grunt-visa-375

My partnership with Grunt is focused on the revival of Al Neil and Carol Itter’s Blue Cabin to be used as a studio and living space for future artist residencies. The Cabin was a “squatters” residence located on the coast on the north shore that has recently come into the care of the Grunt gallery. My role is to collect research about the cabin and its history on the Dollarton foreshore, ultimately resulting in an informative poster for potential funders and the general public. It’s a pretty free form project with few deadlines and important dates, at least few that we have discussed in the past few weeks. My approach is to collect all of the information I can to become well acquainted with the many histories and spatial politics regarding this cabin and the area around it. From there I have the freedom to focus on different aspects of the subject to create an interesting and useful pamphlet.
I am using my research skills to develop a personal discourse to be organized and visualized later on. It’s interesting to think about the context in which this research will be displayed. It will be an informative poster and not a scholarly piece of writing so the information must be interesting, accessible yet not too dense, which is a challenge. This is a skill that I would like to work on, creating a digestible document that neither dumbs down the information, nor ostracizes stakeholders and public seeking info about this project. I am excited to see how my research is organized into a visual document, we have yet to get this far but this is an important ability that I would like to have.
I have been in contact with Dan Pon of Grunt. We exchange emails and meet every couple of weeks to discuss progress and narrow in on what the project will become. This is a project that will result in a poster with the ultimate goal of establishing a residency program, it also has an over arching mission of creating a discourse of spatial politics and art in Vancouver. The research I am collecting and the skills that I’m developing with this project seem to be building up to an open ended involvement with community information sharing and art programs in Vancouver. I am developing a strong understanding of community histories and art involvement in Vancouver and politics and look foreword for the coming weeks.