A day trip

The other day we went to Hamilton. It's about an hour down the highway, and there is a GO bus every half hour, so, easy-peasy. But we rarely do it!

We were first on the double-decker bus, so sat up top at the front! I wish we'd been in those seats on the way home, because something happened on the highway that slowed our progress a great deal, and we couldn't see anything. Of course, only an accident with fire trucks and tow trucks could liven up that very boring stretch of suburban road.

Our main target was the Art Gallery of Hamilton, where they are showing photographs by Vivian Maier. We first met up with a friend for lunch, walking up James Street, which is apparently "the art street." The thing we hear, here in Toronto, is that all the starving artists have been priced out of their big-city haunts and moved down the lake to Hamilton. We were told "art is the new steel." Huge steel plants sit empty, great spaces for ... whatever! And indeed, our friend is on the board of a little gallery on James Street.

I took a picture of myself in a mottled mirrored window, before going into the Vivian Maier show.

It was quite big, about four galleries worth of photos. Great portraits of people seen on the street, self-portraits of all sorts, some colour pictures and some 8-mm movies. Hers is such a weird story and we haven't seen many, many of her photos.

There was also a show of Norval Morrisseau's work and a show called Hamilton Now: Object. This is part of that show, a piece of fabric made of twists and turns of the same photograph.

More fabric, with the pictures on all sorts of scales.

This was also in that Hamilton Now: Object show, but what's important here is Elaine wearing a hat I made in 2014. I think here she was looking through some VR glasses to see wild sparkles and flowers above the blue vessel!

There was Speaking for Herself, women's art from their permanent collection.

This was part of a series, where the artist had taken quotes from ordinary women and illustrated them with Barbie clothes.

We couldn't pass up the VW bus, or in this case the Bruegel-Bosch bus.

This great piece was in the stairwell, by Tim Zuck. Nice.

Then we were tuckered out and headed back to the bus station to go home. It was an old art deco train station, repurposed after that train line shut down. Very stylish.

And then, after some sort of jam on the highway, we got home safe and sound.