How to Play with a Memory

Play Passages is debuting in Toronto one month from today on June 24th! Deep breaths. It will be a multi-media piece that is an exciting evolution for my work, a cross between performance art and an installation that will be brought to life by kids, and that's based on the play memories that many of you shared with me.

I’m getting really excited but I still have so much to do. It’s a multi-layered process as I bounce around between continuing to create the piece itself and pull the elements together, and starting to get the word out. I can get so immersed in the creative side that I can forget to tell people that it’s actually happening.

I thought it would be fun to share a behind the scenes photo with you from last week from when I went to pick up the first image that I had printed for the installation. There will be 17 images of the play memories in total, and each will be printed on fabric about 5 feet by 10 feet. I was nervous to see how a print would look, but I was really happy. The people at Club Ink, where I’m getting them printed, are amazing. I can’t wait to see how the children will manipulate the images, what they will build and create in the space. Some of the images will likely end up crumpled in the dirt too, but that’s part of the point. It’s whatever they want to do.

I’m also hard at work on the audio portion—while kids play in the space with the fabric memories and simple building materials, adults will listen to the play memories and watch. But I’ll share more about that soon. I’m eager to get back to working with audio after a long hiatus, and there are some interesting challenges ahead for me with that. 

Great grant news!

I’m super excited to announce that I’ve won an Ontario Arts Council grant for Play Passages! To refresh your memory, Play Passages is my multi-media community art project that invites people to reconnect with their childhood memories of playing outside. Last spring and summer, I did the initial research; members of the public who grew up all over the world shared their play stories and were invited to draw a map of where they played with their eyes closed. 

This grant will allow me to turn those stories and images into an interactive public installation that I’ve been dreaming about, that will debut in June 2018 in a Toronto park. I'm grateful for the support from the OAC and EarthDay Canada who are helping to make this possible. Stay tuned for more details and updates as the project develops. I can’t wait to see how it turns out and to share it with you.

Yes, I’m Actually Working on a Project about Sex

One thing I can say about working on a new project about sex—you definitely get a reaction! Since one of the reasons I do what I do is to bring new conversations about difficult topics out into the open, it’s been really fun starting to tell people about my nascent project, Erospace. Even though sex is such a primary part of what it means to be human and live in the world, people are still often uncomfortable talking about it. My mom told me after I announced it on Facebook that a friend of hers said she was shocked: “Did you see the new project Mindy is working on?!”, as if my mom didn’t already know, and isn’t one of the reasons why I’m comfortable talking about sex in the first place. Thanks, mom!

A lot is happening around here, as I’m getting Erospace off the ground, and I have some other exciting announcements about another project coming soon. So I’m moving some things around, and I’m excited to announce that I’ve opened up registration for a new, one-time workshop for Erospace this spring. If you live in Toronto and were interested in participating but couldn’t commit to 8 weeks, check out this 3 hour intensive. As part of my research, I'm hoping to do online workshops at some point too, so stay tuned.

Erospace Workshop
Tuesday, April 3, 2018, 7-10pm
Good for Her, Toronto, ON

In this three hour hands-on workshop for women*, I invite you to be my one of my initial collaborators for Erospace. Together, you’ll join me in a variety of artistic experiments and discussion about how we access our sexual pleasure and how that changes throughout our lives.

*includes ciswomen, transwomen, and non-binary folks, no artistic experience necessary.

Sparks

Last time I wrote, I shared that I’m in a new exploring stage right now. And I have to be patient, which is something I’m not always very good at. I’m not ready to share the topic I’m playing around with, or the new questions I’m asking, but I’ll have some announcements soon. Meanwhile, I thought it would be fun to share a little bit about a new tool that I’m fooling around with.

A little background too—I tend to move around a lot when it comes to technique. It’s not that I get bored of particular techniques exactly, it’s just that I use them when I need them, and then if it’s irrelevant for the next project, then I’m done. When I am casting about to capture an idea, or explore a new topic, sometimes I need to add some tools to my toolkit. That’s always the fun part.

I bought this cool little new camera recently, but it’s not a regular camera. It doesn’t capture images with light. It’s a thermal camera; it captures images with temperature. It’s not a photograph, but a thermograph. The image above was not created using filters or anything—the colors represent the different temperatures in the image (orange being warmer, purple cooler). I can even shoot in the dark! 

It’s used more often by engineers to see where there are heating leaks, and things like that. Or for hunters. It’s a tiny little camera that attaches to my iphone, but it records things I can’t see with my eyes. I love that. So much of my work is about seeing things differently, so when I find tools that allow me to play around and literally see things differently, I’m in heaven.

The camera is super low res, and I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do with the images yet, but it has sparked me, so I’m going to keep going. 

What’s catching your eye and sparking you lately?

Rhythms of Play

I find my art practice has its own rhythms, and I’m not always great at continuing to be in touch with people to keep them up with what’s happening. It’s especially like this when I’m starting new projects. I need to go into myself, and I find it hard to share publicly and be ‘out there’ at the same time that I’m incubating a new idea. Twyla Tharp, the choreographer, calls this “scratching”, and I really like that. It’s feels like I’m sniffing around, looking, listening, picking up things in the culture and that are on my mind, but that I don’t have exact questions for yet or an artistic form. It can be an uncomfortable place to be, but I’ve gotten better at being there, and sitting with that feeling of not knowing what’s next. Because I know eventually there will be movement, as long as I keep moving forward with curiosity. It’s definitely a type of play, and I’m getting better at it the more I allow myself to practice it.

I think this sense of movement, rhythms, and play can apply to many of us, no matter what is occupying our day to day. How do we move forward with curiosity in our lives, in the midst of what can often feel like the daily grind? It feels crucial for me; this sense of curiosity, continually pushing oneself, even a little bit, to do something new, to let oneself play.

I’m in a waiting period with Play Passages right now too (waiting to hear about a number of grants), and I’m “scratching” another new project that I can’t share yet. I hope to have more news to share soon. 

Meanwhile, how are you moving forward with curiosity and play in your daily lives? What are your creative rhythms?

Another play story!

I want to keep encouraging you to share one of your play memory with the project! I’ve been getting so many wonderful stories, and if you would like to see your play memory become part of the project and possibly transformed into a photograph, make sure to submit yours soon.

I also thought it would be fun to share another play memory with you to inspire you to participate in the project!

It’s another one of mine, from sixth grade again (I had a lot of fun in sixth grade):

In sixth grade, we snuck out of school for lunch and went to one kid’s house where there was a pool. After swimming in our clothes, we came back to class soaking wet, and got in heaps of trouble. It was wickedly fun.

The Making of my Play Memory Images

I wanted to give you a little more behind the scenes info about the images inspired by my play memory story: Edgewood School and Bronx River. It also dovetails nicely with explaining more about my process, and how I ended up making images by photographing them off an ipad.

Mindy Stricke, 2017

Mindy Stricke, 2017

Mindy Stricke, 2017

"When I was in sixth grade, and it was nearing the end of the school year and had just started to get warm, one of the boys told us that there was a secret rope swing down near the village, over the Bronx River. So after school all of us, boys and girls together, walked the mile and a half to the woods to see if it was true. And it was. Right there, close to the railroad station but completely hidden. We spent the afternoon swinging over the river, which was more like a creek, and had the most glorious time.

This memory felt like both the end and the beginning of something. We were all about to graduate from elementary school and head off to junior high. The playing itself was exciting yet familiar, but socializing with the boys like this felt tentative and new." 

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to make images inspired by childhood play memories, but the challenge was how to do that. How do you photograph a memory? For those of you who have been following my work for a while, you know that for my last project, Grief Landscapes, I solved that problem by photographing a meaningful object in extreme close-up and transforming it into a landscape. 

Originally I thought I would do the same with Play Passages. And I started with my story about the rope swing. I had the idea that I would get a piece of rope and use a similar process. 

But very quickly, I realized it wouldn’t work. It wasn’t really a story about a rope. It was a story about a journey, a place, and a feeling. 

Inspired by a book I read by Jill Berry, called Map Art, I became inspired to visit the location of my play memory on Google Earth. If you’ve never used Google Earth, you really have to try it. You type in an address, and then fly through the air, closer and closer in until you get to your destination. It's kind of magical.

So I went on Google Earth and flew to my elementary school, where we first heard the rumors about the rope swing. And I literally got the chills. So many memories flooded back as I circled around the building, looking at it from different angles.

I knew I wanted to transform it somehow, so I got out my macro lens, which allows me to photograph things up close, and just played around with it; first photographing the computer screen, and then realizing that by pulling up the image on an ipad, I could lay it flat, and warp the original image in more interesting ways. 

The second image was more challenging. Google Earth and StreetView won’t let you see into the woods, it can only show you satellite images of the trees or what a car with a camera on top can see from the road. I originally did shoot an image of the woods from the angle of the Bronx River Parkway, which is the highway which runs next to the woods, and for a while I thought that was the image I would use for the second part of the story. I do really love it.

Mindy Stricke, 2017

But after a while, I realized that it didn’t really have much to do with the story, and I went searching online for images of the Bronx River itself. Like the image of the Burlington garden I talked about the other day, I had to take artistic license. The image I found of the Bronx River is not of the exact spot of the rope swing, but it evoked it for me.

As I started making more images from other people’s stories, I also questioned whether it made sense to have two images from my story while the rest have just one. But again, I decided to be flexible—my story was about a journey, and I wanted one of the beginning and one of the end.

I also want to stay open to making however many images I need to inspired by the stories all of you send me. So keep them coming! This is all just the beginning.

How it feels to participate in Play Passages

One of the great pleasures of having a community art practice is hearing from people about how it feels to participate in a project and have the opportunity to make art again. 

I wanted to share the story behind the making of Ras Tanura, one of the first images I made for Play Passages.

I met Raymond Shih with his wife Aya Nomura at the EarthDay Canada Pop-Up Adventure Playground in Toronto in late May. While his two children played, I approached him and asked him if he wanted to share a play memory and make a map. At first he demurred, saying he was a terrible painter, but I was able to convince him. 

He sat down at my table, and quickly was immersed in writing his story:

“I remember going to the beach in Ras Tanura, in Saudi Arabia. I was probably 12 or 13 years old, and had just moved across the world from Toronto (where I had spent my entire life) to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. I didn’t have any friends there and even getting reacquainted with my parents felt strange; they had moved six months earlier and left me behind with my brother, uncle and grandmother so I wouldn’t need to interrupt a school year. 

I felt alone before, during, and after the move and now found myself living in the middle of a desert! 

Going to the beach made me feel like everything might turn out well after all. There is an intrinsic comfort about sand between toes, salty air, and the white noise of waves washing up on shore. We didn’t do much except build sandcastles and splash in the Persian Gulf but we worked up a serious appetite. I remember the beach snack bar serving up one of the most satisfying helpings of French fries, even if it did come with Libby’s ketchup instead of Heinz."

Then he drew and painted his play memory map:

Raymond Shih, 2017

After he was done, we used my iPhone to visit Ras Tanura beach in Saudi Arabia through Google Earth. It was amazing to see how much the map from his memory reflected the shoreline and bright colors of the real Ras Tanura beach.

At home that week, I pulled up the images of the beach on my ipad, found just the right angle, and photographed it with my macro lens, lining it up and blurring it just so to evoke the map and the feeling of freedom and relief in his story.

Mindy Stricke, 2017

After sending Raymond the image, I asked him how the whole experience had been for him, and this is what he wrote:

“The instruction to draw with my eyes closed was frightening but the experience was liberating. Not being burdened by the immediate feedback of my progress freed up my mind to search out memories that felt rusty and needed a little polish. Amongst the daily pressures of work and family, it was strangely refreshing to engage in an activity where there was no right or wrong answer. 

Since I have zero background (or skill) at painting, I just had to make sure the colours reflected my memories and then let the brush go where it wanted. Painting was pure fun - there is really no other way to describe it. The experience made me feel great all afternoon and I couldn’t stop thinking and talking about the project.”

How great is that? This is the experience I hope for everyone to have, to just be able to let go and have fun, to reach back into their memories and make it come to life.

And the funniest part? As I take my postcard rack with many of the stories and maps around to different events, inevitably many people pick up Raymond’s watercolor and say, “This one is amazing, I could never do that. I’m a terrible painter. This guy really knows what he’s doing.”

And I say, “Just give it a try.”

Behind the scenes of two Play Passages images...

It’s been an exciting week for me, finally starting to share images from Play Passages with everyone! I wanted to share a little more in depth about the process with each of the images, with their full stories and play memory maps right here.

Mindy Stricke, 2017

"Every summer, all summer, between the ages of 4 or 5 until about 10 years old, we played in the bamboo along a creek that ran through my family’s property and through many yards in our neighbourhood.

The creek, which we called “Chicken House Slough”, was shallow and muddy. We hid in the bamboo along the banks and pretended we lived there. We made up a religion with altars and figurines made of bamboo, string, pyracantha berries, vines and sticks. I felt free and powerful, as if I could build a society with my friends from whatever we wanted. We made “food” in tiny cups that we got from slicing a bamboo stalk between its joints. We stalked the creek, threw berries at an angry crawdad, and snuck into strangers’ backyards. It felt exciting and illicit." - Erin Koshal

Erin Koshal, 2017

Erin was one of the first participants in the project, a good friend of mine who lives in Toronto. When I was playing around with ideas for Play Passages, she practically lit up when thinking about her play memories from childhood of exploring the bamboo forests. When reflecting back, she said, “Looking back on these memories reminds me what it feels like to be utterly absorbed in an imaginary world with friends for days and days on end, almost without interruption.”

Together, we visited where she grew up on Google Earth, typing in the address and then seeing if there was a way to see the bamboo forest behind the house. Luckily, when we zoomed in, we could see into the creek on Google Street view. I used one of those angles to rephotograph off the ipad, using my macro lens to get really close and abstract the image slightly. I wanted the image to recall the magical days Erin playing back there.

Mindy Stricke, 2017

"I was in a garden with three to four other girls my age. There were lots of flowers and grass—soft green. It began to rain, and we danced and picked flowers. It began to pour. We got soaked, dancing and singing in the rain. We took off some or most of our clothes. We were rain fairies." - Brenda Simon

Brenda Simon, 2017

Brenda is the Director of Play Programs at EarthDay Canada, and she shared her play memory with me at a play memory collection event I did at one of EarthPlay’s pop-up adventure playgrounds in May. One of the interesting challenges of making an image from Brenda’s story was that she couldn’t remember exactly where the garden was that she had played in as a child, since she was probably only about 3 or 4. 

So I had to get creative and use a little artistic license. Could I find a photo of another garden in Burlington Ontario that I could rephotograph? I decided to play around with this photograph below of the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington, and when I looked through the macro lens, I almost gasped, because the close-up of the image evoked Brenda’s watercolour so perfectly. 

Where did you play as a child?

I loved playing outdoors when I was a kid. This is a photo of me from when I was 6. You gotta love the jean leisure suit: 

I remember that day, exploring in the woods and wading in the river on a day trip to a neighboring town with my parents. And it was fun. But when I started looking for a photo of myself for this post, I realized that of course I don’t have photos of the hundreds of other times I played outside, because I was with my friends, and there usually were no adults around.

And that was even more fun.

There's no doubt that some of my most joyful childhood memories are of playing outdoors, when I created lots of imaginary worlds and adventures away from the watchful eyes of adults.

There have been many inspirations for Play Passages, but one of the primary ones is that since I had kids (I have two of them, they’re 8 and 5), I’ve became increasingly frustrated that it’s so difficult to give them the same freedoms and play opportunities that I had. And I don’t think it needs to be that way.

Fear in many forms seems to have trumped remembering what it felt like to really play, to take risks, to sometimes get hurt, to have a sense of wonder and possibility that wasn’t necessarily “productive”.

I found myself wondering what would happen if I started asking people to remember, what stories would come up? And if I asked them to play a little bit, take a small artistic risk, what would that process be like for people?

It’s not just about nostalgia (although of course thinking back on our childhood play can be very nostalgic). I don’t want to look at childhood play through rose-colored glasses—play is complex and it isn’t always a positive experience. 

I’m just extremely curious about so many things: what are our most vivid memories of playing outside and why do we remember them? What is the relationship between how we played as children and who we became as adults? How do we stay in touch with play over the course of our lives? And how do we give those same opportunities to our children?

I’m hoping this project will spark some of those conversations. And as usual, I’m drawn to making work anchored by a sense of place. I think asking about where we played as kids might lead to some interesting discoveries. (Side note: I also had many amazing play experiences indoors of course, but it’s the outdoor play that kids seem more deprived of, so I’m focusing on that for now).

I want you to start thinking about your play memories. If you can steal some time over the weekend, take a walk by yourself and think back to your childhood. Where and how did you play? With whom? How did it feel at the time? And how does it feel to look back on it now?

I’m really excited to see where this goes.