Eastside Culture Crawl and Cineworks present an evening of films by and about Vancouver-based artist Carole Itter, recipient of the 2017 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts. The Arts Factory, 281 Industrial Ave., Friday, Nov. 23, 6:30 p.m., doors / 7 p.m. start. Free event – limited seating, you must RSVP to attend (popcorn + cash bar).
Carole Itter’s art is labour intensive but she balks when asked how long it takes to complete a project – she doesn’t want to measure the time it takes, it’s a process that takes as long as it does to complete the work.
The artist, who used to split her time between her Vancouver home and the “Blue Cabin” on the North Vancouver waterfront, largely creates her art, be it film, objects, sculptures or written word, from things she finds, always related to the environment and especially the Burrard Inlet where she likes to spend time just watching the water.
“The pleasure of working on (an art piece) is not something I want to measure – not the number of hours,” she said – it’s not healthy to think about time, she adds. “We are so tied to the work week – time has tied us up and I want to release it as an artist.”
As part of the Eastside Culture Crawl in Vancouver, the four films Itter has made over the last two and a half decades will be shown, followed by a 1991 documentary about her life by David Rimmer.
Itter said she doesn’t call herself a filmmaker, rather at times she has come across some material and an idea that inspired her and made her think: “Wouldn’t it be great to make a film?”
She finds the artistic medium of film the most interesting because it can show flow – filming on water has allowed her capture the surface patterns of light on the Burrard Inlet and how it changes as the water moves.
“If you’re a water watcher, you see all these changes – they’re constant,” she said.
Itter is considered an interdisciplinary artist having created art in several genres. She was born in Vancouver in 1939, and studied at UBC and Vancouver School of Art (which later became the Emily Carr University of Art and Design) as well at L’Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. Her art was part of the international touring exhibition “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” which was shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2008.
The four films that will be shown on Nov. 23, Float (1993), A Fish Film (2003), Inlet (2009) and Tarpaulin Pull (2006), are the only ones she has made.
Float has been shown many times, but this time Jem Noble has digitized the three-channel film and he will present them so they are lined up and timed in a new way, Itter explained.
Itter made the film on the Burrard Inlet – floating on the water are a thousand of pieces of manufactured wood that she found and collected. Having spent so much time on the inlet at Maplewood Flats, Itter knows how the tides change and currents move, so she planned the filming for June when there would be exceptionally high tides.
She enlisted eight recent Emily Carr University graduates to move the pieces within a boom – so they wouldn’t float away – and outfitted them in wetsuits and fed them while waiting for the tide to come in. Then she let the current move the wood toward the Blue Cabin – it was the manufactured wood moving back into the forest, she explained.
The unexpected part of the film was the guttural noise the wood made as it moved on the water, making the pieces into impromptu instruments.
Another film that will be shown is Tarpaulin Pull, which is literally the filming of a mass of tarpaulins that are woven together and pulled along in the Burrard Inlet. For years, Itter would throw tarpaulins onto the woodpile by the Blue Cabin. After they got worn out, they were discarded into a pile. Itter finally took the “foul” pile of discarded tarpaulins, whic h she described as having the colour of “filthy blue,” and brought them down to the beach and started weaving and sewing them together.
As the tide came in, she’d pull them up and hide them behind her rowboat, only to pull them out when the tide was down to continue attaching them together with garden twine. Finally, she had a massive tarpaulin, more than six metres. Itter enlisted videographer Krista Lomax to walk with her camera high above her head, dressed in a wetsuit, and videotape as she rowed with the tarp over the water.
The planning of a film, the preproduction work which Itter enjoys the most, was time consuming because she knew the pull had to be filmed in one take – it was being floated away and thrown out.
Much of Itter’s work centres around the protection of Burrard Inlet, where until recently she spent much of her time in the legendary Blue Cabin, with her late partner, Al Neil, an artist and musician. Her time by and on the water has had a massive influence on her work.
“The impact we are having on the environment makes me think the hardest – it’s what I want to show when I make something,” Itter said.
Itter is known for her large wooden rattles that she made from found wood, but she said she loves doing “anything new and different.”
Itter received the Audain Award for Lifetime Achievement, which is given out annually to a British Columbian artist. Itter said the award came as a surprise, she said. But because it came with a sum of money, $30,000, she has launched a new film project called Please Meet The Geese Who Have Lived Here Forever, a fable about a goose and its 16 young goslings. It was filmed over six days with assistant director Allison Hrabluik. The film, although it’s a fable, is meant to raise awareness about the Canada goose and the threat to its existence.
The Eastside Culture Crawl and Cineworks are presenting Itter’s four films as well as a rare documentary about her work by renowned Vancouver-based experimental filmmaker, David Rimmer’s 1991 film Where Streets Are Paved with Gold, an SD video from 16-millimetre film (28 min.) on Friday, Nov. 23 at 7 p.m. at The Arts Factory, 281 Industrial Ave., Vancouver. The evening also includes an eight-minute untitled film by Michael Smart and Tom Chartrand.
The event is free but there is limited seating, so attendees must RSVP at caroleitterfilmnight.eventbrite.ca.
