Broken city, a spider web, and purple flowers

Dear Sarah - Day 145 of our daily drawing exchange

May 24, 2025
Hi Nikki,

The sun is shining here, and my friend Jen came over and helped me clean my deck and move plants around. The fibreglass deck is covered with a snap-together grid which covers up the gross old fiberglass deck but also traps dirt and other plant detritus. We (she) moved all the plants and then we pulled up part of the grid and cleaned underneath, and then moved all the plants back and did the other half. We messed up the grid in a couple of places and had to work backwards. Imagine us kneeling on the grid, swearing at it and groaning because our knees really hurt! We laughed a lot, but had to take lots of stretching breaks for our backs and hips. I also washed the deck glass and windows. Then I took her for lunch because she is awesome and the deck looks great.

Yesterday I had an afternoon with my grandson and we hiked up Mt Tolmie. He was the path-chooser and tree-climber and he loved it. Then we went for ice cream. All very mood-enhancing!

I'm attaching the results of a drawing challenge I gave him over lunch: I drew a few lines on his LED pad and he made a very simple and effective addition. The other pic is of some flowers I drew using leftover paint from the sunsets a few days ago.

Tomorrow there's a family brunch because it's my birthday on Monday, and then I'm spacing out get-togethers with friends over the week.

I'm good for a 4 pm (my time) Zoom tomorrow afternoon.

XO S

Hi Sarah!

Today’s drawing is ideas sprawled across the page… No attempt at perspective or scale but rather, an impression…

I’m starting to think about my psychogeography project (physical legwork to be done mostly in Paris in September) and have been reading about abstraction, art, experience, mapping, and a bunch of other stuff… (sauntering with turtles, for example). I’m considering a project that involves the 37 bridges of Paris. And zines. And random connections made between strangers.

All of that noodling around, of course, has led to a lot of questions. What is a bridge? (what a GREAT symbol to play with!!). What is the role of bridges in the urban environment? What happens to a person crossing between the Left and Right banks? Or this side and that side of the Bow River? How do we form virtual bridges between people we have never met? Or dear friends who live on the other side of a mountain range? How do we create inter-cultural bridges when the world seems hell bent on dividing us all into us and them?

I have no real idea where I’m going with all of this, but that’s where today’s dog’s breakfast of a broken city came from…

See you tomorrow -
Nikki