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<\/a>Conley\u2019s book took her two years to complete, and depicts her illustrations of those 91 buildings; it also has sidebars of information including facts about the properties. (An art exhibit based around the book is happening at Fortune Gallery in October, with Conley in attendance on select dates; see below and fortunegallery.ca for details).<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a sidebar that lists the characteristics of the style that this particular building has, and then it also lists the architect or designer, and maybe if there\u2019s a little story,\u201d she says. \u201cLots of time I have the name of the original owner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conley is originally from the east coast and says when she moved here the architecture was drastically different from what she was used to at home, so it appealed to her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMost of the [east coast] houses had peaked roofs and shingle siding,\u201d she says. \u201cYou come out here, they have flat roofs and stucco. I\u2019ve never seen stucco before\u2026 it looks like Hollywood, what you\u2019d expect Hollywood to look like in the \u201930s and \u201940s. At one time, Victoria had so many art deco buildings it was called \u2018Hollywood of the north.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Conley says her drawings are extremely accurate; she says it\u2019s because \u201ca lot of these buildings are gonna go\u201d and she wanted to keep a record of them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of sad,\u201d says Conley. \u201cBut I can understand. They were built during the \u201930s and \u201940s, and that was the time of the depression and the Second World War; there wasn\u2019t a lot of money. Resources were really funnelled into the war.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The book is laid out by municipality, says Conley, just in case anyone wants to go look at the houses that she has drawn. She drew houses from all over Greater Victoria, as well as Sidney.<\/p>\n \u201cI drew maps of Oak Bay, Victoria, and Esquimalt, so you could go around and have a look,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Victoria is full of what Conley calls visual noise, which was the biggest artistic challenge for her. Some things that are present in real life had to be eliminated in the interest of clarity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of telephone poles, and basketball hoops, and garbage cans, that kind of thing,\u201d she says. \u201cAll of that had to eliminated, and then I manipulated the photographs, of course.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She manipulated the photos so they would appear to be standing upright on the page using vanishing points so she could get the visual perspective right.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hardest thing to draw was the curves,\u201d says Conley. \u201cA lot of these buildings had curves. Sometimes I would take six, eight times to draw the curves. That was the biggest challenge. I\u2019m good at it now, but in the beginning it was hair pulling. It was a bit difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n