, the museum’s president and CEO. “And our public wants to learn more about their impact on the natural environment as well as, as much as we can tell them about the changes through time in the natural landscape.” Image slideshow, video tour, and article found on Globe and Mail.

The chickens are coming! Almost! After much debate, column inches, airtime, etc., Vancouver is one step closer to backyard chicken coops. Earlier this week, City Council approved a plan recommending amendments to zoning and animal control by-laws, the creation of an online registry for hen keepers, safety and health regulations, and the creation of a city-run shelter for abandoned chickens.” (!) Next step: a public hearing to legalize the zoning and by-law amendments. Slowly but surely. (Vancouver Sun)

A tale of three cities. Vancouver is densely built but expensive. Calgary sprawls over rolling prairie land but is starting to think skyward (see the new urbanist-style neighbourhood of Mackenzie Towne). Toronto is somewhere in between. For a tidy summary of how three Canadian cities developed and where their respective planning efforts are taking them now, click the link. (Globe and Mail)

Last week, a pixelated whale. This week, giant sparrows! More public art has gone up on along the city’s waterfront, this time on the Olympic Plaza in Southeast False Creek. Local artist Myfanwy MacLeod’s pair of 18-feet-tall sparrows reference the neighbourhood’s past and present. According to the artist statement, “Locating this artwork in an urban plaza not only highlights what has become the ‘natural’ environment of the sparrow, it also reinforces the ’small’ problem of introducing a foreign species and the subsequent havoc wreaked upon our ecosystem.” They’re stunningly beautiful, too. The complete artist statement and images of the fabrication are found on the City of Vancouver’s website here. Happy long weekend.

Image credit: Pawel Dwulit for the Globe and Mail

I recently stole away to Seattle for a brief field trip. Am always amazed by how two cities of similar vintage, size, and geography could have so much in common yet feel so very different; American and Canadian versions of each other.

One of the biggest news stories unfolding there currently is the redevelopment of South Lake Union. How the central neighbourhood has avoided redevelopment until now is uncertain, positioned as it is between downtown, Capitol Hill, and connected to the all-important I-5. Development has been spurred by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s investment firm Vulcan Inc., and the addition of a streetcar line to the area. (Side note: the line has been so well received that another line has just been approved. Click here for details.)

It’s tempting to compare South Lake Union’s revival to, say, Yaletown’s or Southeast False Creek’s, but the notable difference is jobs. Seattle is brilliant at incorporating job centres with residential buildings. South Lake Union is now home to a just-opened Amazon campus. When it’s combined with offices for The Gates Foundation, Path, and Biomed, the neigbhourhood will see 15,000 new workers added over the next five years. No wonder some of the city’s best restaurants have recently moved in (Mistral Kitchen) or are planning to move (Flying Fish).

Seattle didn’t have the concentration of neon signs that Vancouver once did, but they didn’t experience what MOV’s Joan Seidl dubs “the visual purity crusade” that saw so many of them removed either. Drive up Denny Way and take Aurora Boulevard north. There, mixed in with the car dealerships and motor hotels (think Kingsway), so many mid-century signs still exist—many still in great condition. Our favourite one along that stretch is the Pepsi sign pictured above. For other signs located elsewhere in the city, refer to the driving guide assembled by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer here. They call the tour a “windshield museum.” Love that idea.

p.s. If you head down this summer, be sure to visit the new farmer’s market set to open in July at the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park—another urban planning feat. Details here.

Image credit: Mr. Phelps

Has there ever been such a pun-friendly name as Fluevog? In the 40 years that John Fluevog has been in the shoe business, he’s certainly played off of it, using it as a noun, adjective, and verb—see his chatty website for a sample—all the while building a colourful, forward-thinking, and innovative business that’s only partly about shoes.

From the outset, both the store and Fox’s designs pushed traditional (read: safe) shoes aside in favour of bold, unconventional silhouettes and dramatic detailing. Picture fur-collared ankle boots, multi-hued platform heels, or handmade wooden clogs (the handiwork of their collaborator Ken Rice). In short: Shoes made by risk-takers, for risk-takers. Celebrities like Robert Altman and Julie Christie were fans; others just didn’t get it (Fluevog recalls people walking past the store windows exclaiming “Who would wear these?!”).

In a feature MOV exhibition that opens Thursday night, curator Joan Seidl has traced the Vancouver company back to 1970, when a men’s shoe store named Fox & Fluevog opened at 2 Powell St. in Gastown. With $13,500 borrowed from his dad, then-22-year-old Fluevog and business partner/mentor Peter Fox aimed to build off their retail experience at the venerable Evans Sheppard shoe store on Hastings Street. Peter Fox, a London native, was also working on his own shoe designs which reflected his interest in art history and Carnaby Street’s emerging modish aesthetic.

Fox and Fluevog parted amicably in 1981. Fox moved to New York to focus on his own label; Fluevog took over Fox & Fluevog running it as “just another shoe store” until competition from big chains forced him to rethink his business model—and to take the leap into designing himself. Though his work shares Fox’s unselfconscious design philosophy, it is his skill at branding that has pushed him into new and interesting territory, and earned him a cult-like following.

Working with local illustrator and creative director Dave Webber of Webbervision in Gastown, the two have established a brand that is urban, worldly, off-beat, acerbic, gently subversive, and an attempt to “above all… avoid anything that smacks of being ‘just advertising’.” Old Fluevog catalogues featured in the exhibition comment on such topics as religion, consumerism, and human nature. They feature incredible shoes, too.

In an interview on CBC Radio that aired this morning (click here to hear it), Fox and Fluevog said they didn’t know they were breaking new ground so much as doing things that interested them and designing shoes they couldn’t find elsewhere. Over 3,500 square feet of gallery space has been turned over to a selection of their work. Some 150 pairs of shoes appear alongside photographs, catalogues, press, and ephemera, and yet it’s only a glimpse of their work and its impact to date. There’s most definitely more to come.

Image descriptions, from top to bottom:
A Fox and Fluevog clog from the mid-1970s.
A sketch by Peter Fox.
A selection of John Fluevog shoes designed between 1980 to 2000.

All images by  Kirsti Wakelin.