Well it has been waaaaaay to long since I wrote something here not that I haven't been busy, just busy enough not to get here to post something, i have oodles of things to share but let us start with something new and exciting. This past March I had the pleasure of having Sheesham & Lotus & Son out to my place for a photo shoot and now that the album is finally out I can talk about it. I managed to get several exceptional shots in, in-between them running off to record the tracks for the album. The best one is presented here for your viewing pleasure. Also check them out when they are in your town!! They are fantastic performers and authentic to the core.
John Cleese on the 5 Factors to make your life more CREATIVE.
“You cannot be spontanious with reason.”
This has to be the best lecture which succinctly describes 5 very important factors to creative development.
Plaster mould baby portaits
A brand new series of portraits shot on 8x10 trophy aluminum using a vintage 1856 Voigtländer brass lens. See more in the wetplate portfolio - main page.
Wetplate collodion tintype of a plaster mould
Preserves with memory...
11 x 14 Wetplate Collodion aluminotype made with The Cardboard Supreme sliding box camera.
Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber
On a recent visit to Montreal I saw a great exhibition @ Division Gallery - After the Royal Art Lodge, works by former members of the infamous Royal Art Lodge of Winnipeg. It featured works of:
Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber
Marcel Dzama
Jonathan Pylypchuk
Adrian Williams
Although, the bust-a-gut funny award definitely goes to the creative duo of Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber. Beautifully curated and arranged in groups of common themes, these simple cartoons kicked the sometimes-stuffy white cube experience right in the nuts and I could not help myself from laughing loud and hard. Below is just a small sample of a hundred + images that were on display.
What if ...
Stairs to nowhere...
Favorite set of stairs, now destroyed, a spiral set of joy, now existing only in the recesses of my mind.
Ice in and Ice out
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Metropolis, Montreal
God was definitely in the house this Friday night as the Reverend Nick Cave wailed from his pulpit touching the true believers in the front row gently on their foreheads. The Bad Seeds accompaniment, thundered and scorced behind, a sonic train wreck of biblical litany as the congregation in full trance, roused only during the call and response from the Reverend himself. Honest I am not kidding this was truly experiential. So, in this spirit I have included images that try to capture the show in a more poetic way, as well as a few crappy stage shots. Be sure to watch the video from the floor during the song Stagger Lee it certainly gives a good taste of the night.
2013 Governor Generals Awards for Visual and Media Arts
The GG awards are funded and administered for the 14th year by the Canada Council for the Arts and hosted by The National Gallery of Canada. “They recognize distinguished career achievements in the visual and media arts by Canadian artists, as well as outstanding contributions through voluntarism, philanthropy, board governance, community outreach or professional activities.”
That is the official line from the Canada Council, but I see it as far more than that. This is our chance to meet and thank these individuals for their sacrifices and decades worth of dedication to a severely under recognised part of Canadian society. Ideas, and execution of those ideas are the catalysts of change. Thinking and acting differently from the norm and then to put oneself into public scrutiny, will consume many an idealist. But to have done this repeatedly for decades is what makes these people so deserving of their awards. Not only that, long after they have left us their work continues; continues to enrich our culture, continues to evolve and grow as we do, continues to give economically, continues to add to our collective vi
sual language and legacy - long after they have passed on. It is far too often with the arts that we regale creators for their brilliance and singular achievements after they are dead and rare that we thank them while they are still here – this is our thanks, Canada’s thanks.
I was in this post going to write something about each individual, but their decades of experiences are varied and complex and honestly I do not think I could do them justice; rather I will point anyone interested in several directions that elaborate on their careers.
The Canada Council has done a magnificent job on video biographies for each artist which I highly recommend.
The winners for the Governor Generals awards for visual and media arts 2013 are painter Marcel Barbeau, filmmaker William MacGillivray, composer/sound engineer Gordon Monahan and sculptor Colette Whiten. Ceramicist Greg Payce received the Saidye Bronfman Award. Chantal Pontbriand received an outstanding contribution award for her more than 30 years of work as a curator and art critic.
Anna Frlan - Interbellum
Anna Frlan’s exhibition at the Ottawa School of Art (January 10 – February 21, 2013) "Interbellum" addressed a subject not often engaged – the psychological and emotional remnants of war and the long-lasting consequences on families/people and how this trauma passes on through generations.
Fruits are used as a visual metaphor for explosives drawing on the etymology of the word grenade, (from Middle French grenade "pomegranate" (16c.), earlier grenate (12c.), from Old French pomegrenate (influenced by Spanish granada); so called because the many-seeded fruit suggested the powder-filled, fragmenting bomb, or from similarities of shape.) which she visually underscores by creating a pomegranate with grenade pin and lock. The work explores unaddressed or repressed trauma—several pomegranate grenades rest quietly on a fruit platter on the family’s bureau.
The exhibition was filled with rich poetry and texture underscored by her choice of medium - commercial grade steel. Anna wields a MIG welder alternately as pencil and chisel. She builds texture and form—sometimes delicately cutting flat steel to resemble lace, sometimes building density and volume that she later grinds into to the forms she imagines.
The result yields remarkable objects; the grey and silver steel communicate gesture, line and pressure much as a charcoal drawing on paper. It's uncanny because this is cold hard steel. I went back several times taking in the artistry and dedication to a single medium, the clever use of metaphor, and the pure fascination of how something we know to be so hard can be made to seem so soft and fluid.
Having a Lynne Cohen Moment.
On one of my adventures through the vast entrails of the concrete jungle looking for the mens room, i turned right, walked through generic double glass doors and fell into a Lynne Cohen photograph. Oddly enough though, the photo i captured with my phone camera was something more sci-fi than Cohen. You will just have to take my word for it. Although the weird sense of water as opposed to floor is deliciously off-putting.
Lynne Cohen's Swimming pool?
No? Perhaps it is more effective horizontal?
Will Magic Marker Ink Kill You?
Over the remnants of our dinner plates my son powered into full rant about - "you know what i hate" no what, sayz I, how could i leave him hanging? - "when people tell me how toxic marker ink is AND how bad it is for me - like I am going to die from it or something." And then gave a poignant performance of how ridiculous he thought this was. On one hand he posed the question and the other asked my participation.
A Toast...
RIP TOM
An original, a patriot, a troubadour out of time, a hobo, a rail car jumper, a plywood poet – a Canadian, Stompin’ Tom Connors. It is with a heavy heart I heard the news from my son, fresh off the twittersphere Wednesday night.
It is not his comedic hits I will remember him by (although Goodbye Rubberhead so long Boob has a special place in my heart) but rather his genuine, honest, self-made artistry. Yes, everyone has his time but, with Tom gone, it makes me sad because it gives to wonder who will sing or write songs about the Old Algoma line, a mine fire in Timmins, Tillsonburg, Skinners Pond, Big Joe Mufferaw, Wawa, Second Narrows Bridge disaster, The Gaspe, or anything truly Canadian? We are collectively richer because someone did.
Rest in Peace Tom, Canada seemed smaller with you around, but it is bigger now because of you!
Lycanthrope - Jim Holyoak @ Donald Browne Gallery - Nuit Balanche Montreal
After one too many encounters with individuals in various states of intoxication during the Nuit Blanche festivities, it was refreshing to sit down on the floor at the Donald Browne Gallery and take in this delicious combination of sight and sound.
Lycanthrope is a fantastic drawing installation that included a performance of the artist Jim Holyoak attacking a paper-lined fortification while musicians Nick Kuepfer & Neil Holyoak (Jim's younger brother) created an accompanying wall of steady sound. Jim Holyoak used an ink-slathered whisk and various graphite sticks and gouache-laden brushes to visually echo the soaring notes of looping sonic trance/bat-chirping sound from electric guitars with great analogue assists: cassette tape machines, 1/4 tape looping machine, amplified bell and chimes, all whirling though what looked to me like a horn from a Hammond organ! Think Philip Glass on acid.
Jim’s attention to detail and mastery of his tools and media are represented not only in this giant singular work, but also on the rest of the gallery walls, from floor to ceiling. Clever and articulate drawings of creatures and various abstract stalactite/stalagmite like drawings of various sizes and paper quality pinned to the wall. Of particular interest are the drawings in which Jim incorporates his own ink stamped body parts into a bat wings or a hares elongated feet.
This was the finissage so, unfortunatly if you are reading this you cannot see the show - except on line - Jim and Donald's links are below if you want to see more or just watch the videos I have inclued and it will give you a small taste of the evening.
Michael Snow Retrosepective - Art Gallery of Ontario
The AGO has done a fantastic job of assembling a selection of work by Torontonian artist Michael Snow, covering six decades of his sculptural career in a single room. All of the sculptures are, in the words of the exhibits' curators: "instruments in the artist's orchestration of thinking about looking." The collection underscores Snow's singular vision and pays homage to an artist who even today--in his 80s—continues to be at the cutting edge of Canadian and international art. Much of the work on display is interactive and, it its day, may have been difficult or obtuse to most viewers, is now (as is with much great art) simply understood and profound.
July 18, 2012 till March 17, 2013
Congratulations John Kahrs
In september the international animation festival hosted a preveiw and discustion by the director of the Disney animated a short called Paperman. John Kahrs spoke and demonstrated the techniques and tools used to create the black and white short film. Although the story in many ways is your standard, "boy meets girl, loses girl, finds girl again, happy ever after" story - the attention to detail and single-minded desire to create a B&W black ink brushed quality and respect the gestural drawings of the character designers and animators creates a feel that looks very analogue - but was mostly created using vector-based digital drawing tools. "You can make drawings that are resolution independent and you can manipulate the lines after you’ve created them. Ultimately, the end product really lives happily in the space between 2D and 3D." - John Kahrs
Congratulations are definitely due for this Oscar ( Disney's first since Its tough to be a Bird in 1969) for what is a poetic demonstration of the potential harmony between digital and analogue, each drawing from their strengths.
John Kahrs after a marathon of 2+ hours of signing posters at The Ottawa International Animation Festival
Pencil vs. Eraser
Telephone pole poet Gregory Alan Elliott councils on honesty and pencils. On the pencils vs. eraser debate I think I am with him 95% of the time, although cleaning a slate is sometimes necessary. What do you think?
Happy Birthday Charles.
Again, thanks to Frederick Scott Archer and the invention of wetplate collodion we have an image of Charles Darwin. Happy 204th Birthday Charles
Charles Darwin - Maull and Polyblank for the Literary and Scientific Portrait Club / 1855