26 February 2026 – From far off, even from medium far-off, the stainless steel in Natalie McHaffie’s sculpture Solo appears to be exactly what it is:
solid bars of stainless steel.
When I move in close, my cheap-end-of-the-range (and very old) iPhone cannot cope.
It reads that solid steel as a lustrous fabric rippling in the breeze.
Entirely misleading.
Also magical.
Posted by icelandpenny on 26 February 2026
https://icelandpenny.com/2026/02/26/up-close-misleading/
24 February 2026 – Rays of sunshine flashing all over the place, and colours bouncing around with them.
Well, no, not literally. But it looks, it feels, like that.
I stand at the intersection of E. Broadway & Main, deliberately missing two green lights, transfixed by the transformation of the Yarn Bomber’s “Be Kind” slogan and companion heart.
After years of exposure, the colours have faded and the wool is bedraggled. Construction screening now hides all that, and today’s sunshine throws us the words and image in dramatic, high-contrast relief.
Moments later I turn into the alley that will lead me to the Salvation Army drop-off centre, my eye primed for the bounce of light, colour and shadow.
Barely into the alley, and a perfectly ordinary wooden staircase delivers all that.
A few more steps, and look: green/yellow wooden pole, blue/pink/black garbage bins beyond, and down there in the distance, the turquoise blunt end of a Sally Ann truck. (I just have to stand in this ramshackle alley and look around. Colour smacks me in the eye.)
Even this tattered fabric car-shelter is on the bounce. Metallic silver, varying shades of blue in the window panel, and a vivid yellow RESERVED on the pavement for extra impact.
How fitting that right at the Scotia St. end of the alley, just where I turn into the Sally Ann compound, I find the splashiest colour bounce of all: this 2020 VMF mural, Vancouver: a People-Powered Future. (I later learn the artist, Oakland Galbraith, is only 12 years old at the time, which makes it even more wonderful.)
Next day, more sunshine, more bounce — starting with my own slight geographic bounce, down to the Devonian Harbour Park on Burrard Inlet at the edge of Stanley Park.
I happen to think the park’s signature sculpture installation is OK-fine, but not outstanding. Today, in all this blazing sunshine, it is outstanding. Today, there is nothing solo about Solo (Natalie McHaffie, 1986); it offers a whole conversation among its elements.
Neon-bright turquoise cedar panels play against stainless steel framework that seems to ripple in the light…
and, together, they throw sharp black outlines against the green grass.
Later, at the eastern end of my walk, I eye the bright edge to each peak on the Canada Place fabric roof…
and realize the sun can throw sharp white outlines just as easily as black.
Clever old sun.
Posted by icelandpenny on 24 February 2026
https://icelandpenny.com/2026/02/24/on-the-bounce-2/
21 February 2026 – Still, poised, suspended on its plumb line.
Waiting.
Waiting for spring.
Posted by icelandpenny on 21 February 2026
https://icelandpenny.com/2026/02/21/waiting/
8 February 2026 – I thought line & light were already magic. Then came the surprise.
The first “line” is, literally, a line-up.
I’m walking north on Quebec, and I see what is surely the year’s first sidewalk line-up for a cone from Earnest Ice Cream.
I almost join the line; don’t; almost turn back to join the line when I see this fellow ahead of me enjoying his cone so very much.
But I don’t. I walk on down to False Creek.
Where quite different lines greet me — racing shell pods just this side of the Olympic Dock, their vertical above/below lines bisected by the horizontal line of the water. And, bouncing all around, scattershot rays of sunlight.
Anchoring the east end of False Creek, more lines — all those triangles that slot together to make Science World’s big round geodesic dome. Plus sunlight, playing favourites with a few of the facets.
My eye is in for the rectilinear. Then I get distracted by this evergreen.
Nature doesn’t do rectilinear! But, lines are lines. Just… different lines. And still the bounce of light, above, behind, and filtering through.
Back to the rectilinear…
and back to nature.
The silhouette of the crow, the curve of the branches; everything drenched in light.
I turn south along the little creek that flows through Hinge Park. There has been some reed-clearing here, I think, creating a more defined line through the water. I learn on the railing, watch ducks paddle their rounded lines through all those verticals, real and reflected.
And then… and then I realize I’ve just cocked my head, probably pulled a quizzical face.
What is that sound? Faint tappings, rhythmic, and, even fainter, the crooning of an almost subliminal voice.
I follow my ears on down the creek-side path. Then I see it. A bit farther south, spanning the creek. The industrial pipe cum “railway engine” cum pedestrian bridge…
cum percussive instrument.
Thanks to the three people sitting on top.
I am enchanted. Look! A boy at one end, a couple of 20-somethings at the other; all three tapping sticks against the metal, woven into each other and into the recorded soprano vocal line that inspires them.
The young men remain seated. The boy moves around, explores other surfaces.
He braces against the “smoke stack”…
and then, sure-footed, turns to make it his own next musical instrument.
I lean there until the music ends. The boy disappears down thriough one off the cut-outs, obedient to his mother’s call. The young men notice me, and wave. I applaud, then tap my heart. They tap their hearts, and throw their arms wide in my direction. I throw my arms wide, right back at them. We beam at each other.
Magic.
Posted by icelandpenny on 8 February 2026
https://icelandpenny.com/2026/02/08/line-light-magic/
31 January 2026 – And then…
the rain came back.
Posted by icelandpenny on 31 January 2026
https://icelandpenny.com/2026/01/31/and-then/
28 January 2026 – Or, maybe: “Colour.” Or, for the old-school among us: Colour [sic].
Meaning, I have found myself playing with the concept of colour these last few days. It is all thanks to a comment by J. Walters on my previous post — her pleasure in the “gorgeous colours” in Vancouver, viewed from her farther-east landscape of “variegated white.”
(By the way, if you don’t already know her Canadian Art Junkie blog, give it a visit.)
So I walk around, and I amuse myself by seeing colour differently. Seeing it in relation to other attributes.
Colour: Brilliant
What’s more brilliant than reflected colour, bouncing off the plate glass of a downtown tower, under a blazing sky?
Colour: Muted
A murmur of colours, quietly living and breathing within the textures of their host, a tree trunk.
Colour: Juxtaposed
I’d not have bothered with either, on its own. Dead leaves. Pretty but unexceptional tiny blossoms. Yawn. The appeal is the contrasts of their juxtaposition. Deep rust vs sunshine yellow; battered vs fresh; last-season vs right-now.
Colour: Unexpected
One of the Monty Python skits had a character intone: “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” Well, nobody expects a Very Colourful Dog on a tree trunk, either.
Colour: Obsessed
Namely, the colours I discover while indulging my obsessions. Two examples.
1 – My obsession with neighbourhood street-side “fairy trees,” decorated by civic-minded residents, sometimes with a swing for extra delight. Plus, in this specific example, our “Unexpected Dog.”
2 – My obsession with winter moss. In this case, right at the base of my “Colour: Muted” example above.
It’s all colour, if you want it to be. Hurray for colour.
Posted by icelandpenny on 28 January 2026
https://icelandpenny.com/2026/01/28/colour/
24 January 2026 – Let us first define our terms.
Winter, not as most of the country is currently experiencing it, but winter as we experience it here at sea level on the Canadian west coast. More precisely, because the quip fits: winter as we experience it here on the wet coast.
While much of the rest of Canada contends with brutal temperatures and heavy snowfall…
our shops run out of umbrellas.
I see this sign in the VanDusen Botanical Garden gift shop, where I loiter awaiting my partner for our planned winter walk in the Garden.
Sun overhead, and hoar frost sparkles on the grass.
Tree trunks and branches flourish their winter coats of moss.
Sometimes in great goofy patches…
sometimes as a shimmering outline, viewed from the shadow side of a tree trunk facing the sun…
and sometimes draped along the branches of sibling Japanese maples, touching fingers above Heron Lake, itself adorned with a rare skin of ice.
That ice, however, is only in the upper reaches of the lake.
Farther along…
the fountain guarantees open water — to the delight of paddling ducks.
We first walk a path known officially as the Winter Walk, because of its plantings, and as we go we tick the list of its star attractions: witch hazel, heavenly bamboo, Japanese laurel, and wintersweet.
Then we veer off, take other pathways across the Garden, and notice their mid-winter palette as well.
A fiery Red osier dogwood, for example, there in the middle distance, with bright Japanese skimmia right here at our finger tips.
Grasses in the perennial beds are neatly bundled up…
dancing their feathery tips over plant stalks in the flower beds. These plants are pruned for winter and currently anonymous, but their time will come.
Tree trunks!
We are drop-jawed at the jewel tones of this Snow Goose flowering cherry…
and then find ourselves equally impressed by the austere tones of this Sichuan birch.
(Enlivened, I feel compelled to add, by a kick of moss in its upper branches.)
Then we’re off, out past the Garden’s rammed earth sirewall, handsome in any season…
and on down Oak Street for a while, prolonging the walk.
Posted by icelandpenny on 24 January 2026
https://icelandpenny.com/2026/01/24/winter-walk/
21 January 2026 – The cat came back.
We must be more fun than a ball of wool.
(Literary allusions note: from Sandburg’s 1918 fog poem yesterday to a folk-song today that is pure cat not fog — 1890s American blues-folk origins, Harry S. Miller; 1979 Canadian folkie hit with revised lyrics, Fred Penner; 1988 Oscar-nominated 7-min. animation, the NFB. Click here for 7 minutes of delightful silliness. A break from grim real-world silliness.)
Posted by icelandpenny on 21 January 2026
https://icelandpenny.com/2026/01/21/that-cat/
20 January 2026 — Oh, those little cat feet!
Yesterday the fog prowls in from the west, slides its paws under the Burrard Bridge…
overnight it settles comfortably into place downtown…
mid-morning we are still its favourite place to be…
but then?
It scampers off.
Presumably to chase a ball of wool.
Posted by icelandpenny on 20 January 2026
https://icelandpenny.com/2026/01/20/fog-fog-fog-not-fog/
10 January 2026 – I have an errand, down by Pacific Central Station, and the skies are not heaving anything at anybody. I am happy indeed as I walk north on Scotia Street.
Even happier when, near East 2nd, I get to moon over yet another growth of fresh winter moss on a curb-side tree.
Oh, I know. This is a perfectly ordinary photo of a perfectly ordinary patch of moss, and either you share my obsession and moon along with me, or you shake your head and move on.
As I also do.
Errand accomplished, weather still surprisingly agreeable, I keep walking north. Cutting through False Creek Flats, I see that this stretch of battered old warehouses is, apparently, finally being demolished.
All the signs suggest this conclusion: windows boarded up, dumpsters out front, bright blue mesh fencing. Down there at the far end, the kind of new-build we can likely expect — structures to welcome more “knowledge industry” activities.
Across Terminal Ave., heading indeed toward the terminal (Pacific Central Station), I look up while waiting for a light to change. It gives me time to admire the vee of SkyTrain tracks overhead.
I also have time to look left, skimming my gaze along the front façade of Pac Central to rest on the cranes beyond…
which mark a New Build worthy of those capital letters: the new St.Paul’s Hospital complex.
Lights change. I cross, I walk, and I pivot around this elegant lamp post shadow at the far train station corner…
to see…
the bulk of the new hospital, now showing us its full dimensions and scale.
One peek at an explanatory billboard, visible through a gap in the fencing…
and I right-turn to follow a pathway to Gate 4, which runs along the far side of the complex.
East side of the building to my left, Trillium Park to my right, and straight ahead — over there in North Van, the far side of Burrard Inlet — snow on the mountain peaks. Plus, you bet, warmly dressed skiers.
Down here at sea level, the Trillium Park soccer players are lightly dressed…
and even I have bare hands and an open jacket.
One last glance at the hospital complex through playground equipment in spiffed-up Trillium Park…
one last salute to all that high-altitude sparkling snow…
and I carry on north & west into Strathcona, heading for Main Street the other side of Chinatown.
My zigzag takes me between two very modest apartment complexes. I’m thinking they’re a bit on the grim side, then slap myself for snobbery. Whatever their aesthetics, they are clean & tidy & details like paint and windows look well-maintained.
But that’s not why I’m showing you this photo. After you pass (or don’t pass) your own judgment on the aesthetics, please note the black blob on the ledge between the centre balcony and the open window.
See it?
It is not a blob.
It is a cat.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight — or so I thought — of a cat tumbling out that open window, surely to his death. He does not die. He lands on the ledge. I stand there, waiting for him to start wailing for help. He does not wail. He settles down, toes curled over the front of the ledge, and does what he clearly does on a regular basis. He fills his lungs with fresh outdoors air, and watches the world go by.
I salute him with great respect. He ignores me.
I walk on.
Posted by icelandpenny on 10 January 2026
https://icelandpenny.com/2026/01/10/new-moss-new-builds-new-snow-a-very-calm-cat/
WALKING WOMAN 