Kate Hutchinson

2012-02-11T07:12:00.000-08:00

I regret that I missed Miranda July's Montreal talk last year.

2012-02-08T06:08:00.000-08:00

Yawning cat.

2012-02-06T07:02:00.000-08:00

Chris in the summer. He's still biking these days. Not me, I'd rather walk.

2012-01-31T06:28:00.000-08:00

Views from the Jacques Cartier Bridge bike path.

2012-01-29T07:25:00.000-08:00

Chris in the kitchen. (not great scans)

2012-01-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

After we had pulled up the old kitchen floor.

2012-01-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

Chris washing the windows this past fall.

2012-01-22T12:00:00.000-08:00

The red kitchen counter.

2012-01-19T12:26:00.000-08:00

I miss you cottage!

Taught this morning and am teaching tonight. Am a little tired but posting on this blog always relaxes me and makes me feel better. After all its all about the photos, and what's better than that!

2012-01-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

More from our NH Labour day camping trip. I miss camping, although with the beautiful snow right now cross country skiing has been pretty good!

2012-01-14T08:37:00.001-08:00

From our Labour day camping trip to the White Mountains (NH). Chris in the tent.

Thanks Alexi Hobbs for the shout out earlier this week. See it here.

2012-01-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

More of Chris at the cottage in September.

2012-01-08T13:41:00.001-08:00

Chris at the cottage in September.

2012-01-03T13:24:00.001-08:00

I am back. New Year's resolution #1: blog more consistently!

2011-10-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

Some recent Red Counter images

2011-10-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

Noodle floating

2011-10-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

2011-10-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

My grandmother turns 90 today! When I talked to her this morning she said that other than getting a bit slower she doesn't feel any older than she did 50 years ago. She is quite something.

2011-10-12T13:27:00.000-07:00

A summer picnic in the park.

2011-10-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

Diagonals at my parent's place.

2011-10-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

Playing with bread ties on the red counter.

2011-09-30T13:39:00.001-07:00

Pigeonz around the house.

2011-09-28T08:15:00.001-07:00

Voltron in the summer.

2011-09-27T16:16:00.001-07:00

Great Casse Croute: Chez Claudette on highway 370 in Ste-Marguerite.

2011-09-22T15:04:00.001-07:00

Everyday still life scenes from the cottage. Cottage Life Magazine give me a job!

2011-09-19T08:08:00.001-07:00

Beanbag Headache

2011-09-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

Back to our regular programming: Chris on the beanbag at the cottage.

2011-09-12T12:22:00.001-07:00

After finding that the naturalist counter images weren't working out I decided to go out into the world and photograph what was actually happening in the woods. I have always loved the old beaver marsh near our cottage and so I visited this spot many times this summer and photographed whatever residents I could find. Mind you I am not a nature photographer so once again this was a new way or working and once again the results were less stellar than I had hoped. Above are some of my favourites from those visits. So now it is back to the drawing board, I don't see anything that is quite working yet, no glimmer of hope to draw me in one direction or another. So I may try another approach to this subject. Not sure yet.

2011-09-07T07:49:00.001-07:00

1. Beaver skull
2. Rodent jaws (Beaver and unknown)
3. Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly
4. Beaver bones
5. Raccoon and Mink tails
6. Bluejay feathers
7. Snake skin

An attempt at a new project. I have a Biology degree and I have always wanted to incorporate this interest in my work. Ever since I was a kid I collected bones and any other animal artifacts that I found in the woods. So this summer I decided to photograph some of this collection. Partly functioning as a new counter series, this time I used the wooden counter at the cottage as my base. I also tried the white plastic picnic table as a more austere and incongruous surface. I tried different angles, different types of light, and different arrangements of the objects. The most successful ones are those posted here.
Trying something new is so hard, and inevitably it fails at first. Hopefully you learn from this first failure and it sends you in a new and more successful direction. This is how work progresses for me. I had originally pictured this as a little naturalist book, where the images would be paired with stories from how I found these objects. Now I don't know what will happen to these images, more than likely they are just one step in the journey to the final project.

2011-08-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

Our friends in their paddling pool.

2011-08-29T18:59:00.001-07:00

Cottage counter (after coffee)

2011-08-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

The last Ferrero Rocher

A metaphor for the last few days of summer. For most people the coming of fall is depressing, but I find it uplifting. It is when I wake up from the haze that warm weather inflicted upon me. I am ready to go! And good thing too since I am teaching 2 classes at Champlain (in Creative Arts) and 2 classes at Dawson (in AEC photography). And I am not the only one waking up from the slumber. Galleries all over the city are opening exciting shows this coming week. Here are my picks:

SAS: "Declic 70"
Group show including the work of Michel Campeau, Clara Gutsche, and Gabor Szilasi
Aug 25th to Oct 15, opening tonight at 5:30
372 St Catherine West #416

Galerie Trois Points: "In The Time of Sakura" by Olga Chagaoutdinova
Aug 25th to Oct 1st, opening tonight 6-9 pm
372 St Catherine West #520

Galerie B-312: Les 20 Ans De La Galerie B-312
Group show including the work of: Manon de Pauw and Valerie Blass
Aug 27th to Oct 2nd, opening Saturday at 1pm
at Maison de la Culture NDG, 3755 rue Botrel

Les Territoires: "Fordlandia" by Scott Chandler
Sept 1st to Sept 20th, opening Apet 1st at 6 pm
372 St Catherine West #527

Get out and see some art!

2011-08-01T16:36:00.001-07:00

Chris just before and during sneezing.

2011-07-27T18:18:00.001-07:00

Chris with his morning banana.

Sorry for my absence recently. I am enjoying another busy summer at f/start. Teenagers are awesome but they can sure tire you out! But working with Aislinn and Peter makes every day fun and full of laughs. I may post only sporadically till mid-August. I hope you are enjoying your summer.

2011-07-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

Morning shot of Chris.

2011-07-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

My image for "The Chain", a fun project that I was very happy to be part of!

2011-06-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

This photo will be in Foam Magazine's first foray into book publishing. A Book of Beds!
The image is from the Hospitalis figmentum series.

2011-06-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

Voltron sleeping. When he is not being the devil he is pretty cute. Sometimes I think it might be fun to be a pet photographer.

2011-06-27T08:18:00.001-07:00

Chris reading "Open".

2011-06-21T07:10:00.001-07:00

Cat portraits.

2011-06-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

Since tomorrow is the first day of summer I thought I would look back on some winter photos. It's amazing to me that this past weekend I was swimming in the lake pictured in the top 3 images, and that the marsh full of tracks in the bottom 2 images is now full of frogs and tadpoles. Happy summer solstice!

2011-06-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

Chris having breakfast by the door.

2011-06-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

This is real dedication to "Ulysses" (thanks Claudio).

2011-06-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

The making of my book

2011-04-26T16:20:00.001-07:00

A few snaps from the book making process

First off the cover is made from a thick Japanese card stock and Chris brought the trimmed covers to our friend Paul's house so that they could letterpress the covers together. It was an intensive and full day process to get the 25 covers done and Chris took the photos below of the process.

I had the pages printed by a commerical printer who calibrated their machine for me so that the colour and density would be what I was looking for. This left me with a huge box of almost 1000 sheets of thick paper. They were trimmed but then they needed to be folded. Here is my folding station at Concordia:

After folding the sequenced and grouped pages would come home with me so that I could sew them while watching (more like listening to) movies or crappy TV:

Pencil marks added to where I will make my holes in the pages:

In the middle of sewing a group (the groups are also called signatures):

One book where the sewing is finished:

A cover that is scored and ready to glue to the body of the book:
So there you go. It has been an interesting process, and one that I have really enjoyed so far (still have some sewing and glueing to do!). Many people have asked me: Why a hand made book? Why not a blurb book? Why not a digital book? I guess I thought it would be interesting to try and do it myself, to see what it takes to put a book together. This way Chris designed it to my specifications, and I got the exact cover that I wanted, and the size that I wanted, and the paper quality that I wanted, and the printer calibrated the way I wanted it. And then doing all the work myself also makes it a bit cheaper in the long run. And I am so happy with how it turned out, much better that I ever could have hoped. There are still a few left to sell so let me know if you are interested in owning your very own copy!

2011-04-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

Review of my exhibit in The Montreal Mirror today.

2011-04-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

Another image from "Ulysses, a personal journey"

Vernissage and Book Launch tonight at Warren G Flowers Gallery,
4001 de Maisonneuve West, Dawson College, Montreal.
If you use the de Maisonneuve doors the gallery is on your right as you enter.

2011-04-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

A copy of my book! This book accompanies my "Ulysses, a personal journey" exhibition which is opening this week. Facts about this book:

Contains 79 colour images, image notes and an essay about the work
144 pages in length
The book is hand stitched and hand bound
Is in a edition of 25
For sale for $100 (email me if you are interested in reserving a copy: kate@katehutchinson.com)

The book will be present at the vernissage (which is also functioning as a book launch), but will not be in the gallery during the rest of the show.

For this book I must thank Aislinn Leggett for tutoring me in book binding, Paul Lessard for doing the letter press of the cover, and of course my husband Chris for the layout and design.

Also the show was hung yesterday and even though the vernissage is not till Wednesday the gallery is open to the public as of this morning (hanging took less time than I thought so the show opens one day early). I think the exhibit looks great, go visit! Hope to see you Wednesday!

2011-04-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

Another image from my upcoming show "Ulysses, a personal journey", which you may have previously seen on the Hey Hot Shot! blog.

A very brief summary of what this work is about:
The images are all set in Dublin, Ireland and feature Hutchinson and her father as they try to connect and understand their place of origin through James Joyce's Ulysses.

Vernissage (opening) on Wednesday the 20th (info in my last blog post). This evening will also serve as a book launch for my limited edition artist book version of the work. More on that and images of the book making coming up in the next week or so.

2011-04-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

Invite to my exhibit, opening next week.

Here is the info in case you have trouble reading the invite:
Exhibit runs from April 19th to May 13th.
Vernissage is April 20th 6 to 9pm.
The gallery is the Warren G. Flowers Gallery, in Dawson College. The College is a big place so the easiest way to find the gallery is to enter by the de Maisonneuve entrance (just West of Atwater).
Hope to see you there!

2011-04-08T20:01:00.000-07:00

Spring seems to have finally sprung here in Montreal!

Tonight Chris and I did the final layout of my book. Today I also cut all of my covers to size. Tomorrow I am off to the printers and Chris will visit our friend Paul's letterpress! It is coming along.

2011-04-06T19:19:00.001-07:00

Chris at the cottage in the fall. Either Chris never wears a shirt or I only like to photograph him shirtless. Which do you think it is?

My friend Zoe Jaremus' MFA photo thesis show is up at the Parisian Laundry till Saturday.

2011-04-04T19:00:00.000-07:00

I found an old photo of Chris on the meds after his knee surgery.

Things are coming along well for my exhibit. When it's been a while since you last mounted a solo show you forget all the details that take so much time: spotting, trimming, mounting; and then getting the prints in the frames: measuring and cutting spacers, cleaning the glass, etc. Well now all that is done. And my invites were printed today. Last week I did a first practice run of my thesis talk for the MFA class and it went pretty well. Lastly I am doing an artist book to accompany the show (an edition of 25, some of which will be available for purchase in a few weeks). So the images were all scanned and chosen a while ago, now the book layout is done and designed, the image notes for the back of the book are done, but my essay is not finished. So once that is done and the digital layout is double and triple checked I will be printing it out and stitching it together myself. Almost there, I can see the finish line in sight! I am feeling a bit more relaxed so I hope to be posting as usual from now on.

For those of you in Montreal you may not be aware that tomorrow evening Vik Muniz's Waste Land is playing as part of Films That Transform (a series that my father helps to organize) at McGill. I missed it when it was in theaters so I am hoping to find the time to see it tomorrow night.

2011-03-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

Another cat photo. Sorry for the recent hiatus. Unfortunately it will probably continue for a few weeks while I get work done. In the meantime check out this year's FIFA line-up.

2011-03-01T17:30:00.000-08:00

A photo from our last camping trip in August.

I have always liked Terry O'Reilly's "The Age of Persuasion" and in January of this year they started offering a podcast. The first few minutes of this episode is about the founding of Kodak.

2011-02-24T16:58:00.001-08:00

Our cats, just because.

I am very much looking forward to Night Blanche this Saturday night. An all night art party, what could be better! Don't miss the awesome Art Souterrain, where Montreal's underground tunnels fill up with art of all kinds. Two artists showing in Art Souterrain that I don't want to miss are Diana Thorneycroft and David Spriggs.

2011-02-22T08:34:00.001-08:00

Chris looking for a book and reading the newspaper at the cottage.

These days life has been very busy what with teaching two classes at Champlain, one at Concordia, and tutoring two sections of an art history course at Concordia. But I am not complaining, I really love the teaching. It is just hard to juggle those hours with working on my thesis show. Hopefully most of the printing for the exhibit will be done in one week's time. It is all coming together and I am very excited for my April 20th opening. But before that I still have to work on a book format of the work, think about the possibility of incorporating sound and finish reading this, as well as other research books. When it rains it pours! But it is all that nice warm, feel good rain, just a little too much of it.

2011-02-18T08:36:00.000-08:00

Icicles galore. Have a good weekend!

2011-02-16T20:31:00.001-08:00

Chris in orange and two orange cats in Ithaca, NY.

2011-02-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

Summer memories.

Three talks that I am planning on attending this week:

"James Joyce and the Creative Challenge of Early Cinema", by Dr. John McCourt
Tonight (Monday Feb 14th) 8:30 pm, Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve W, rm H-1220

"Photography and Conceptual Art in Canada", by Jayne Ward
Tomorrow (Tuesday Feb 15th) 6:30 pm, Concordia University
1515 St Catherine Street West, EV-1.605

Corey Arnold
Thursday Feb 17th 6:30 pm, Dawson College
3040 Sherbrooke Street West, 5B-16

2011-02-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

Some still lifes from when we painted the bathroom.

And a question: why was this book not on most people's top photo books of 2010? It can't be that poorly produced, and to me it is one of the best series around.

2011-02-07T14:22:00.000-08:00

Dog at Jeanne-Mance Park.

Sometimes I would like to be a dog chasing after sticks all day, or my cats sleeping in the sun. Do you think that photos of cats or dogs can be anything other than cute or cheesy? And is there anything wrong with that?

2011-02-04T06:50:00.000-08:00

My Irish Grandmother series has found a home at The Centaur Theatre for the month of February. A sequence of small prints from the series is now on view in the Seagram Art Gallery at the Centaur till February 27th, in conjunction with the Irish play "Stones In His Pockets". The space is open from 9am to 11pm, Mondays to Fridays. So if you happen to be in the Old Port stop by and take a look. The address is: 453 Saint-François-Xavier, Montreal, H2Y 2T1.

2011-02-02T14:47:00.001-08:00

The auction that I am part of is over tomorrow (Thursday) at 1pm. Go check it out and maybe you'll be tempted to bid on a piece!

2011-02-01T16:38:00.000-08:00

Cottage still life. A quiet moment for busy times.

2011-01-30T17:34:00.001-08:00

A storm in the woods.

2011-01-24T16:50:00.000-08:00

Photos above done for The Globe and Mail. Montreal designers who are participating in the Interior Design Show in Toronto, which is opening this Thursday. I had fun seeing the workshops and stores that these designers work out of. From the top: Domison, Couper Croiser, Gau Designs.

2011-01-21T09:51:00.000-08:00

Chris in our favourite chair by the window. Also an image of him misusing a Jennifer Loeber print, which I got when we did a trade. Sorry Jennifer, it won't happen again!

2011-01-19T09:50:00.000-08:00

Chris.

2011-01-18T15:20:00.000-08:00

Chris as a temporary invalid (knee surgery).

2011-01-16T16:41:00.000-08:00

The Natural History Museum, Dublin

Another image from the series that I am working on these days: "Ulysses, a personal journey". I am giving you this sneak peak because a print of this image is being included in the most recent Daniel Cooney Fine Art auction called "Of Gods and Monsters" and curated by Andrew Mroczek. You can see all lots from the auction here, and my specific image and some information about it here. Bid early and bid often!

2011-01-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

Out for breakfast with Chris.

2011-01-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

Out for breakfast. (at le Vieux Velo)

2011-01-10T06:53:00.000-08:00

Images from the Red Counter: our young litchi plant, and beer bottles the morning after.

2011-01-05T10:56:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year everyone!

Today my good friends pictured above had a baby girl! Congrats Nancy and Neal!

2010-12-21T15:57:00.000-08:00

From Cape Cod this past August.

Happy Holidays! I am signing off for 2010. I hope you all get some time off for rest, relaxation and good cheer. I've been saving up my film for the past few months and finally brought it to the lab this week so I will have lots of new images to show you in 2011!

2010-12-17T14:39:00.000-08:00

From the November issue of Canadian Living Magazine. Frances Paris with husband Alain and friends in their backyard. For a story about how to make friends when moving to a new town.

2010-12-09T07:01:00.000-08:00

Me with Evergon santa! Check out Chris and Zoe's funny versions.

2010-11-25T17:25:00.000-08:00

OK, enough whining for now, (I just needed to get it off my chest) back to the photographs! Above are some more Habs fans from the spring 2010 playoff season, these ones sporting sun glasses. All of this series was taken outside the Montreal Canadiens arena (the Bell Center) before playoff home games. Hockey is big in this city and when the Habs (what we call The Canadiens, for Habitants, the original French colonizers of Quebec) are in the playoffs everyone gets excited and happy and the city is electric with anticipation. Growing up I was never really connected to this hockey fever. Since my parents are both from Dublin they weren't that interested in hockey and me and my sisters took figure skating lessons. I did play club hockey in University but that wasn't in Montreal. Then Chris and I moved back to Montreal together and in the past few years Chris has had half season's tickets to see the Habs. He gets hockey fever big time, and now I am finally joining in and enjoy watching hockey too (yesterday we went to a local bar to watch the game and ended up chatting with a guy who was scalping tickets before the game, he was giving us the low down on how it works). So that's why I started taking these photos, I finally felt like I was connecting to hockey fever in Montreal, and becoming a real Habs fan and I wanted to show all these different people that are so dedicated to their team.

2010-11-23T12:57:00.000-08:00

My hand. Kind of a symbolic image for a subject that I propose for discussion. That is the cost of entering photo competitions. Here are some costly contests that interest me, a few of which I have entered in the past:

Magenta $50
Identities Now $50 for 1-3 images, $100 4-10 images
Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 22 Pounds per photograph
Hey Hot Shot! $80
Critical Mass $75 first round, $200 second round

When you hear that the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize had more than 6000 entries, and that they chose an image of a young red headed girl as the winner (a re-occurring theme and somewhat of a fetish of the Portrait Prize), you wonder if there is any use entering, and if the prizes are in fact made for the benefit of the photographers or for the financial gains of the institutions involved. So are we giving them a hand out or are we the photographers too easily tempted by a potential win?

I will make my comments section active again so that you can chime in. Would love to hear what people think!

2010-11-19T16:24:00.000-08:00

Cool cars from Cape Cod.

Last night I went to the Sobey Art Awards Gala. Lots of artists, curators, friends, and wine = good times! Congrats to Daniel Barrow.

2010-11-17T10:11:00.000-08:00

The dock.

2010-11-11T17:51:00.001-08:00

Cloud and Dandelions, intervention images that I made a year or two ago.

Recently I bought Lay Flat 02: Meta. It's a beautiful little book and the images and essays included are both very strong. I would suggest two things though. One: that the essays failed to mention what is often the unmentionable these days, and that is that much of this reflection on the medium of photography recently done by photographers may be brought on by the fact that we are at a crossroads, in that place where film meets digital, and that this change on the ground, and the need to learn new tools, and the transition that photographers are going through in their working process has lead them to reflect back on the materiality of the medium itself. And two: that although the artists included were interesting and quite a good representation of the work out there I would suggest that including these additional artists would have made it stronger: Michael Love's "Self Portrait with Rifle", Michael Flomen, Chris McCaw, John Cyr, and Curtis Mann. Also if you are interested in this kind of thing you may want to check out the Victoria and Albert's exhibit (in London, England) on till February: "Shadow Catchers: Camera-Less Photography".

2010-11-01T07:48:00.001-07:00

Montreal's team is doing really well this year so to celebrate here are some more Habs Fans from the 2010 playoff season (+ a ghostly one for Halloween).

2010-10-27T19:59:00.001-07:00

This year The Grange Prize is Canada vs. The USA, and it is a stiff competition. Go vote before Sunday!

2010-10-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

My very talented husband Chris designed these books for this year's line of Snare books.

2010-10-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

Both the colour and B&W images were taken at the same location in Howth, Ireland. The B&Ws were taken in the summer of 2000 and the colour version ten years later this past summer for my "Ulysses, a personal journey" project. What is so uncanny is that when I came upon the scene this year I did not realize that I had photographed it before. It was only upon looking through some old negatives last month that I found the remarkably similar images.

I often feel like I am being led around by my subconscious when photographing and this definitely seems to be the case when I was twice made to stop at the concrete and yet ornate wall on which seems to float an island.

2010-10-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

A beautiful US Life Saving Station in Cape Cod.

2010-10-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

Waiting in line for the drive-in at Cape Cod.