Home Publications Artwork News Links About
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / ARTIST
Portrait of the collector as a serious man
Mariken van Nimwegen, 1999
Home Publications Artwork News Links About
Portrait of the collector as a serious man
Mariken van Nimwegen, 1999
Mountaineering courses at Capilano College culminated in a successful climb of Mt. Waddington. A chance conversation led to eight years of employment on the B.C. Rail Rock Gangs, where he qualified as a driller-scaler, blaster, and then Foreman of High Scaling Gang 152, receiving two "attaboys" for heavy salvage work, one for a cliff-face rescue of an injured worker, and a WCB Gold safety award. Refer also to Patrolling the Budd for an autobiographical story of this chapter of his life.
A desire to move back to Vancouver led to drafting courses at V.V.I. in 1988. He helped design and build a no-till seed drill for an engineering firm, and then started in architecture in 1989, a career that continues in 2007.
He was a founding Director of the Richmond Community Arts Council in 1970, and drew the cover image for their first newsletter. In 2000 he was appointed to the Vancouver Public Art Committee, and elected Chair in 2001. He registered as an Architectural Technologist (AT.AIBC) in 2001, and served on the A.T. Advocacy Committee at the Architectural Institute of B.C. for two years. He currently Chairs the exhibition advisory committee at the Architectural Institute of B.C. and represents the committee on the Communications Board. He volunteered for the Vancouver International Writers Festival for eleven years, as well as for the Jazz Festival (3 years), Fringe Festival (2 years), Musicwest (1 year), and other events.
Sim wrote a number of articles for MultiCAD magazine, Australia, and produced a multimedia article for Autodesk Press, USA. His illustrations have appeared in periodicals including architectureBC, the Journal of Commerce, the Wellington Times, Agweek, and the Illinois Soybean Digest.
He has exhibited drawings, photographs, mixed media, prints, and small sculptures in Vancouver galleries and the AIA Gallery in Seattle. Recent work includes pen & ink and brush pen drawings, digital photography and editing, watercolours, limited edition linocut prints, and self-illuminated sculptural assemblies. Subject matter includes public art, architecture, abstracts, and scenes of Vancouver and nature.
Purchase of a Maud Rees Sherman painting led to extensive research on the artist, compiled in Looking For Maud. Please refer to the B.C. College of Arts Ltd. chapter for a sample of this project. Spin-off articles on R.S. Sherman, School Days magazine, and artist/educator John Kyle, based on research done while working on Looking For Maud are posted on the Home Room web site at Malaspina University-College.
Vancouver's sparsely written early art history prompted Sim to organize research material into Art & Artists in Exhibition: Vancouver 1890 - 1950, ISBN 0-9732542-0-3. Using the focus of exhibited art, it lists over 360 art exhibitions, 1,760 artists, and 6,800 paintings, summarized into 1,050 artist biographies with hundreds of references. Refer to the publications section for more information about this project. The project has been purchased by a number of major institutions as well as collectors and appraisers.
A limited edition compilation Selected Graphic Works: 1998 - 2004, ISBN 0-9732542-1-1, was self-published in March 2005. Refer to the publications section for more information about this project.
Sim was selected as the feature artist in Amphora issue 135, June 2004, the quarterly journal of the Alcuin Society. A number of his drawings and prints were reproduced in the high-quality periodical. Another article was published in Amphora issue 136, and two more block prints were published in issue 137.
Sim's first solo exhibition was on display until the end of July 2004 at the Daily Grind cafe at 1500 West Georgia Street, Vancouver. There were nine original pen and ink drawings in the show, some with "spot" colour added, and one being a digital work further altered with pen & ink and watercolour. Four block prints were exhibited in the show Eight B.C. Printmakers at the Gallery from December 2004 to January 2005.
The National Gallery of Canada installed a donor wall at the entrance to their facility in 2005, to commemorate 125 years of donations to the Gallery. Having donated a number of early Vancouver art history documents to the Gallery library in recent years, Sim was honoured to be included on the wall as one of the donors.
He was in a two person exhibition titled Viewpoints at the AIBC Gallery from September 8 to October 20, 2005. Sim exhibited one photograph, several block prints, three etchings, two watercolours, six pen and ink drawings, three framed assemblages, and numerous small sculptures in the successful show. The Fall 2005 issue of architectureBC featured a review of the exhibition. Sim wrote a series of articles for architectureBC, on "The Digital Drawing", as well as for the Alcuin Society, including articles on the history of Amphora for the 40th Anniversary issue, and another on collecting.
Sim had a solo exhibition of new drawings titled B.C. Sketches at the Daily Grind Cafe in Spring 2006, and another solo show Transient Moorage there in the fall. He was invited to exhibit in the Books and Printing exhibition at the West Vancouver Memorial Library in December 2006 with a total of seven artworks on loan, and he also had three prints in the Malaspina Printmakers winter exhibition on Granville Island as well as four works in the Daily Grind 2006 Christmas exhibition.
A wood engraving commissioned from Sim by the Alcuin Society for a "printer's mark" series of prints will be published in the next year as a tipped-in limited edition print in every copy of Amphora, the journal of the Alcuin Society. The project was generously funded by Dr. Yosef Wosk, and is intended to include 12 commissioned engravings. The first four are complete and will be printed in editions of 500 each at Barbarian Press, prior to inclusion in Amphora.