SPAM (Special Presentation Art Mail)

Little Demoed | Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes, Catalina Valenzuela Varas, Nick Short and Diana Sims | February 2021

In 2017 The Washington Post declared the death of the electric guitar based on the gradual crash in sales seen throughout North America. At that time, it would have been difficult to account for the recent plethora of “spare” time folks would have to take up long lusted-after hobbies. While this year has seen a renaissance in the sales of musical instruments, many already practiced musicians have been left wondering if they will ever play for a live crowd again—if this is the death of touring and the music scenes as they knew and loved. While a great many bands reluctantly dissolve into the pandemic ether, others have taken the opportunity to make more vulnerable work. Live audiences have been replaced with the intimate listenership that occurs in people’s bedrooms and headphones—settings that encourage the kind of candor that technology tends to buffer. 

For this month’s edition of Special Presentation Art Mail, Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes plays music with Nick Short and Catalina Valenzuela to make four songs under the title Little Demoed. This 15 minute EP includes two original songs written by Catalina and Marisa as well as two covers: one by Saint Vincent and the other by Kate NV. Marisa plays drums, bass and lead guitar while Catalina plays rhythm guitar and sings her own lyrics. On the Kate NV cover, Catalina has translated the Russian lyrics into Spanish. Nick has engineered and produced the four songs in CHOMS, a shared jam space and recording studio. Nick also plays ambient keyboard and drums on the “Marafon 15” track. Classically trained pianist, Diana Sims, was invited to write and play her own compositions over the song “Looper.” 

This collaborative endeavour was conceived and produced on the stolen traditional and ancestral Indigenous lands of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.

Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes is an artist working fondly with photos, sculpture and music. Her most recent exhibition, Everything Leaks, was at the Polygon Gallery with Maya Beaudry. 

Catalina Valenzuela Varas was born and raised in Santiago, Chile. She is now based out of Vancouver, BC. Aside from her design practice and her guitar-playing, she also enjoys having a good time. 

Nick Short is a musician and a self-taught audio engineer. He runs CHOMS, a recording studio and jam space, with his friends. 

Diana Sims is a multidisciplinary artist born in Pittsburgh and new to "Vancouver." She is primarily interested in beauty and the eternal. 

CHOMS, founded in 2016, is located at 102-1055 East Cordova and currently serves as a communal practice space for musicians and bands, as well as a recording and audio post-production studio. CHOMS has worked extensively with Vancouver's local DIY music scene, with out-of-town artists from Seattle to Toronto, and with community-oriented music projects.

To-Do-To-Do | Matthis Grunsky and M.E. Sparks | March 2021

Matthis Grunsky and M.E. Sparks revisit the to-do list as a site of ideation. List-making is a way to organize, plan and record, but it can also function as a form of storytelling told through metrical summaries of our day-to-day lives.

Over the course of the pandemic, lists have provided a sense of structure during periods of slowness and isolation. In the absence of social dates and deadlines, list-making becomes less about increasing productivity and solidifying goals. Rather, in its less-solid, less-productive form, the to-do list allows for us to wonder, observe, and reflect on things that may always remain incomplete.

In To-Do-To-Do Grunsky and Sparks have created lists of lists that organize and dis-organize. Through a nested directory of hand-coded websites, they invite participants to contribute to a collective to-do list with no set aim or deadline, visualize the distances between planets, and draw the forms of one-hundred popcorn kernels. They have reimagined the mental lists we compose while trying to fall asleep, and have brought together a wide array of generously gifted lists from anonymous list-writers. Through this, they question if these bullet-point narratives may begin to reveal shared priorities, imaginings and purpose.

Special thanks to all the list-makers who shared their personal lists with us. We are beyond grateful! Thanks also to the SFPC stewards for introducing us to new tools for digital exploration.  - M+M

Matthis Grunsky and M.E. Sparks both live and work on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Sə̓lílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil- Waututh) and xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. They have collaborated on projects that explore computer programming as a form of painting.

In his work, Matthis engages in the production of images through both material and digital systems. He uses traditional methods including painting, drawing, plaster casting, and printmaking, alongside newer technologies such as computer programming and electronic prototyping. Through these methods, he explores how we find meaning in random and chaotic information. Matthis’ research is currently supported through the Canada Council for the Arts.

M.E. works primarily with paint and canvas. Through a practice of pulling apart and recombining borrowed forms, both art historical and autobiographical, she looks for the moment an image loses its representational solidity. Recently, she has been exploring material possibilities of un-stretched painted canvas. Paintings are cut apart, layered and draped in an effort to obstruct and reimagine both the pictorial space of painting and its historical narrative.

share plates | Michael Lachman and Lyndsay Pomerantz | June 2021

In the last year the need to find alternative ways to connect to one's community has become increasingly vital. For Lyndsay Pomerantz and Michael Lachman, food—be it through sharing recipes, images or meals—has served as a way to gather, and relate to one another. Building on an ongoing interest in social and aesthetic aspects of food, Michael and Lyndsay have created a menu to guide us through an intimate, yet collective experience.

Bringing together an assembly of recipes, images and links, the menu becomes a resource, connecting us through food in a moment where our social relationships to eating and gathering continue to shift.

Lyndsay Pomerantz (she/her) is a settler living on stolen ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, aka Vancouver. 

She is an artist, curator, writer and home cook. Her zodiac sign is Gemini. Her fluctuating moods dictate her level of commitment to the art world although she is a professional arts administrator, so she’s technically a full-time employee. Her digital images are collaged from a myriad of sources—her own photographs, scans from vintage books, screenshots from movies and found images online. Preparation of food and food culture have always been important to her and more recently she has begun to consider cooking and baking a part of her practice.

Michael Lachman (he/him) is an artist living on unceded Indigenous land of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

He has applied to MFA programs several times and was not accepted so he “quit art,” but no one is buying that. His sculptures tell elaborate stories with literary and historical references. He is currently studying computer graphics with the intention of creating environments for video games. This takes up most of his time, but he spends his days off rock climbing and hugging his cat Mr. Softee. 

share plates is supported by the Responsive Small Neighbourhood Grants initiative

Wild Card | Justine A. Chambers and Sara Wong | August 2021

Shifting attention away from the screen, Wild Card is a participatory game devised by Justine A. Chambers and Sarah Wong that consists of 52 playing-style cards, each of which reveals a set of instructions for a score to be performed. Not unlike dance choreography, the scores that make up the project enable sequences of movements to be learned, passed on and elaborated. The artist’s interest in cards stems from the nature of play they represent, and how they have the capacity to function as a tool for decision making and collaboration. The movements being prompted are distilled from habitual gestures, and invite performers to fixate on moments that are otherwise overlooked. 

Each piece in the Wild Card deck provides a set of instructions that can be seen as an invitation to participate in and shift a continually unfolding “dance.” While the instructions on each card varies, prompts such as “Glance behind you” make room for each one, in its turn, to be further interpreted by its performer. When enacted, the scores have the potential to manifest as an interruption of the everyday. The artists have strategically chosen initial hiding spots throughout the city of “Vancouver” for each of the 52 cards, and can be happened upon by chance or sought out using the provided map accompanying this email. Adding another familiar element of play to the project, the artists are encouraging participants to perform sequences alone or with others, trade the cards or give them new hiding spots once they’ve been enacted.

Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her movement-based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances “that are already there”–the social choreographies present in the everyday. Her choreographic projects have been presented at Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Helen and Morris Belkin Gallery  (Vancouver), Sophiensaele (Berlin), Nanaimo Art Gallery, Artspeak (Vancouver), Hong Kong Arts Festival, Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, Agora de la Danse (Montréal), Festival of New Dance (St. John’s), Mile Zero Dance Society (Edmonton), Dancing on the Edge (Vancouver), Canada Dance Festival (Ottawa), Dance in Vancouver, The Western Front, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.

Sarah Wong is an emerging dance artist, choreographer and writer based in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her practice explores queer and racialized identity through the lens of ancestry. Using embodied experiences and archival materials, she creates within the realms of performance, installation, and creative writing. Her work has been presented in Vancouver at IGNITE! Youth Arts Festival, Vines Art Festival, and Boombox, and internationally at Mosaico Danza Interplay Festival (Turin, IT). She has worked with artists including Dumb Instrument Dance, Kinesis Dance somatheatro, plastic orchid factory, and Mardon & Mitsuhashi. She is currently engaged in an artistic mentorship with Justine A. Chambers through the support of the BC Arts Council Early Career Development Program. 

Wild Card is supported by the Responsive Small Neighbourhood Grants initiative and the BC Arts Council.