Ingrid

Ingrid on the street talking about male equipment. Men can pee way easier than women.

I like it that she points when she talks. She has many important points to make.

Silken poem

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silken, soft men
whose trunks
move along the street for them.

their tiny paws are vulnerable,
so sometimes they glove them,

their pinks corrode
under this gaze.

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Copyright 2005 Catherine Moran.

Windows aglow with fake blood and panties...

This art window had a lot of fake blood sprayed on the inside of the windows and old panties hung on washing lines with various ages posted beside them. The lady inside did a lot of writhing about. It also had many leaves stuck in it. These are my bestest friends Ingrid and Xochitl looking away from it, as one should...

Magazine Ladies

These ladies were covered in cut up magazines. They would read them and then do lady-like things like apply face powder or refill sugar jars. They were both funny and creepy.

More performnce art...

Queen West Red Light project

These are photos from the Queen West Art Fair's Red Light Project which was performance art along Queen street, taking place in different windows. This one was my favourite. This man wrote a long story backwards for an hour and a half. The best part was the story was really good. It was very well written. It was first person, about girls and women and how he got into S & M. Wow! Impressive work.

Touchless

Here's a poem I wrote -

Touchless

These lonely arms
Feel like phantom limbs
Without you.

There are only
Wooden bodies everywhere
That cannot be made soft
By these God-damned
Loving hands.

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Copyright 2005
Catherine Moran.

The Love of Tiny

Look - some people love tiny so much they even quilt it.

Beautiful Northcote Backyard

These are my good friends N and L in their backyard. I used to live with them in a shared house and, Boy! Do I miss having a backyard. In the summer, the trees grow huge, and green and fall generously over the table. When you're sitting out there it feels like a safe, warm cocoon. The Japanese maple sits in the shade, radiant and auburn, the ferns stretch out their leaves, as if waiting for a touch. Snails slowly slide from one green thing to the next. It seems, people can sit in that yard and talk forever. Time waits for us. I miss them... even though I still see them. It seems any time you make a change, living arrangements, relationships... etc., there's often some pang of regret. They are such good good people and every time I see them I feel thankful for having somewhat haphazardly, fallen into their lives. Thank God they were gracious and loving and kind, and let me live there while I completely unravelled and then, somehow, came back together and took off again in another direction. They are smart as fuck and as funny and caring as the best people you'll ever know. Sometimes you can keep friends, even after they really know you.

End of the Cottage Season

The best things about summer in Northern Canada are only possible in the summer. Escaping far up north to the cottage where the trees never stop and the smell of living things is pungent in the air. The way the sun hits the various leaves of various trees and the sound of the loons on the lake. I am so fortunate to have a piece of this, through my boyfriend Mathew and his family. It has made our summer absolutely wonderful. If it weren't for that refuge, I don't know what we'd do with this concrete excuse for a city. Living right downtown and working there makes it hard to see beyond it, without something else...

Pink Tar Bulb

Pink as a start, is a good place to start. It connotes prettiness and sexiness. I think this piece is pretty sexy. Fall bulb breaks through tar. How symbolic.

Fall is in the air.

Library of Old

Here's the Kind of library I wished I worked in. It must be quiet there. Mmmm....

The Cottage

Late night at the cottage. Mathew's nephew James playing the guitar remarkably well. Everyone starts singing along and music fills the dense summer air, travels out over the lake and gets taken away... to other cottages, to the loons that live on the lake with their babies, to the water and the sky... up into the air...

Summer should feel like this, I think. For once something feels right and good.

End of the night...

This is how the cake looks at the end of the night. The party is simmering down. Loud bouts of laughter are still heard from different areas around the cottage but most of the guests have gone. Every surface is covered with beer bottles, plastic plates, wine glasses. Bits of cake sit, somehow fittingly, in the shrimp dip bowl. Cigarette butts float merrily in a half empty cup of tea. Someone on the deck recounts the story of his dog. The only remaining child has a blanket thrown over his head as he sleeps, completely unaware, on the sofa.

It has been a long day.

Barbie Cake Fantastic

This Barbie cake was made by the mother of a childhood friend of mine, E*. Every birthday this girl E* had, her mother made an even more fabulous Barbie cake than the year before, and every birthday she sent the party guests home with a photo of her creation. I guess she wanted our mothers to know how inferior they were and she wanted all us little girls to be jealous ad infinitum. She was a mean mother and often ordered us around throughout the entire birthday party. We were shuttled from one party event to the next like little sheep, with loud orders and announcements like "Now girls, you will watch E* play pin the tail on the donkey" or "Girls! Line up neatly and watch E* open her presents". Birthday parties were heavy business back then (and probably still are). They were certainly treated very seriously. I rarely see little pickled weiner hotdogs but when I do, I always remember E* and her mother. They were another rare but valuable commodity in the dream-like realm of birthday party memories. Those and little tiny pickles. Ah... mothers who knew how to throw the cogs in the memory-making machine of childhood. At these parties E* would also commonly order us around. I guess she felt the thrill of the power too. I remember us all being ushered into her room to listen to the new Michael Jackson record on her little pink hi-fi. A room full of girls in party dresses squished on her fluffy bed. I must have been genuinely jealous because my diary entries were consistently filled with lies about what grandoise events would occur at my next birthday party. Guest appearances of the likes of Olivia Newton John or an entire underwater themed celebration. Those diaries were also filled with lies about puppies and kittens. For example: " Another wonderful day! I received 5 kittens and 8 puppies as a surprise gift today!". Pretty much every day had an entry that went somewhere along those lines...

I wrote a story about E* and her crazy family. You can read it here.

Taken In.

This is founded on an old dry cleaners tag that says "Taken in". It is composed of an old lighter fluid container, dry seads and a stem of a fake flower. It is one of my favourite pieces. Perhaps because it feels deeply evocative to me. Maybe that's just the personal mathematics that were involved in making it. God knows if these things ever translate. Hopefully bare composition translates. In making these boxes I sometimes feel the arranging and rearranging is a way of dealing with pain. It feels better after the "things" have fallen into "place". Here's to hoping that the the concepts of "thing" and "place" are not just relative, or relative to something others can enjoy. Art always feels so bloody seclusive. Welcome to my own tiny world.

Tiny Bottles

Tiny bottles can't hold very much. Could anyone fit a tiny ship into one of these? Perhaps they could hold enough wine to make an ant drunk... or a fairy see fairies. I have quite a collection of tiny bottles. Some are old demerol bottles that I unearthed from an old hospital dump... Some were purchased in Chinatown for a small sum. They make me happy. I'm not sure why. Small containers are comforting. I also like tiny teacups (see the post - lonely frog - for a picture). Maybe it's all about tea parties. Little girls like tea parties and I guess I miss being a little girl. Being a woman is not nearly as fun. Life got really complicated somewhere along the way.

Behind these bottles you can see a passport photo that someone lost and I found. Her eyes look crazy.

Never Love a Stranger

Well who to love then?

Isn't everyone a stranger? Strange is a good word. She "made strange". Why don't we talk like that anymore? Make strange. I want to "make strange".

This is a scrap of paper that someone wrote the title of a book on, and then slowly, quietly, mysteriously, slid it across the desk to me. (I work at a library). Asking for it, without asking. Warning, perhaps. He is a grumpy old man who loves romance novels and Tom Robbins.

I kept it.

Rooftop.

Watching old westerns on the roof.

Summer is best for endeavours such as these.



Night time.

I miss roof tops. Being above the city is a great feeling.

It makes one want to take pictures.

Only You....

(When there was love)

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Once, not so long ago
I collected garbage
and arranged it, and rearranged it. and collected it
and glued it and cleaned it and sorted it.

In my little room atop that creaky Victorian house,
I made mobiles and boxes and sculptures...

this is one.