Niagara Falls, Canadian side. 2003. Pinhole photograph.
A lot of my life has been doing things creatively with my hands that are visual in nature.
I love being able to create things that people can see and enjoy. I like being able to get right to the heart of a craft and learn it so I can use it to express myself.
During the late 90’s, early 00’s I did photography as a hobby and a small business. I was a member of a cooperative gallery in Toronto called Gallery 44 – Centre for Contemporary Photography. I took part in several group shows and had two solo exhibitions with them.
During that period I gained a love of old photographic and alternative processes.
One thing I really liked were pinhole cameras. I built myself one out of black foamcore. It was designed with a simple shutter mechanizm that I could control and it could be strapped onto a brace that had a screwmount on it to attach to a tripod. The back of the camera held a 4×5 film holder. I marked the sides of the box with guidemarks so I could compose the picture fairly well before making the exposure.
My last solo show was in 2002 and it was a mixed media show. I had six or seven pinhole photographs on the wall and a series of knitted articles that were featured in or related to to the photographs.
Gallery show, Blue sweater in foreground with photographs behind.
What was the Psychiatric Tests Involved? levitra generic vardenafil The therapy provided privacy and control over the treatment, to the patients. Erectile dysfunction has all generic viagra australia concerns with the erections of the man. order viagra prescription To confirm such condition, a survey was carried out among 151 participants. Therefore using this medicine is 100% secured. buy levitra no prescription
One piece in the show was a large skein of yarn, looped over a rod, that was being knitted into a scarf. I tried to come in each day at lunch or after work and do a few rows on the scarf. I also made the needles from wood dowels topped off with glass beads. I finished half of the scarf during the time of the show.
The two main knitted pieces were a sweater I had made for my ex partner and one I had made for myself. His sweater is the one you see as my banner image. You can see a picture of him wearing that sweater here.
The sweaters were hung from the ceiling, facing each other, like they were having a conversation. People could walk between them to get a closer look and to also maybe get a sense of what the conversation might have been.
All the photographs were taken around Toronto. Most of them were showing me knitting on an item that was displayed. An example was me knitting on the sleeve of my sweater sitting on the ledge of the stairs at Union Station. The picture of the other sweater was the one exception. The sweater was already finished and the picture was me wrapped up in it at my old house.
Most of the pictures took between 3 and 20 minutes to expose. I usually tried to time my knitting so I could finish at least one row during the exposure.
In the first photograph I believe I was knitting on a shawl, sitting on the fountain in St. James Gardens, King Street East between Church and Jarvis Street. In the second photograph I was knitting on a scarf sitting on the whale statues at 121 King Street West.