Freewheeling Fancy: Vancouver Arts & Recreation Studies

Freewheeling Fancy was first exhibited in 2001 as my BFA graduation installation at the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design (now known as Emily Car University). The project emerged from a period defined by limited means and abundant improvisation — a time when my creative practice was shaped as much by circumstance as by intention. Working as a single parent, supporting myself through student loans, part‑time jobs, and navigating the high cost of living in Vancouver, I built the installation from the materials that were available to me: discarded electronics, thrift‑store turntables, VHS players & tapes, craft supplies, and the small, overlooked objects that accumulate in everyday life. These materials did not just support the work; they determined its form.

The installation consisted of a constellation of kinetic sculpture stations, each animated by simple mechanical motion and the unpredictable behaviour of analog technology. Turntables spun assemblages into motion, creating a drawing machine and miniature worlds that were humorous, fragile, and slightly chaotic. Colour televisions displayed looping video feedback, transforming my section of the group exhibition space into a shifting field of light and pattern. BBs rattled in improvised chambers; feathers and pipe cleaners trembled with each rotation; mirrors scattered reflections across the room. The sculptures were not polished machines but lively, awkward contraptions — devices whose charm lay in their imperfections.

One of the central works featured a toy chopper motorcycle with a toothpick‑and‑Q‑tip rider drifting through a psychedelic feedback loop. For this piece, I recorded a minimalist cover of the “Born to Be Wild” chorus, using a drum machine, electric guitar, and a single vocal line. The repetition of the loop — both visual and sonic — transformed the familiar anthem into something more intimate and more absurd. It became a small, looping world unto itself, suspended between parody and sincerity.

Although the installation grew from necessity, it inevitably engaged with broader questions about consumer culture, obsolescence, and the life cycle of technology. The objects I used had already been discarded or devalued; by reanimating them, I was challenging the assumption that artistic value is tied to newness, expense, or technical sophistication. The work asked viewers to consider what remains possible within the things we throw away — and what stories those objects carry with them.

The video documentation included here comes from the surviving Hi‑8 footage of the exhibition. The material was digitized years later, and its graininess, colour bleed, and occasional distortion have become part of the work’s visual language. These imperfections echo the installation’s original spirit: a commitment to process over polish, to experimentation over refinement, and to the creative potential of limited means. The documentation captures moments of motion frozen in time — glimpses of the kinetic energy that animated the gallery space.

Revisiting Freewheeling Fancy now, I see it as both a record of its moment and a project that continues to resonate. Its low‑tech aesthetic, bricolage methods, and embrace of analog feedback feel newly relevant in a world increasingly defined by digital replication and rapid technological turnover. The installation’s playful critique of consumer culture, its celebration of improvisation, and its insistence on finding value in the discarded remain central to my practice.

This text accompanies the video documentation as a way to bring the original installation into the present — to honour the work, the conditions under which it was made, and the ongoing questions it continues to raise. Freewheeling Fancy was built from what I had, but it also became a way of imagining what else could be possible — a reminder that creativity often begins in the spaces where resources are scarce but curiosity is abundant.