PEOPLE...this place was built for them!

… for them and here is a tribute to those that made it happen: for them/ by them.

As promised last post this is the day of photoshoot sharing now that it actually happened. While many people were non-social distancing at the beach and causing the police and front-line staff a bit of stress, we here at Project 851 had a comfortable flow of the main players coming through in waves of celebration. We kept our distance while the photoshoot went on around us and took time to enjoy the fruits of our labour. Note: during this Project there was a different kind of fruiting labor going on: check the two beautiful children that were born during the construction phase.

Babies first:

1) lol okay maybe I”m not a baby but I am THE baby in our family (that’s Mom & Dad behind me); always good to know someone’s got your back!

2) Mom explaining the virtues of chocolate cake and cake sandwiches to Freya (Reece, the contractor, and Sara’s little one). First baby born during the construction of Project 851

3) Dino with baby big boy Bazil. Bazil might be the second baby born during the project but he is HUGE in cute factor and we might have to declare a tie with those two.

4) Mama Tamara, the master Bread maker with Mr. Cutie pie — I love this shot as there’s so much going on in it; foreground Mama & Bazil midground - people leaving and background - random neighbour working on his deck.

1-4 Family pods expanding their bubbles with friends of Project 851. I love that KoKo gets in there with a BIG smile on her little dog face. This is General Contractor, Onsite Contractor, Architect and Architectural photographer with family and all one big family extension of mine now! I don’t know how many people taking on a project like this can say that at the end but sure am glad to be one of them.

missing: Joe Fry from Hapa Collaborative (but don’t worry we have him and Louise in a shot below)

FOOD: can’t have a celebration without food (and drink!!)

Cheers to the corner stone of Project 851: like champagne to a ships bow!! (pilsner to granite)…

There are so very very many stories to tell with this Project and now that all the construction is virtually 99.9% done the plan is to continue with the blog and share as many as my memory provides, so that may be 2 more posts hahaha. This granite cornerstone came from an idea of Marianne’s when on her travels to Italy, hmmm a year or two ago?? Time flies when you’re pre-covid grounded. Nonetheless, she came back from Italy all excited about planting a gem right at the entrance of the site and as usual I just said “Cool, that sounds great”. Little did I know the stone would be sourced and cut to perfectly fit the space created during the concrete pour, what wasn’t I thinking right? As usual the Contracting team, the Czech specialists Dino on the source and Vlad on the cut of the stone went to work to make it happen. Vlad the master millwright put his precision carpentry skill to work and didn’t stop until it was perfect!! Cheers to the team!!

See if you can find Vlad in the crowd of amazing people who were here to make it all come together.

Cheers and as I always say to make magic happen you have to have a great TEAM and leave enough space to make sure your boat can float.

THANK YOU: Mama, family, friends and those who have now become friends. These are the core people who have been around since 2016 until Saturday May 9th 2020 who have been part of the team and let’s plan to celebrate for at least as long as it took us to get here!! (more to come)

COMMUNITY...closing of the project professionals

No post last week as preparing for the big final reveal so to speak. That means the final exterior photoshoot by Janis Nicolay (instagram pineconecamp) for Marianne Amodio (instagram mahgarchitects) and all of us who have played a role in Project 851. It felt right to post this on May 4th. It’s closer to Cinco de Mayo and it does feel like this team on the photoshoot has had many battles and won the war on liberating this old house into an amazing place of love and community interaction. Once those photos are published in special places I’ll be sure to keep you appraised.

Well, well, well, like all good things, they come to those who wait. This means the weather was not on our side this last weekend so you have those amazing photos to look forward to next week!! However, there is no way I could keep you just hanging there so take a look at the build up as we evolve towards “this” Saturday. Coming to you from a nice day somewhere, sometime, but this place…

Hopefully this Saturday will be amazing while we continue our social distancing-work/gathering to celebrate Project 851. We’ll be dancing about not getting in the way while sharing that great outdoor space as some of us will be inside, looking out. That’s not too shabby of a place to be either.

Looking forward to sharing fun of the exterior photoshoot next post!!

PROGRESS...how do we all fare?

This week has been strange and reflecting on how the world is doing makes it kind of odd to think of what the word Progress means. Progress in a time of pandemic makes you take pause and perhaps it’s the pause that is progress. What will be the silver linings after all is said and done?

People have most certainly been behaving strange of late and perhaps it’s been a combination of staying home (with family, like that won’t do it) and beautiful weather so going out anyway, with a full moon tossed in and growing fears settling in. I try to stay away from too much social media as the negative can be overwhelming: rise in theft, people acting crazy (ie. Nova Scotia dude killing 16), activists occupying elementary schools, parks being invaded with needles and tents, lots and lots of “be afraid activities”. Then there’s the other side that you often have to seek out to keep perspective balanced (and balanced it should be)

Progress: Yes tap onto the hyperlink on the word Progress and what do you find? It’s a discovery of silver lining in amazing women leaders that are making a difference. These interesting times might just be what we need to take on new perspectives and discover value where we didn’t see it before.

On that note let’s take a look at some of those things here at Project 851:

ART... meaning behind Elipsiprotomentophobia (Koko's pick)

Art by Future Headspace. This is Artdog Koko’s pick for today’s post. We have decided that Koko can pick a work of art in the house collection and we’ll let you know more about the piece and the artist in the ART posts. Personally, I couldn’t be happier to see that Artdog Koko picked Elipsoprotomentophobia as the first work up for discussion.

This is what the piece looks like!

The work is 3 dimensional and in 2 parts: The lightbox with formula and the 3 dice with letter on them that can spell memory or forget or any combination of the letters ie. momoet, fomery, morgrg, memoet … Behind this work of art is a very clever mind playing with the idea of the fear of never having an original thought, Elipsiprotomentophobia.

Although the word/title Elipsoprotomentophobia sounds Greek and is to a degree, it is not grammatically correct Greek. The grammatically correct word would be Elipsoprototypophobia. When I asked the Artist about that I was told “mentophobia may be incorrect but it flows better when saying it”. So nice to know the Artist thought about it and decided to go with the flow. Take a look at the formula close up, noting the elements of chance on top, with the roll of the dice.

This contemporary work came into the collection oh about 8 or so years ago and I find the work of Future Headspace that which tickles the neurons to make them dance you into a chuckle or a smirky smile. It’s more than interesting and sometimes dark, usually clever and always cheeky. In my opinion this work is in the same family as Laurence Weiner. I never asked the Artists if there is a connection but that’s where my dancing neurons go. I never asked the Artists if there is a connection but that’s where my dancing neurons take me. Perhaps I’ll ask next time we chat. Mind you he’ll probably say something like “na, my influences are Dali, Mucha, Takashi Murakami, Mœbius and David Lynch. This is because I know for sure there was a Kevin influence.

It’s wonderful to be in direct communication with the Artist and be able reflect and go back to discuss work. When this piece was rehung here at Project851 that’s exactly what I did as I’ve had many questions about the collection from others and it’s always nice to revisit the work — kind of like this formula…

ME: I often get asked about the symbol after the equal sign and what it means. My short answer is that it’s connected to the eye and seeing yourself as well as your place in the world. What’s your take on the symbol?

Future Headspace:

Here’s where the work started visually. The sign comes from one of the design ideas I was working on at the time but it never got really finished... the design for the eye as a symbol of the sun, earth and moon. The sun being the white bit of the eye, the earth being the black circle in the middle and the moon the light reflection. The pieces left over when you cut that out (the negative space) leaves the icon in the top of the photo which looks like and atom on its path around the nucleus and so it is used as a symbol for the answer to the equation because the answer will range from the atomic to the universal.

ME: …and the equation relates to the answer how?

Future Headspace:

The equation is a formula to work out the meaning of ones life... the audience applies their values to the equation and will be able to answer the question to the meaning of (their) life.... and yes, title is 'fear of never having an original thought' I couldn't have a known symbol to represent the answer as it would suggest the answer is already known... thus the symbol had to be an unknown quantity... and that eye design was on my wall as I was creating the piece and so got included.

ME: So you looked up and saw it?

Future Headspace:

I had a big eye made but couldn't figure out how to use it...

ah well - that is the start of it all —-that piece the one is called ICU.

the preliminary drawing for that is the one I use for my website eye

ME: It makes me think that the formula applies to your life at different times as you have different experiences so it’s an evolving answer. The answer changes depending on how you see yourself at that point in your path of living.

Futer Headspace:

Yes, true but it wasn't so much that... more to do with people searching for the meaning of life... looking for purpose.

I can't tell you the meaning of life... but I can give you the formula to figure it out yourself.

I think you can apply values... as in digits... input figures (as it were) into the formula and get an answer at any time.

You take the square root of life experiences - thus you take all your experiences and figure out what is it that has been multiplied by itself within those experiences, then multiply that by them the outcome of the memory x time - which in itself is either, take a memory and a time and multiply, OR take all memories and multiply by a period of time OR any variation between those 2 options. Simple really when you have the formula.

ME: Hmm, interesting but then you really only have the complete answer to the formula once you’re done or kaput, so to speak.

Future Headspace:

Yup. Exactly

ME: Obviously you’re a person with a name so why do you refer to your work as Future Headspace and not signing your name?

Future Headspace:

Because that's the artist name... the hammer head etc. All Future Headspace. Like Elton John.

yup - never signed work as the artist not important... the work should stand on its own, no matter who made it... getting rid of the the art market selling artists not artwork.

ME: I like your play with LIFE saying life is just an “f” in lie. You also play around with words all the time how did that start in the beginning of Future Headspace?

Future Headspace:

In the very early initiation of Future Headspace... started this... stopped straight away as didn't really work as I wanted it too... but still exists in the background.

These two links like the ones embedded in the words above were the oldest, the first as Future Headspace:

https://ifartart.wordpress.com/author/futureheadspace/

https://ifartart.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/clollage-1-e1281806795100.jpg?w=584

ME: Thank you Artdog Koko sure knows how to pick ‘em!! Until she’s barking at the next piece in the collection!