jeff tessier photography

Steph Seagram - Artist in Studio session

Huge thanks to Steph Seagram of the Cossart Exchange for sitting for a portrait this morning in her studio at 270 Sherman.

Two images after the jump ...

York Salmon

Starting tomorrow at the James North Studio, the Collective is hosting a themed group show, somewhat of a rarity for us.  The show is titled "Red".

The themed show provides a convenient opportunity for me.  I've been quietly mulling in my mind for some time now how I might engage or respond to a wonderful essay published last summer by the Hamilton poet and essayist John Terpstra.  John, by the way, gave me the idea for my popular 'Garage Doors of Hamilton' series.  I can't seem to get away from that guy.  Good thing, that.

The entire essay (there are two parts, published separately) is worth reading, and can be found in Hamilton Arts & Letters, volume 4, numbers 1 & 2.  For the JNS show I have produced a series of 48 photos that riff off of this passage (which I have abridged somewhat):

The houses in our neighbourhood sport a variety of brick colour, but one predominates…. This colour has a name.

York Boulevard used to be called York Street.…Until the 1970’s, York Street was the main commercial drag for the neighbourhood, when it was torn down in its entirety in the name of urban renewal and road widening. Reclaimed brick was in demand at the time, and if a salvager wanted a potential buyer on the other end of the telephone line to know what he was selling he would say York Salmon, and the buyer would know. The brick also went by the name West Hamilton Salmon, because under the shadow of the escarpment in the nearby Durand neighbourhood, many nineteenth century homes were being dismantled to make way for apartment towers.

The colour of brick is specific to the soil it was made from, and to the methods of baking, especially in the early days.

Here, the backyard where bricks continued to be made well into the twentieth century was in the valley of Chedoke Creek, which is only a few kilometres long between the escarpment it falls over and the marsh it empties into. York Salmon leapt from the sides of this neighbourhood creek.

Can you say that a house made of brick made from nearby claybeds looks better where it stands, that it is better able to evoke its particular landscape, and that its walls are better able to take in, to absorb, the feelings of those who live there?

I would like to know where I am.

Houses made from brick that is indigenous to the earth beneath our feet; which are an articulation of the earth. The longer I live with this fancy, the better I like it.

Images after the jump ...