“I miss you”, in Trinity-Bellwoods park, Toronto, April 2009

Well, time flies. The MSF show was tonight (and through Sunday) at La Petite Mort and everything went well. Turnout was great, and most of the peices sold — mine was snapped up pretty quick. My favor­ite peice is a pho­to­graph by my friend Pedro Isztin of his father and nephew. Check out the show if you’re bum­ming around Ott­awa this week­end with noth­ing to do. The pho­to­graph above, “I miss you,” was my donation.

I was in Toronto last spring for a con­fer­ence. After the second day, I rode my bor­rowed bicycle home from the CN Tower, through Trinity-Bellwoods park, up the little hill, and along the path past the ten­nis courts toward Col­lege and Dan­forth. That is where I saw the let­ters stitched into the fence. It was spring, still wet, and although the sun was warm it was still a little cold too. I don’t know why the words were there, or what they mean. I found them com­fort­ing, in a way, like I had been let into a private con­ver­sa­tion between lov­ers, albeit in one direction.

It was a pho­to­graphy con­fer­ence. Not want­ing to look like a big nerd (or at least a big­ger one than I already am), I brought my little Min­olta pocket cam­era with me. Maybe that makes me even nerdier. Whatever. In any case, the little no-controls-all-automatic brick of hard plastic and metal did a great job on that trip, and I got a few great pho­tos. Great because they are import­ant to me.

It was a heady time, those months that I spent shut­tling back and forth to the Big Smoke. I was there three times in six weeks. Each visit brought me a little closer to the pos­sib­lity of mak­ing some­thing of pho­to­graphy. Every time I went things seemed a little more real. I gained a lot of con­fid­ence. Going to Toronto gave me the push I needed to start a series of invest­ments that have res­ul­ted in some inter­est­ing, excit­ing, and reward­ing work over the past few months. This photo is a product and a sym­bol of the pro­cess of re-investent that has allowed me to grow as an artist. It was long overdue.

It’s really nice to see your work hanging in a gallery.