Tag Archives: gravelly beach

Spoken + Song

“Postcard” spoken word in Winterkeep’s ambient musical postcard

postcards inside of postcards

“Winterkeep is the artist name of Mat Tyrrell, currently living in Queenstown, New Zealand”

Backgroundr: in the blur of all the Internet communiques, a musician from New Zealand reached out asking permission to use spoken word from my “Postcards from Gravelly Beach” pod – which i think of as audio collages delivered via RSS.

I was slow in returning his request (travelling) but of course the answer was “fill yer boots”. Due to the delay, the track is not on *the album* but can listen via YT above. Of course, the album tracks all being named as “postcard #x” is appropriate.

I was very curious to see what he would come up with and while i of course recognize my disembodied voice, somehow removed enough to where i don’t recall what and where the reading emerges. Such curious joy – somehow the music often fits the foggy riffs my brain talks to itself with (if’n ya know what i mean): explorations, traveling outside of time and constraints and contexts, dream state in between gasps of breath.

Winterkeep’s Blurb: Taken from an upcoming album exploring discarded postcards from another time. Absolutely inspired by discovering Richard Skelton recently, it’s given me a new direction to take my music. I hope you enjoy ☠️ Words courtesy of Dave Thorvald Olson – Postcards from Gravelly Beach

I replied: 

Holy smokes, I have arrived back from a ramble in my erstwhile home country (Canada) to my accidental home (Japan) and here is my voice, recorded somewhere I can’t quite remember… On a ramble by train, by ship, by tuk-tuk… Was it the Himalayas? Arabia? The Mediterranean? or was it here in my backyard barn? The details don’t matter, the impact, I’m hearing myself remixed and floated back while I am wiped out in bed under a mosquito net – is a uniquely powerful intrigue.

Dig in on all channels:

Personal Musings

Diary: (inexplicably) myriad tasks from Gravelly Beach, Oct. 15, 2004

As it goes, while looking for something else, I came across a diary from 2005 – published in a proto-blog software (w/o RSS) made by Ben Livingston and hosted by Jay Stewart – or something like that… anyway… for whatever reason I can’t find the original text but oddly, there is a screenshot of “entry #5”.

Notable because of the monumental tasks checked down the list like no big deal.

  • Was days of running Zhonka Broadband ISP, making documents of all sorts
  • Alluding to starting “Postcards from Gravelly Beach” and “Choogle on with Uncle Weed” pods (check and check)
  • Moving to Bernice’s double wide on Gravelly Beach road
  • Doing renovations on the Puget Street house and sore back after a bit of shock seeing the police shakedown unsuspecting neighbour kids coming out of their house and laying them down in the middle of the road with guns drawn for no fcking reason(!)
  • Writing letters of judicial political support (lotta lobbying in those days)
  • Adding links to a website (hello here we are)
  • Thinking about starting on oil paintings (done) and a novel length project (not done)

Yep, all that like its no big deal.

Oh of course, what i was reading at the time (Salinger bio, Keroauc, Dostoevsky, Hemingway) – note namecheck for Last Word Books – and digging clams

Around the same time I also wrote the LSAT (law school admission test) studying for which is notably not on the list.

Anyhow, always be archiving.

Personal Musings

Diary: mowing lawns and Tchaikovsky (ca. 2005, Gravelly Beach)

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I hate mowing lawns worse than anything and I did it twice today.

Gravelly Beach, (off of Steamboat Island Rd.) Puget Sound – Bernice’s house, 2005

After a long hayfever delirium, shower, nap … now awake in yukata robe, loosley tied – a wee bit tattered since I acquired 1992 at a Tottori hot spring. 

Painting on backporch, almost out of colors so the sky is purple and swirly with white and tetch of black.  Last of blue goes for water and only green is toolight for dark trees but I slap it on anyhow. 

On back porch listening to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 – cannons and timpani and chimes. Oh yeah it is July 3rd so american fervor is fever pitched and fireworks spurt over the hills from several angles. I hardly notice under the wave of music – heck in Japan I saw fireworks which make joebob and his stash from the tribal stand look weak! 

Of course the rest of the world is at bar-b-q parties and parking lots watching skies for color but I am best trying to savor the last of this tranquil hide-away before Bernice returns next week. 

My studio is aclutter with 13 projects in process as I scramble to get stuff to a “sort done enough” mode to put on hold of a month or a decade.  A healthy sized wooden frame stretched and staple with hemp canvas piled now with a barrage of Belize bric a brac – postcards, painting and pics amongst transport tickets, government stubs, and shells.  europa painting (acrylics) hanging here and there – seems close but all needing time to refine, but not tame, the spontaneity of the composition and stroke. 

Gravelly Beach series of oils are here and there (some larger than others) but mostly dry but some unfinished – oil take so long to dry I am not sure if I should make another pass on them now – yes i’d best whilst still here and can work en plein in the heat of moment. 

Scrapbooks unfinished, notebooks partially filled, papers to go in binders, things to burn, people to leave, things to sell, give, lose, wrap. 

Rim shot fireworks, candles flicker in the breeze, 3 round candles with stands found while packing – or rather sorting stuff from one house to store at another awaiting sale. Can’t exactly “move” unless a destination has been established: Deep Cove, a community in North Vancouver looking likely – a New Belgian beer and chai tea in ceramic mug complete the table tableau.

In breaks of action, ohhs and ooohs bounce across the water – strange since I *never* hear anyone and the distance is hard to tell in the inky air.  Drum circle bounces across, past the commercial fishing boat moored up for partying, from Cooper Point hippie hoe down, a neighbour cranks Boz Scagg’s Lido Shuffle which always (along with a certain Fleetwood Mac song) reminds me of 3rd grade afternoons at a baseball park, sneaking in woods with … {sigh}

DaveO Shop, Japan Cottage Musings

Suez Panoramas, Global Postcards & Fungible Shiba Inu stamp

Video

Arts and crafts update from the Kura barn with  recent dossiers of various mixed media projects including: Suez Canal panoramas, more Kerala India spy photos & sherbet-coloured houses in oil pastels, poetry & travelogues on hotel stationæry, and the circular story of a postcard series from Cascadia, also a fun-gible Shiba Eno stamp. 

Get in on the fun. #hint https://daveostory.com/shop

PS happy to be “at home” at Tsuchida Cottage 

Let’s enjoy global ephemera and postal goodtimes #daveoshop

Gravelly Beach

Trees, Shadow, Beach (& tubed paint riff)

Another en plein air oil-on-stretched-canvas painting view of Gravelly Beach for a bit of sunshine in your day.

Shadows & trees at the end of Puget Sound, 2005, oil on canvas

Note: Shall I make a batch of postcards for sale from the series?

PS Many folks don’t realize that VvG was an early adopter of pre-mixed oil paints in tubes and often used them direct from the tube (both in terms of not mixing colors, and sometimes not using a brush)… Previously, generally painters ground their own compounds and mixtures into oil paints in studio. Of course these convenient tubes allowed him to create very rapidly finishing a canvas or sometimes two in a single day outside.

A la Carte, Personal Musings

Tsuchida Cottage Art Gallery (in process)

Image

New addition by Jean Smith (see also: Mecca Normal) / this lady reminds me of someone, somehow… do you know who?

Needs properly hung but wanted you to say “hello”.

Also, glimpses of:
* Miyake Noriko
* Grateful Dead pacific Nw box by Roy Henry Vickers  (thanks Trev!)
* Gravelly Beach series (me)

Elsewhere in house: Michal Korman & many others (this is a note to self to document further)

Note: There is another by Jean who is doing so many interesting projects to build an Free Artist Residency (FB)  somewhere in BC… check her interviews for more of her great story.

Parties + Events + Invites

Giftbag Round-up / Dave + Ryoko 4-20 Kekkon-shiki

Gallery

At weddings in Japan – unlike in “western” countries, guests usually bring cash in special envelopes as a gift rather than a household appliance or other oddment from a registry. The cash is often in 2 envelopes – one as a “gift” and other the cover their portion of party expenses. Regardless, the notes as fresh and crisp and in a special envelope with appropriate decorations and minimal written sentiments.

The guests are almost always sent on their way with a gift bag of treats with items which reflect the spouses personality (not always the case), or the region or season of the wedding. Anyhow, we took the gift bag part on with great enthusiasm and vigour as we wanted all the guests to take a piece of our heart reflected in hobbies, interests and whatnot.

As it goes, with all the work assembling the gift bags of disparate objects, we neglected to document the items dutifully. Fortunately our pal Robert Scales did a pretty decent job of capturing the assortment which included the following

  • Bizen Yakima saké cup – nearby Bizen one of 6 great centres of pottery of Japan, the cups were handmade by master potter Hosokawa-san and fired with no glaze for 2 weeks at 1000 degrees Celsius in a massive kiln
  • Note: cups were wrapped in newspaper and packed into hemp cloth drawstring bags

  • Matcha tea – from Kyoto, in a metal tin with bamboo accessories: whisk chasen and scoop chashaku
  • Gig Poster – the Taisho-era jazz/travel inspired art for the wedding made by Joanna Ambrosio of Ganamo Design (Vancouver/Mexico) and professionally printed (A4) by Fujii Printing
  • Sakura oil painting print – from Dave’s Gravelly Beach series, printed A4 by Fujii Printing, signed and number (150)
  • Commemorative postcards (2) – featuring paintings by Dave of Rural Caprine Farm’s noted gingko tree in full yellow splendour and haiku postbox (there is the actual postbox on site) of a poem about letters and peaches. Postcard backs designed with Olympia typewriter. Printed by moo.com
  • Thank you card – hand-lettered (Japanese and English) by Ryoko, accessorize with stamps from US and Vatican, printed by Fujii Printing
  • Incense – ceremonial from Bali
  • Ceningan Divers invitation – a special offer from our friends with a dive resort in Bali
  • Vendor thank you – round-up of all the vendors who assisted, contributed etc to the wedding, including URLs for thanks and reviews etc.
  • Gift bag – blue heavy corrugated paper bags with string handles from Usigaya decorated by hand with a special ink stamp (thanks parents) and gold/silver paint marker flag flourish (by Dave)
  • Finally, a special “typewriter card” paper clipped to each one to make unique and washi tape to close each bag.

All the materials were ordered, delivered etc and then moved to the goat farm’s kitchen table where dear helpful pals (under supervision of lawyer Lindsay and the Jen-eral) assembled and moved down to the goat farm so the area looked like a splendid festive morning. Then, each guest (mostly) received their bag with (hopefully) delight.

Note to self: there is a snap somewhere of the guide to assembling gift bags to add here.

Gravelly Beach

Background about “Postcards from Gravelly Beach” painting series

“Postcards from Gravelly Beach” series is underway in my #ArtEveryDay series.

Backstory:

Lived in a trailer we rented from Bernice on Gravelly Beach Rd.

Some crazy shit went down with the house I owned in town which required a ton of energy and stress.

When returned home, i’d rush out to the backyard before the end of the sun with a basic oil painting set and an easel.

i painted the view in 20 or so ways, in half a dozen mediums, various sizes, styles and techniques – all of which you’ll see you’series, ll see during the next fortnight.

The freedom of painting re-sparked my poetic exploits as I started a spoken word literature podcast called Postcards from Gravelly Beach which featured my own work and works of my heroes.

I found it tremendously therapeutic to give my words and audience as well as cathartic to say the words out loud during a time of transition.

Wasn’t long after that on a trip to Europe, I wrote a significant sized cycle of poetry and painted a load of landscapes with a stack of sketches waiting for rainy days to finish.

In all, that Renaissance all started with about $20 worth of art supplies.

Curious to see which postcards folks enjoy the most.

#ArtSavesLives