SUPER SUMMER '77

"For the artist, a movie camera provides an opportunity to record those instances when we begin to look outward, and consequently shift our interest to what we see there from what goes on completely in the minds eye . . ."

Michael de Courcy, 1977

In the Summer of 1977 in Vancouver, with temperatures averaging 15ºF higher than normal, people seemed to literally live at the beach. In that way, filmmaker Chris Gallagher, photographer Barrie Jones and myself were no exception. Together, we were inspired to record the bits and pieces of this exceptional West Coast summer experience from which I was able to cobble together this film.

 

Super Summer '77 was part of a succession of conceptual/photo-documentary projects I created during the late 1970s. These works, which I describe collectively as experiments in the vernacular, include:

- Greetings from the Urban Wilderness, 1976
- The Artist— a work in progress,1977
- TBA TV (Television by Artists), 1977
- Front Page/Marking Time, 1978
- The Vancouver T-Shirt Open, 1978–1982 (annually)

 

vernacular |vərˈnakyələr|
noun
1 (usu. the vernacular) the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region: he wrote in the vernacular to reach a larger audience.

 

 

The ARTIST - a work in progress