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A Look at the Visual Appeal and Attraction of Carnival Art
“The gaudy, bawdy art of carnival rides hooks thrill-seekers with sensational fantasies from soft porn to invincibility, which mask its roots in Classical Antiquity.”
Crazy Beach: A ride that really has nothing to do with the beach.
This short photo-essay and review of the commercial art and design used to entice customers at PNE Playland in Hastings Park, Vancouver, BC, which traces the roots of carnival past Medieval festivals thrown in defiance of the black plague to Greco-Roman Mystery Schools and the Cult of Dionysius, has just been published at Suite101.com. Copyright restrictions prevent me from posting it here, but please click on the link if you’re interested in reading it.
HarriSand, HARRISON LAKE WORLD COMPETITION OF SANDCASTLES:
Ephemeral Art boosts tourism, adds value to local communities.
Fantasy themes abound at the HarriSand Sandcastle Competitions in Harrison Lake, in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia. Photo by Simone Keiran
Vandalism to 9 sandcastles cost Harrison Lake $120,000 in revenue, proving that even ephemeral art attracts enough tourist dollars to make the investment worthwhile.
by Simone Keiran
published 15 August, 2008
Western Canadian Travel; Suite 101.com
Joni Mitchell’s adage about “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” certainly applies here.
Everyone knows that art galleries and museums are major visitor attractions. Public art forms like well-conceived architecture and landscaping, sculptures and two-dimensional works such as murals also not only beautify cities and towns and make them better places to live in, but signal pride and success to tourists and investors alike. It is not so well-known that hosting a world-calibre sandcastle or ice sculpture competition can attract hundreds of thousands of dollars to a community.
This lesson became abundantly clear after midnight on 7th August, 2008, when vandals evaded a security detail to climb a fence and destroy nine of the world-famous “Tournament of Champions” sandcastles at Harrison Lake near Vancouver, BC. The estimated cost of damage reported by CTV’s Darcy Wyntonyk ranged around $120,000 in lost revenue if the unique art pieces couldn’t be fixed. Not bad for an art form which began with little more than buckets and sand.
Canadian team, Peter Vogelaar’s “The Pirate Queen” was one of the sandcastle sculptures that was destroyed during the vandals’ attack. Photo by Simone Keiran
Of course, ephemeral sculpture competitions are a serious business now. One world class competitive team from California made over $300,000 in 1990 demonstrating the art at beaches and malls alone. Professional sandcastles can take a doubles partnership around 50 man-hours or a team of 5 to 6 sculptors over 100 man-hours to complete and are reinforced with environmentally friendly white glue or other agents. Many of the participants are trained as professional artists in other media such as ceramics or bronze, and their aesthetic knowledge shows.
Often the competition includes a People’s Choice award where the appeal tends to range from comic narrative to popular beauty. Sculptors’ Choice awards incorporate more intricacy and difficulty of engineering. Often the images include fairytale or historical elements, allegorical tableaux or even religious iconography.
The Sandcastles are displayed in an enclosed space set aside next to the lagoon on Harrison Lake’s popular beachfront. Entrance fees are donated to charity. Photo by Simone Keiran
Snow sculpture competitions have become a favourite art event held during Winter Olympics. Peter Vogelaar, a contestant from the BC interior, won gold as a member of the team which sculpted at Torino in 1996. He has also won several sand sculpting awards at Harrison, showing how versatile the skills are for producing ephemeral art, and his public demonstrations included a well-publicized event at Metrotown Mall in Burnaby.
Harrison Lake, in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, is about an hour’s journey south of Vancouver along the old Route 7 highway on the way to Hope. It is an attractive resort town on a picturesque lake, and provides a nice contrast to the busy urban bustle of Vancouver. Photo by Simone Keiran
Harrisand, Harrison Lake’s famous sand sculpting contest began in 1986 as a demonstration event. To be sure, the town has a number of significant advantages. It is already a resort, blessed with awe-inspiring scenery, a beautiful public beach, hot springs, marinas and other tourist amenities. The International Champions Competition moved there in 1989 from White Rock when the angular grains of the local mountain lake sand trumped the spherical “tumbled” ocean grains for durability and ease of production, but this was after the purse was sweetened by the local Lion’s Club.
As with every venture geared towards tourism, such competitions only work if the local community support them meaningfully, by offering sufficient prize money and perks to attract the good artists and audience numbers. Vigilant security also helps.
Competitors at Harrisand vet themselves through elimination rounds at other competitions, by apprenticeship for a minimum of 3 years to master sand sculptors, by endorsements from mayors or other major public figures, or by proving their worth as sculptors with successful careers in other, less ephemeral media. The standard is high and this is reflected in the quality of the finished pieces.
The 19th Annual Sand Sculpture Competition at Harrison Lake starts on the 2nd of September, 2008. The exhibition continues until October 19th. Over 60 teams are expected to participate. Information, competition entry details, rates and hours are available online at the Harrisand official website.
FORT LANGLEY NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA:
Family Fun Includes Activities, Demonstrations, Exhibitions & Tours
Original log trading post and depot at Fort Langley, photo by Simone KeiranBC’s birthplace provides children with many early Canadian things to see, learn and do at this beautifully restored and preserved fur-trading fort on the Fraser River.
By Simone Keiran
published 13 August, 2008
Trained guides, well-planned activities and an interesting variety of interactive exhibits make Canadian history an entertaining and educational experience for the whole family at this fully restored Hudson’s Bay Co. fort and fur trading outpost first established by James McMillan in 1827 on the Fraser River. The desire to please and impress visitors, however, extends past the spiked walls of the palisade.
A blacksmith from the local Kwantlen tribe tempers a hook from iron. She holds the red-hot metal with tongs over the edge of the anvil, and calls an eight-year-old from the audience to help finish. He dons a thick apron, safety glasses and gloves. A few strikes with the mallet puts a right-angle kink into the spike. After it sizzles in its cooling tub, she hammers it into a chink in the wall to show how it works. Excited, the boy pulls his parents over to the sluice-box set up by the heritage-seed vegetable garden, where they pan for gold.
A volunteer docent greets visitors and explains the workings of an old-fashioned frontier cooperage. Photo by Simone Keiran
Fort Langley’s attractions also include:
- The depot filled with different furs; trading goods like guns, blankets, or cooking pots; and an authentic fur press where visitors can watch and even take part in demonstrations of how pelts were bundled for their long voyage back to Britain. The storehouse is arguably the oldest European-built structure remaining in BC.
- A cooperage where a barrelmaker planes the slats of wood for the barrels which packed the popular dried salmon once shipped all over the world. Strings of dried salmon hang from the ceiling as well as oolichan, or candle-fish, tiny sardine-like fish so saturated with oils that they were literally substituted for the valuable and hard-to-get candles. Little oddities like this make the experience memorable.
- The Big House, comfortable living quarters for the chief traders, as well as Servants’ Quarters, the spartan dwelling where lower status employees lived, both fully furnished with items appropriate to their time period and purpose. The contrast is a provocative subject for children.
- A large, sturdy wooden boat used by fishermen on the Fraser, and canoes, like the sort used by the courier-de-bois and Sto:Lo people, the Upper Coastal Salish nations who populated the riverbanks. Visitors were involved in the boatmaking process.
- The palisades and lookout, which surrounded the outer perimeter of the fort in the event of an attack, are perfect places for children to run and climb over.
- A gift-shop and café.
Countless Klondikers streamed through Fort Langley during the Gold Rush of 1858. For fear it would be annexed by Americans, the British government signed a Treaty officializing their claim to the territory, and an RCMP garrison was set up to enforce it. Fort Langley is the birthplace of British Columbia.
Dried salmon and oolichan, or ‘candlefish.’ These oily fish were burned as candles when stores of wax were unavailable. The salmon which used to be caught in the Fraser River was once long enough that it reached from a man’s shoulders to his feet. Photo by Simone Keiran
Visitor information, including ticket prices, hours and days of operation, and detailed instructions of how to get there are all available online at the Fort Langley National Historic Site website.
The Heritage Townsite of Fort Langley
Fort Langley is full of pleasant boutiques and coffee shops designed to appeal to visitors. Photo by Simone Keiran
Cafés, boutiques and antique stores line the streets. Attractions include a fully restored CN Railway Station, the Fort Wine Co. and the Langley Centennial Museum. Fort Langley should not be confused with the City of Langley, however, west of the historic townsite.
The Albion ferry crosses the Fraser and connects the TransCanada Highway with the old one-lane Highway 7 route on the north side of the River, a pleasant and slower-paced trip along the Fraser Valley to Hope. Photo by Simone Keiran
Visitors Touring by Car
Highway 7 which bypasses the Transcanada’s heavier traffic at Hope, BC, is more scenic and sedate. This route swings closer to Harrison Hot Springs, and the Albion Free Ferry, on the river bank between Mission and Maple Ridge, offers sweeping panoramas of the Fraser River.
CHINESE LANTERN FESTIVAL:
Lighting up Fantasy Gardens in Richmond, BC, Canada.
The 2008 Greater Vancouver International Chinese Lantern Festival, with its scenes from Chinese history, science, folklore, mythology, and cartoons, combines fluff with fact in the oddest style.
By Simone Keiran
published 03 August, 2008
Western Canadian Travel: Suite101.com
At night, the two dragons which tower at the corner of Richmond’s Fantasy Gardens seem to come alive, glowing like movie screens in a theatre. Their purpose: to generate more appreciation for Chinese culture in Canada.
The gateway is through another lantern, a pastiche of traditional architectural detail which evokes impressive entranceways from the Forbidden City to the Great Wall, except topped with rodents. These cartoon creatures, which look like Steamboat Willie, puzzle visitors, but they refer to Chinese astrology; 2008 is the Year of the Rat. They aren’t mice at all.
Traditionally, lantern festivals are held at Chinese New Years when the year honouring one of the twelve legendary animal companions of the Buddha progresses to the next. This means they light up the seasons’ darkest hours. The middle of the Canadian summer means long days and late shows, and the astrological significance of the rat goes astray. All the same, its scale, colour, variety and invention present quite a spectacle.
It’s as though organizers couldn’t quite decide what they wanted to do. A stunning tableau of Kylin—mythical creatures which bring good fortune, fashioned from tens of thousands of tiny coloured apothecary bottles which glow like jewels and impress visitors with the ingenuity and artistry of their creation—is positioned next to a kitschy scene of nylon turtles, swans and other cutesy pond critters. This abrupt shift to the absurd with no transition happens throughout the exhibition.
There are breathtaking moments. “Carp Leaps through the Gate of the Loong” features sculptures built entirely out of china—blue-&-white porcelain bowls, cups and spoons intricately strung together. They form fish, dragons, lanterns, and rime the waves like sea-foam. Not only is the piece a novel play on China, quite literally, but its beauty and cleverness stays with viewers.
The sheer scale and diversity of the enterprise is impressive. It covers acres of park. At the heart is a life-sized pagoda stretching up for three fiery tiers into the darkness, its mannequins of court musicians the only nod to China’s ancient dynasties. There are scenes from Journey to the West, the legend of the Monkey King, Taoist legends, and even the Loong, a mysterious deity from whom the Chinese descended.
Some dioramas sport science-y names like “The World of Insects.” Except, a dinosaur world where T-Rexes feasted on prey from different epochs, while unconcerned Duckbills grazed five feet away, never existed. Not even in China. This is the child’s eye on nature, not science itself. Often the lanterns contain clever riddles for children to decipher, although some of them can leave adults stumped.
These anachronisms are key: to fully appreciate the lantern show, disbelief must be suspended. Science gives way to make-belief, since facts complicate fantasies. Those who look for the sublime in external nature through art or intellect will be grounded by grinning rats.
The cartoon RCMP Musical Ride, speaking of anachronisms, is bizarre. This includes the row of columns topped by RCMP officers interspersed with sparkly rats like a psychedelic Appian Way. Elsewhere, glowing totem poles are derived from native art in the Pacific N.W. This is Canadian culture reflected back to us, both ridiculous and sublime.
How strangely fitting that show is set within Fantasy Gardens, the loss-leader amusement park with its heritage Dutch-Christian themes of farmhouses, churches, windmills and castles, which brought down the Social Credit government of British Columbia back in 1991. Some things are best enjoyed by not looking too deeply past the first layers of fluff.
Fantasy Gardens Lantern Festival website
Steveston and No. 5, Richmond, BC, Canada
Night show: 8:30 – 11:30 pm ($25 per adult; children over 12/seniors $20)
Day show: 11 am – 2 pm ($15 per adult; $10 per child/senior)
family passes, season passes and discounts available online
Until 21st September, 2008
Simone Keiran 
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