11 August 2024 – I’m in behind City Centre Artist Lodge, once again epicentre for the Vancouver Mural Festival, now in its final day.

Much to my surprise, I’m not much engaged with VMF official activities this year, but the hoop-la does have me noticing things with a sharper eye — colours, shapes, energy, juxtapositions — as i weave through the adjacent alleys.

I don’t yet know it, but I am curating my very own collection of white bunnies.

Starting with reflections + fence + signage + curb stones in the north/south alley right behind the Artist Lodge…

followed by resting man + dog + red-X motif + pop-up art display in the east/west alley between Main/Quebec/5th/4th…

which brings the white-bunny concept into my life.

It’s the framed quote, bottom-right in the line-up: “Art is a white bunny in a scrap metal yard.”

I like this! Deliberate bunnies, and “found” bunnies as well — whatever adds scamper & bounce to the streetscape.

Right opposite, same alley: four chairs lined up in a deliberate and carefully positioned tribute to the looming chair in the gigantic wall mural behind them…

one detail in Andy Dixon’s 2017 VMF mural Red Studio (After Matisse), his 90-foot-high portrayal of his own Vancouver studio.

After that, my white bunnies are whatever & wherever delights me, whether day-glo construction guidelines on the sidewalk before me at Quebec & East 4th…

or white communications discs high on a roof beyond me, punctuating the tower to their left…

or an eye-level fluorescent X just south of Quebec & East 2nd. (Only later, at home, do I notice the red-X motif in the alley with the pop-up gallery, and realize there must be a connection.)

One final white bunny, down by False Creek.

A multi-coloured white bunny, mind you — art is inclusive! — painted by Nature, and proclaiming a message that seems hard to believe, this hot mid-August day.

Fall is on its way.