MOMENTS OF MOTION

Even though Alison Jayne Yip moved to Vancouver for a while, she continues to let her eye and hand rove. She has a particular interest in motion and the moment in movement when intention weaves between actions. At least that's how I put it.



What makes it so relevant to what we do here, Alison Jayne, is that motion is the positive/negative male/female to urban design.



And then there are the collages. I cannot put them all here and we'll devote a separate website to this. All I will say about collage in our themes is that from construction, space and combination it is the gateway to abstraction. Abstraction.



I'll let you be the judges of how much it does say about its topics "alley tree" and "Chapel yellow", and I'll let Alison Jayne give us her commentaries when she gets around to it.

BRIDGES OF CALGARY

Saturday, August 05, 2006
9:00 AM
Kensington Starbucks

We are meeting to sketch bridges. So, pick your bridges:




JMB:So, we met. We picked the Mission bridges accross the Elbow River. Between the Talisman, the 4St Bridge and the old railway bridge from St.Mary's Cathedral we have a combination of foot bridges and vehicular bridges, and if you count the footbridge from StMary's on the basis of its design - a railway bridge: 5 bridges total.

Saturday morning was magical: sunny, warm, and soft light against a pure blue sky. So we set our chairs right in the river - and Steve got lost in the bolts and steels and girders and webs and joists and balustrades and pontoons that make the StMary's old railway bridge and as usual, I cannot wait to see the finished product - the sheer focus, intensity and accuracy that reach out and grab you by the shirt collar that happens to me with all of his sketches. This bridge actually used to bring the railway to the heart of Calgary for passenger traffic from Calgary to Edmonton. That was way back when.
I, on the other hand, drew like a madman, as many angles and as many bridges as I could. Bare feet in the river, up one bank, down the other and 2 days later still hungry for more views. Anyway, here it is for now:


The old StMary's Railway bridge is full of surprises, angles to draw, and relationships to the end users, at the river level, or up on the deck.
The bridge at Mission is a little more difficult to draw because it is so hard to find a spot where you can see the entire bridge. It has one foot on an island, and it connects two "urban designed" areas on either side. The feeling however, is as I hope I drew it - a sharp contrast between natural and urban.

The footbridge at 21st Avenue on the other hand, is simple and delightful. It is a straightforward span from Lindsay Park to the multifamily, but the aprons are whimsical - and a wonderful spot to hang around and watch waterfowl as they appear through the season and from just about anywhere from the globe. Keep and eye for Mergansers - these "ducks with a bad hair cut" as I like to call them are really interesting: they have a little plume on the top of their heads, and they hunt for fish in a team. You will see them swim underwater after fish in a choregraphed unison I never tire to witness.

Inglewood Bridge over the Elbow