Category Archives: inspiration

I am a perpetual student.

This site is an experiment. It’s my attempt to document the wide array of personal interests, curiosities, and self-directed learning efforts which continually seem to occupy my off-hours.

My interests tend to vary – I tend to hop around a lot conceptually, in terms of what motivates or excites me.

I go through phases; minor obsessions with very different topics or areas of interest. Like the avante-garde pop of Devo, or the social commentary of Popeye and Groucho Marx, or the design philosophies of the Bauhaus, or Einstein’s Relativity. I have always tended to hop laterally from subject to subject, and then try to integrate and assimilate that new information into what I already know.

I’m mostly a visual learner. I need to see and make images to help me understand. So, aside from the chronological, bloggy aspect of this site, I thought that it would good to have an image portfolio to show any research that I do, or to show illustrations that helped me to get to where I wanted to go.

Somewhere there are connections – common threads – between all these various areas of interest. Finding those threads and tugging on them is part of the joy of discovery.

I am a life-long learner, and probably, a perpetual student.

 

The Monument for East Vancouver

Ken Lum’s public art piece, “Monument for East Vancouver” transforms an ad-hoc symbol of regional pride (or defiance, membership or territorial claim) into a new landmark on the city’s skyline.

This piece is controversial… Some people love it, and some people hate it.

There are many opinions and interpretations of where the East Van cross came from, and what it means…

http://www.straight.com/article-281162/vancouver/what-heck-east-van-cross

http://vancouverisawesome.com/2010/01/12/east-van-cross/

I have gradually grown to love this piece. It stands at the corner of Clark Drive and Great Northern Way, facing downtown Vancouver like a ginormous middle finger, as if to say “Take that, rest of the city! We’re East Van!”

Like it or not, it’s definitely a symbol.