1. Where does this find you? Tell us the story of how you got there.

This finds me luxuriating in retirement. I now have the time to be able to explore not only all sorts of new things but also to be able to go back and reinvestigate old places and ideas. In my artwork, the challenge is finding the right balance between stimulating novelty and comfortable familiarity. I'm most enjoying the paths not previously chosen that turn out to be indirect routes into well known, but hardly exhausted, territory.
When I stepped out of the house the other morning, I noticed that this lily was flowering again, late in the season, and stopped to photograph it. Afterwards, it occurred to me that I could use it as a "self-portrait" for this interview, not because I think of myself as blossoming, but because I love the feeling of getting another chance.
I live in Montreal. I came to Canada from the United States in 1966 to go to university and have never thought of leaving.

2. Why do you moblog?

I think it was Jack Kerouac who said that "An artist's job is to subjectify the objective and objectify the subjective." Photographing our day to day lives and sharing our images as Mobloggers helps us to do it.

3. Where do you go to my lovely, when you're alone in your head?

I don't know where I go, but I do know how I get there. I get there through physical activity, walking for example, or yoga, or even something like knitting. As a sculptor, the physical work, which I enjoy (usually), is a means to explore space kinesthetically. I like to work with my hands. I'm a tinkerer at heart, and I enjoy working on all the different aspects of my work, whether theoretical or practical. That's part of the explanation for my username, Factotum.

4. What is that one random item you have hoarded away that you can't bear to throw away for nostalgia purposes and what is the story behind it?

Hahaha. Caine, who posed these questions, knows that my collecting and hoarding borders on the pathological. I'd claim that there's nothing random; everything is saved for a reason :)

5. What would your biography be called, who would write it, and who would play you in the film?

Well, Michael Holroyd is my favourite biographer. I've had a really interesting life even if I'm not particularly interesting as an individual person, and I think he'd be able to capture that. Let me skip ahead to question 7 and recommend Holroyd's Basil Street Blues, a biography of his parents and family, as well as his biography of Lytton Strachey.

6. Who has been an inspiration to you? Why?

The earliest people who dug clay out a stream and made something out of it, or drew in the sand with a stick.

7. What is one of your favourite books, and why?

I think many Mobloggers would really enjoy Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty.

8. What was your childhood obsession? What happened to it?

Reading was a childhood obsession, and it has continued unabated. I still love kids lit and picture books! I seem to be reading a lot of non-fiction these days, especially history and "literary journalism".

9. What (or who) would you most like to photograph?

How about the cave paintings at Lascaux or Chauvet? Or, even better, some other unexplored cave.

10. What and where is your most favourite place?

I like being outdoors,even in the city, and prefer my landscapes on the slightly rugged and bleak side. I love Cape Cod in the winter, and I thoroughly enjoyed traipsing across the Yorkshire moors with Viv and Swamprose. My favourite indoor places are museums and library stacks.

Posted by Factotum