Hamilton Artist Update 20 – a weekly review of art related activities by Chris Erskine.
This week:
- June 3rd – Open House for the Heritage Inventory Project held at Whitehern Mansion
- June 6th – Final demolition of the James Street Baptist Church
- June 7th – Hamilton 24 Hour Film Festival
June 3, 2014: Open House for the Heritage Inventory Project
Hamilton City Staff held an open house for the report submitted to City Council a few weeks ago. The report created rationale for what should or should not be designated as heritage buildings. This rationale will apply across different communities that once had their own systems. As a test, the city staff examined the downtown core to determine what buildings might be recognized. As a result, nearly 1,000 buildings were identified as heritage designated worthy.
June 6, 2014: Final demolition of the James Street Baptist Church
As reported earlier, the developer appeared to be moving quickly to complete the demolition process and this assessment proved correct when the balance of the building was demolished on Friday. Friends and twitter traffic noted the demolition. A co-worker took the following photos of the demolition around 8 am on Friday morning.
Raise the Hammer covered the story but the comments still focused on the merits of the demolition rather than the process of approval. It is still my impression that this demolition was ok by a few community volunteers and city staff. I am not aware of any politician actually voting for its acceptance. Again, it is my understanding that community volunteers gave a partial alteration permit to do essentially a partial demolition. This label allowed the permit to bypass the Heritage Committee, the Planning and Economic Development Committee, and City Council. Thus no elected officially actually approved the decision. It is also my understanding that the decision to accept this process was ok by city staff. There is also the question of the list of conditions. The Permits Committee set a list of conditions, but where and when were these conditions addressed by the above committees?
June 7, 2014: Hamilton 24 Hour Film Festival
On Saturday morning, we got our marching orders for the 2014 Hamilton 24 Hour Film fest. This year’s challenge was to use the following items in a 5 minute or less film.
Line: Carpe diem. Seize the day boys. Make your lives extraordinary.
Prop: Watering can
Location: by Candle light
The kick off was held at the 41 King Williams on the 3rd floor. It was very much twenties to thirties crowd. I have since discovered that some of the other teams are very experienced. I saw one photo of a team using a “Black Magic” 4K camera, these things are very expensive. Also, some seemed to have access to professional editing equipment. Meanwhile, I sat in Tim Hortons’s doing my film editing on my laptop. I am very proud of my creative team and I believed we did a very good job, much better than I was originally expecting. Hopefully we will make it into the top 10. There were 35 teams at the start but only 27 submitted by the 9 am deadline on Sunday. I can’t believe how tired I was from the storyboarding, filming, and editing. Other members of the team felt the same way. We find out the results this Friday.
Chris Erskine
@erskinec
FCSD Studio 