Señor Panda's Menagerie of Light

ASFASA Festival cont'd - these socks were made for walking...

2010-02-12T12:31:00.000-08:00

Hey there thinkers --

It seems my painting up and walked away today. Away from the temporary show at the Concordia student lounge and to a longer-running part of the ASFASA Festival at the Philosophy Department on 2100 Mackay Street - It's All Relative: the conceptual, philosophical theories, knowledge, a search for meaning.

Vernissage is tonight at 6:30, and my painting is about the fallibility of memory and the layers of meaning we must push through to realize that there is nothing on the other side but the same emptiness that's inherent in everything. It's called "Black Socks"!

k, that's it.

ASFASA Festival 2010

2010-02-09T17:11:00.001-08:00

"The ASFASA Festival is an interdisciplinary initiative that aims at creating links between students from the Fine Arts and Art & Science faculties while encouraging communication and the cross-pollination of ideas between departments of Concordia University."

And once again, a science and art mashup, this time my painting work can be seen on the 7th floor of the Concordia Hall Building (2060 Mackay street), from February 8th - 12th, through the Philosophy Students Association. Hope to see all you science cats there!

[ see Google Map ]

she blinded me with science... [and magic]

2010-02-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

I'll be showing 3 works in this years Art Matters festival - a portion of a series called "Phantom Whims & the G-Spot"

Neurotheology, caprices and ghosts - empiricism battles mysticism in a knock-down makeout session between pixels and the patterning habits of stars, magical mossballs, and a general mistrust of manifest simplicity.

Check it out at the Magic & Science show, from March 6th to March 22nd

Galerie Yergeau - 2060 avenue Joly (nearest intersection is St Denis and Ontario)

[ see Google Map ]

Alice's laundromat.

2009-11-23T20:28:00.000-08:00

Long time no post. I got inspired to keep writing here thanks to one comment, and also how I'm kinda ignoring anything that isn't Paint lately. No pictures of new work, due to camera loss, but rest assured I've got turquoise, cadmium, violet and ochre all up my arms on a regular basis. And I'm moving into a place with a studio soon, with another artist, this should be beneficial all around, to say the very least.

I feel I'm passing through the looking glass at the moment, it's gray and comfortable on this side, and on the other is my real life, waiting to swell and ask a lot of me. It's about frelling time I moved to a bigger place....

I chew-chewse Pavel Tchelitchew

2009-09-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

It'll be interressin' to see how many people get to this page by Googling "Pavel Tchelitchew". Anyone banking on NONE? Bueller? Anyone? Shirley? No, I doubt it.

Not for lack of being awesome, of course. Pavel's awesomeness, that is. Here's where I'm supposed to expound like a good an informed blogger who's wise to all things art historical, but the truth his he's entirely new to me, and that's definitely the point! For class we have to make some laughably non-thinking project on anyone who's drawn anything at all in the last 200 years, and fortunately I found this guy among all the articles. Caught my attention immediately with a tree that is not a tree....

Yes, that's more like it, and what do I know about the guy?

He's Russian, influenced by macabre Romanticism, has a very popular painting at the Tate, lived from 1989-1957 (died young at 59), not terribly well-known, worked on set design for ballet, had a few shows in Paris and London and the MoMA, had a thing for astronomy, alchemy, childhood motifs and interior/exterior body landscaping (sublime veins and the like)... and I think I'm in love, you guys, at least for today.

What I will eat, and what I will never eat, also ---- Art Cards for Sale Now!

2009-09-06T21:24:00.000-07:00

So with the craft fair gone and in the dust of fond and slightly rained-on memories past, I have a few things to enjoy in the afterwards. I have a cookie with my portrait on it, c/o Amber PB and her table boasting beards and bird-earrings and (of course) sugar cookies painted in food dye with pictures of people on them. They even had vegan ones, which is how I can nibble on myself without qualm as you see here!

In other recent news I printed and packaged and beautifully presented the full set of 12 art cards that I was selling at the show, except now I'm including with each one a handmade envelope made from pages of an old Neal's Yard Bakery Whole Foods Cookbook. Because essentially the recipes are terrible and hilarious and the ink drawing of mushrooms and cucumbers are actually pretty gorgeous.

I don't feel bad, I feel like I rescued these poor recipes from any chance they may have had at getting made and eaten, and exalted them to the proper status of treasure/spectacle that they deserve.

I mean, Kombu Surprise, you guys. Kombu. Surprise. I am in awe.

Meanwhile, Get'Yer Hot Fresh [insert delectable adjective here] Art Prints + Recipe Envelope Right Here!

hurray!

Presents! Kindness made material you guys.

2009-08-31T16:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why I get blessed so much sometimes. Wether it's my inclination to count blessings or that I simply do just get showered with good things on a regular basis (and I also might be easily amused)...

At any rate, I found a rather precious envelope leaning against my door last week. I was having a terrible morning - no spark and no fire in the gut - and had finally dragged myself out the front door to find this package marked "Contents: Art Paper". Are there sweeter words? Immediate fire back in the belly!

It came to me from the very kind (really, astonishingly kind) artist I'd met on Flickr - Catherine L. Mommsen. She not only sent me a huge stack of the creamiest, most luscious papers (Fabriano and Portofine among them), she also tucked in a handmade card with one of her beautiful drawings on the front. I do so love her art... there's a fineness, a tranquility, a sense of the religious unknown, and a kind of worldly dreamscape to it.

So amazing, Catherine. You are my art hero! I have to get cracking on drawing on this wonderful new paper, I think.

Also, while at the Boom-Chix-Boom art sale (more on that next post), I traded art for some buttons made by Kirsten McCrea of Papirmasse - a lovely service for anyone who needs more gorgeousness and whimsy in their life. Basically for $60 you get 12 signed and editioned (and killer) prints throughout the year - now doesn't that sound much better than some quick-to-be-obsolete and full-of-ads magazine subscription? Yes, I thought so.

the March issue makes me want to listen to rousing icy synthesizer music and eat snow...

oh yeah, one more thing (BOOM CHIX A BOOM)

2009-08-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

While at La Centrale and enjoying Pantheon Petro, I picked up a little flyer, oh a little flyer indeed...........

With my name on it! Shit gosh I guess that means I really have to sit there and sell postcards and little zine-type things now all weekend. Shucks. Who knew? I mean, I did, but I didn't realize I'd be named on something official or nothin'. (Colour me pleased. And come see some performances and buy some stuff if you can!) /shameless plug. :)

4296 st-Laurent

514-871-0268

lacentrale.org

Pantheon Petro @ Galerie La Centrale Powerhouse

2009-08-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

Amazing what we do with our lives. Perhaps even more amazing to hear about the story when you can understand french a little better. But it was an satisfyingly technicoloured artist talk @ La Centrale nonetheless!

Dominique Petrin, former member of tribally-petrochemical-punk-revival band Les Georges Leningrad has basically grown up out of her 20s and has started using her silk-screening skills of band poster madness for good and not delicious evil. (well, it's all relative). A whole gallery plastered with jungle bright rips and prints and wrinkled triangle eyes and macaw birds and eggs puking ribbons to the floor = Dominique's personal forest and an altar to her own religion. If I got the translation right!

I remember hearing about Les Georges Leningrad (Montreal local of course) a few years ago, I'm not sure when they broke up or whatever, but I'm glad I got the heads up just now to go listen to them because they will eat your head with jungle thrash. So so so very good.

Download LGL- Sangue Puro here!

(she did all the cover art for the band, and many many posters I wish I'd been able to take pictures of, they were twisted and gorgeous. Some for Deerhoof and Add N to X, too.)

The gallery has become a jungle, chaos.
A petrochemical place.
A timeless space, dangerous, violently stimulating.
In this space, which I call forest, women have built an altar; this is where they pay respects to what we will call the “inaccessible”, symbolized by the stone.
A ritual will take place at night, a paper-made voodoo, sort of.
We do not know if it is black or if it is white.
Jean Cocteau transpires the supernatural; it inspires me.
There is in papier-mâché all the magic that children possess naturally.
On the other hand, silk screening allows ephemeral universes filled with mystery to emerge.
Anyway, mystery is a fleeting gasp.

- D. P.

PANTHÉON PÉTRO
DOMINIQUE PÉTRIN

Exhibit
August 21 to September 20
Opening
Friday, August 21, 7pm
Artist talk
Saturday, August 22, 3pm
Performance as part of Viva !
September 20, 9pm

Idle thoughts, special guest appearances...

2009-08-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

One of the things I love most of all about drawing is the unexpected nature of it.

Start working more often in cafés? Surprise musical guests will start showing up in your hair. Or sushi might come to life if you happen to be idling next to a fish market (and call me a bad vegan but I love that salty smell of ocean and deep-sea creature).

Also café-born: In the midst of a particularly perfect morning listening to french chanteuses and battling the august heat waves with a shaded window seat and a humble cup of joe, I managed to distill two Very Important Thoughts I wasn't able to put into words before, regarding the way I work.

No. 1 : The act of drawing can be a litmus test for personal Truth.

When the lines become genius, impassioned, something more than I expected at the outset - I pay special attention to whatever I'm thinking about at the time. It's usually important. Okay, it's always important. Or it's very very zen. Is that not important?

No. 2 : Dream deja vu is a good sign of properly tapped intuition.

Just what it says. It's pretty common for me to get little flashes of a previous night's dream while I work and I think now that just means I'm being subconscious enough.

Obviously these insights won't apply to everyone's art! But if you work in a pretty free-conscious style you might understand this I bet.

Summerpaintings.

2009-08-10T19:28:00.001-07:00

We finished our last painting critique today, and my children were bare on the wall, full-colour splayed all vulnerable and unfinished, like feverish flowers or spider spittle or cup noodle ramen...

Not terrible! I said that my influences were Matta, Japanese prints, religious art, comics, systems of organization and every manner of non-human humanity there is (ghosts, demons, robots, spirits, gods, chimera, golem, imaginary friend, faun, angel, what-have-you). I feel like I could have made more... but isn't it the way to always be hard on oneself.

I'll be setting up my home studio soon (ie: the bit of floor next to my bed), and make lots and lots of works in an experimental vein before the summer is out. Portraits that are a little fucked up, faster works, maybe copy some old masters so I can figure out how the frell to paint silk.

Maybe I'll sell my bed so I have more room. It's a thought.

Eating paint for breakfast. (Hero # 37 of 581)

2009-08-07T07:38:00.001-07:00

I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open. It's one of those massively beautiful sunswept friday mornings where I'm a little underslept but still sitting at the bask-point of summer, in front of my window. Not too hot (not this summer anyway), and having to invent some activity to fill the rest of my day.

Ah, I know. Galleries!

I think my brushstrokes need to some heroes to look up to, and I mean that so literally it's almost child's play to fix. Essentially, my paintings are looking finicky (to me) and I'm pretty sure that the established contemporary artists might have some clues as to how to make an effective Effect without getting so OC all the time, every time I want pink to fade to orange I break out the hobby brushes! Not so useful!

One artist who I can think of recently who's inspiration in this regard is Dana Schutz, who I just discovered. She paints an alter-verse populated by people who have the ability to eat and reconstruct themselves like it ain't no thang, and the colours people, OH the colourss... she's part of the movement that my painting teacher calls "Post Human", which apparently I'm a part of and you'll hear no complaining from me about that designation. Human is so passe anyway, bring on the carnivorous cheery golems I say.

See? ----->

So rough yet so effective. Wowee.

So I was in hiding...

2009-08-03T00:48:00.000-07:00

... and now I am not.

Right now I am drawing little pen-pieces again, quite like the feeling I had while making Planetjam (which you should go buy and support wee little artsy me and my ever-growing need for canvas space even though I totally can't find places under my bed for all the finished works, egad!)

There isn't really a theme except for whatever's brewing just below the surface of my head, so the titles of these two are really more of a happy surprise than anything premeditated. Fire and Water are the most passionate of elements, the sexiest and the most unpredictable... it's a small surprise that they're my favourite to try and capture in pen.

With a few more of these finished I'll be printing them out onto lovely cardstock and selling them for a reasonable bit of pocket-copper at the BOOM-CHIX-A-BOOM sidewalk sale/benefit event at La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, August 22nd and 23rd, it should be a hoot of a hootenany! All my other zines will be for sale as well, and I'll be sharing a table with the lovely Amber of Ambeau Peanut Butter, + friend. Hope to see you out in the sun-rays!

(a poem)

WOOSH WOOPER SUPER-NATCH-O

oh no he's bought the owl! and it's hungry

I used to collect matchbooks with one match left

in the behind of my bookshelf

just in case the sky got hungry

and went AROEIWOINRWNGAOEIROWIR *ping*

A shell of a game

2009-05-10T17:38:00.000-07:00

This is the calm place that doesn't change but just sways lightly in the current; growing scales, barnacles, pearls... transforming shipwrecks into coral. Making a bit of a whale sound, but whooshier.

“That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy – a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty, or a battleground, or a prison of it, but that does not make it any prettier.”
Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

RIP bird sundae

2009-05-06T06:33:00.000-07:00

The finished product! WEll... mostly. I lucked out in that the professor had snapped a pic before I lost it, so there we see it indeed have wings! They're a bit cut off on the side because I hate Safari browser and it's inability to let me position photos correctly, but you can see it up close at my Flickr account (and click on "All Sizes" to view it in more sizable glory).

I was thinking of ice cream while painting it. Ice cream and beetles and organs, oh my.

Stolen or Given Away?

2009-05-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

I've lost you, painting. *weepsniff... oh well*

This is what happens when you procrastinate about picking up your artwork from studios at school... I managed to find 4 of the 5 that I made this spring, but unfortunately not the largest one. And my favourite one. It looks like that picture up there, except more refined, and with huge white wings, and I don't even have a picture for my portfolio! That might be the worst part.

On the other hand, ephemerality of art, right? I'm not actually crushed, I guess. Onto the next works...

Speaking of works and ephemerality -- I worked on a delicious batch of vegan Carrot Cake Cookies while working on a drawing piece for Fatigue Magazine, and both turned out beautifully. (the cookies are ephemeral because I ated them! the submission because I am handing it to the editors on sunday)

Hope everyone's having a happy May so far! I know there're readers out there, regardless of no commenting, so to all three of you, I wave and send a virtual cookie, can you smell the cinnamon? :)

make a drawing from 8 reference photos, okay

2009-04-15T18:04:00.000-07:00

My last drawing assignment for Uni got an offer, as in, a classmate wanted to buy it. A good omen, yes? Oh yes! I should say so. Some small part of it might be the antique frames, which are admittedly gorgeous and make my disparate doodles less... disparate. Actually, this whole thing had a magnetic kind of cohesiveness, for, if you look at it a certain way, doesn't it look like a dragon kind of creature passing by the windows? That's the idea, anyway. It's a sum of parts, and if you go to the Flickr link you can see exactly what each piece was.

Working title might be something like "how to turn a pedestrian drawing assignment into a work of meaningful art", or something, whatever, I'm terrible at naming things, generally. Names are pretty bollocks, yeah.

The girl who offered to buy my piece? Made this. I fell over, a little bit, inside, when I looked in her white diorama ceramic sculpture-thing. There were marshmallows, bird-like marshmallows making silent tender conversation in stop-motion video at the end of that dream-like music-box-sized corridor. And she wondered if it was Art with a capital A, and to that I say -- Bollocks! This is gazing inside someone, something, and if that isn't worthy of the A, I'm out of the game. I ran up 3 flights of stairs and back down to the basement floor just to grab my camera and remember this. Enchanted....

post-soleil. the setted sun?

2009-04-05T15:26:00.000-07:00

This one's rising.

Well, I made it until noon. Noontime, sun at the zenith. I captured it with a masking tape circle on the floor, which is actually an enso really. No, really. I had a 76% urge when I showed up to not even open my pencils at all and fudge everyone out who happened to show up with that trick. To be completely honest, it's probably more powerful to expect a huge drawing performance and find only a bare floor with a circle on it, than to see some art student draw yet another random project in the hallway. It's like those monks who whack their disciples over the head to shock them into enlightenment. Much more penetrating. Much more better.

That said, I like my sun. I think I'll fill the rest of the page later on at my leisure, over the summer, to be a giant flaming flower planet-thing. And I need to figure out how to attach the little mirror without hurting the paper.

I also found out this morning while reading up on Shinto for class, that Amaterasu - the epic-ly epic primary Shinto Kami of the sun -- is often represented with a mirror! (!)

I love Amaterasu. Ever since I heard about the legend where she hides herself in a cave, until getting tricked outside to bring light back to world, well... I thought she was neat. Female deities are soooooo often associated with the moon, but not this girl, no, she was flaming from the get-go! Her brother Tsukiyomi is the Moon Kami.

"when you want to harvest these just use a razor with delicacy on the edges of their travel compartment"

2009-04-01T15:05:00.000-07:00

Everything's swirling together for the finish line: 1 more week of school left, and 1 week of solid studio critiques to look forward to. My projects (my babies!) are just about incubated, grown solid limbs, hot off the presses (so to speak). The booklet was the most nebulous until very recently. I actually wasn't sure if it would come together at all, but an inspired format change to the font was the missing element it needed, and I got happy with the layout late last night. *wipes giant anime sweatdrop from off of head*

I just have to figure out how to print it at a higher quality than a usual casual zine, give it an appropriately surrealistic-yet-delicious name ("Apocalypse Popcorn" ?), and then my first art-book will be done. Go life accomplishments. :)

Also, happy happy: I got more mail in my metal conjuring box!

A girl named Sailor sent me a postcard full of my favourite things: children's book cutouts, maps, paint names, bubble-balloons, blood cells, and.....

Beautiful bugstamps! I'm so grateful, these look like treasures. Thank you, Sailor! I'll leave them in their clear cage for now, save them for a world-saving letter, or perhaps save them forever, chittering behind the plastic making talk-time with Waldo and the swatch called "New Spring" :)

I do love mail correspondence... I picked up a bunch of free pastel boxes today, I think I'll fill them with small neat things and send them around the world soon. AFTER school is done being stressful, that is. Oh, I'm gonna go apeshit with the sparkles and reality tv after this week is done....

I think it's entirely possible to evolve into a foolproof machine

2009-03-31T16:15:00.000-07:00

Imagine if you might... the top floor of this building is a dislocated airport atmosphere, an ice age wisp-moment, a lavender ghost shark air-quarium. It'll be my home for a full day of drawing, all my pencils scattered around me as I slowly, slowly grow a sun in graphite, flames licking in slow motion to fill a gigantic paper on the floor. My temporary home and magic carpet ride, ha!

If I could extend this to a 24-hour performance and watch the nightlight twinkle in all colours of the city all around me, all alone in the sky........ I would, oh I ..... all for the want of an after-hours pass. :/

This will still be glorious, though.

like 64% of art students, I have a thing for little sparrow-y city birds and tangled masses of branch

2009-03-31T13:17:00.000-07:00

These are some friends of mine. Accidental videos are the sidewaysest! I mean the best.

O HAI

Oh, and Montreal is pretty much designed to climb all up over at a moment's desire, if you can take a bit of dust and the moderate thrill of kicking your boots against the side of old buildings at people's head level. We saw had the most epic-ly boring evening right after, with stolen birthday cake and deliberately terrible karaoke and Eddie Vedder's ghost channeled into a roots rocker and it was AWESOME.

I also totally wasn't kidding about the birds. They were having a little tea party this morning in the lot behind the arts building! So springy, wish I'd had some breadcrumbs in my pocket, even if it is a strange thing to carry around. I know it's not the most amazing picture in the world, but actually if you look at it for more than 4 seconds it starts to become quite beautiful, like a cloud of smoke or daydream of park light... oooweeeeooooooooooo. It was kind of a moment, and I also got a big kick out of taking pictures of presumably nothing, a couple steps away from the art hang, because regardless of how eccentric it might look, in that general vicinity bird-picturing ranks a modest LOW in weird behaviour.

I even have a relevant drawing to post. tweet!

"if i snapped a photo of you every time you smiled, i would end up with a lot of useless, blurry photos"

2009-03-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

Sometimes my mailbox is a day-brightener. Every so often I remember the #1 perk of making & trading zines, and that is getting to read other people's. A girl named Keet sends me her creations every so often and every time it's like a fresh breeze, xeroxed cheesy dancing kinda smile-making stuff. This most recent one came with robot postcards, even! And the book is little thoughts and twisty snippets of musings on life, I quite love it ---

To get yrs, and ask her for anything else she's done cause it's all awesome I assure you: NERDTURD@Gmail.com will set you right.

oh I've been working on the silk road...

2009-03-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

I'm still alive! I've been busy with the end of semester, working on a few larger paintings for class, and hoping that I manage to step away from the brushes long enough for things to dry so I can take them into school without smudging them all over. Lately it's all been about colour and fluidity... and big dots. And wishing I had more tubes to choose from. This summer I'm taking another painting course though, meaning a lot of focused attention and hopefully some splurges at the art store. New brushes and solvents and surfaces, oh my! Who needs a vacation when you can build worlds at the end of your bed/studio? :D (I'm only half joking!). I can always do Asia after school (and that way I don't have to come back if I don't want to...)

So you probably also noticed that's a self portrait up there. Or, um... if you've ever seen me, you'd know that's my funny face. Appropriately sitting on my pirate lunchbox canvas perch (!) anyway, I needed to make a new one after destroying the last one in my first public performance two weeks ago. The project was a combination "destroy something you love" and healing piece that involved Javanese gamelan music, an ancient television set, a huge pair of scissors and a bucket of white housepaint called "Moonlight". It went so powerfully, even if the documentation video ended up being pitch black, *sob*. Maybe I'll post it anyway, but it's really really lame and all you can see is a fuzzy blue screen and my arms flailing around. Ah well, such is life. I'll just have to be brave and attempt another performance, maybe this one with a light source around? ha.

Here's also a sneak look at the kind of work I'm doing right now. Again, very colour based...

It's very much not finished, but it's close, and my vision in pigment is starting to speak the same language as my drawings, which I'm happy about. I'm even kind of pleased about the big blank bare canvas spots... don't ask me why. If I had to speak inspiration... I'm waist-deep in Chinese philosophy right now, which was almost certainly a subconscious force here. The whole Jade thing it's got going on, as well as rather perfectly exemplifying the Neo-Confucian concept of Li, which is "the underlying intelligence and order of nature as reflected in its organic forms", as quoted from Wiki.

It's really astonishing actually, how the world orders itself into an awkward & pure perfection. The other day I found myself staring at the folds of my headband hanging off the radiator in the bathroom, remembering the dark shape and feeling almost as if I'd seen it before. Or drawn it before. And I probably had. Which makes me wonder about chaos and how much our surroundings are shaped by the physical way we interact with them, and how much by our perception of it all. Like, when I toss a book on my bed... does it land in a particularly Elizabeth sort of way, and I'm inclined to say yes? And in that case... is making oatmeal or catching the bus art? Holding a pencil or a lover is the same? And when I see a book that someone else has tossed upon their bed, do I mentally alter the angle and colour to fit into what I've deemed aesthetically comfortable to MY reality? If it doesn't, what happens then? Who designates this Li stuff, anyway? !!

haha, okay, I shut up now. :DDDD

*doodles*

new zine, seven loves, the end of the world and dancing bears

2009-02-22T20:58:00.000-08:00

So spring is in the air, almost just peeking it's way around the corner and I am R.A.C.I.N.G. to get as much drawing done as possible. I find winter very insulating in a creative way. Maybe incubating would be a better word? Anyway, I'm actually a little sad to see the snow start to go... it was my blank canvas, a little bit.

This latest project is my newest zine... I haven't found a name for it yet, although this morning as I was curled into an unpleasantly morphing nauseous ball after a night of wayyyyyy too much whiskey, two names did float through my head that could start the chain reaction towards the correct title. "i don't really believe in the apocalypse" or or "sweetest sun". Something like that. (sidenote: don't you just love the gracefully random things a subconscious can bubble up in the throes of hypnagogia?)

It isn't necessarily about the apocalypse. It's definitely planetary though, a bit epic. Probably a lot more about growth and seeds, evolving, creation myths, all tied together with the idea that it will end and it's all ended before. But it's not heavy! Actually! Maybe it's the page made up entirely of adorable snack food? Snack food is kinda a theme, too, because it's MY zine suckers. :P

I've also been nominated for the Kreativ Blogger award by the luminous and fruity K from Apricot Belly! I am supposed to list 7 things that I love, and then pass this award onto 7 other bloggers. I... don't really know 7 other art bloggers, and thusly I'll make this a little mission to find a few, how's that? Here goes!

"What are 7 things you love?"

1. Life! I think it's juicy and confusing and never boring and even when it hurts it's kinda funny in a horrible way. And it keeps improving, how is that? age 80 is going to ROCK SOCKS.

2. Making things with my hands (and my heart and brain). Making things in general. Give me a void and some tools to fill it and I am a happy happy girl. I kinda leave trails around wherever I go... ^^;

3. My experience of the divine. It's been there like an extra halo of radiance on everything since as long back as I can remember. (I will divulge that the white circles that are allll over my work are probably very very related to this).

4. Dancing like a moron. Dancing like a flower. Visualizing the earth coursing up through my ridiculous giant Canadian Winter Boots as I cyborg-prance at crazy parties.

5. The city of Montreal. It done me good. It made me a woman! I'm not even kidding.

6. Waking up at 4 in the morning to make myself an elaborate bowl of oatmeal. Nurse said oatmeal for 2+ hours reading whatever thick and conceptual book I've managed to find lately. Drink piping hot yerba mate alongside. Finish said breakfast. Then Go Back To Bed. Love it.

7. My kitty!!!! Okay, and every single one of my friends. Especially my oldest ones. I have really really really rad friends. Loyal and strange and beautiful, all of them. My family too. "my friends and family"? Well DUH I love them!!!!

Enough mushiness though. Here's some impossible band playing at the Sala Rossa's Japanese Night coming up March 4th. I'll be there! You should be too!

tamagoléoptera
Oh right! Almost forgot (and okay, so I do know some artsy bloggers):

1. Bettina @ Inside the Artist's Studio
2. Michelle @ My Zoetrope
3. Evan @ Bjorked Off
4. Evan @ Swan Fungus
5. Olivia @ Olivia Ew
6. Amelia @ Chibi Amelia
7. Angie @ Angie's Amazing Adventures

Go! go forth and love things! I'm out.

happy heart day!

2009-02-15T20:19:00.000-08:00

"
I saw two necks, male velvet strong, lamplit mid-keyboard swell in a freeze frame embrace, the air smokey and sweet with the smell of youth and january hope... remembering for a moment that we all will die. one's dress shimmered silver and silk, his beard wrapped around a nightlong grin and beer bottles clattered like softly tossed snow around the room. There were promises flourishing everywhere, between the languid and the crazed, the blind and the violent, the yogi, the yoni and the star, because - for the most part - we were young and youth is designed for grasping of all kinds.
"

ps. painting custom patches is fun! :)

Performance #2: Persona Literata

2009-02-12T17:45:00.000-08:00

"Dear Diary,

today I woke up and I was a ghost. How strange! made of lines, eleven years of words and promises and opinions and stories. boys and mistakes and doodles and heroes and days. I am having a hard time creating words. Right. Now. They are so permanent and so wrong... and just who am I now anyway? I walked up and down the street, fingers numbing in the cold and my mind numbing too... a Self dimming and fleeting to leave just the skin. So in a way it's a shell with no soul. OR is it a soul bared completely with no body to recognize? As much as a soul can be summed up in an A B C kind of way, and just how WAS your tuesday? Dear diary, I never wrote dear diary at all. Who was I talking to? It wasn't me. I haven't found a ME definitive enough to be the fulcrum of these words yet. There is a good story I'm wearing, it's a one-of-a-kind couture made from the hundreds of voices that all went by E. Ranger (except that phase where I wanted to be called - wait for it - Willow Moon, and I really don't count her as part of the Me-ish canon at ALL, what a chimp!.... <----- Artistic license). Like a relay race of my own name... with no prize and no finish but apparently a decent uniform and oh there's unlimited graphite!

ANYway. I hate reading my own writing. The End."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I consider this my first real performance. I had to psyche myself up all morning to go outside but I needn't have been so reluctant. This was exhilarating!!!!!!!!

I only walked. That's it. I walked slowly and at one with the Persona. Cars slowed down, people did double and triple takes. My hands felt like they would crack right off in the sub-zero weather, but I kept going, vision at once blurred by the pantyhose and sharpened by the contacts and pure creative high.

Seriously, this is like my dreams coming true. Literally. The fantasies I lost myself in as a kid, the strange characters that I still draw... stepping off the page and into YOUR TUESDAY MORNING. What the hell??? I love life! I'm wearing this suit again.

"i am sick" zine finished!

2009-01-29T19:14:00.000-08:00

/\ also a drawing inspired by sky gardens, dante's hell, and the letter w

I made a zine last week and finally got it printed today! I don't know why I always end up making these things in a whirlwind flurry - this took me an evening and a half, and it came out pretty naturally. The naturalness might be due to being feverish and wonky the whole time I tremulously held that gluestick, but I wouldn't have it any other way. In fact I stopped when I felt better enough to leave the house, which left me with exactly 16 pages of ranting and diagrams and love songs to lozenges.

I'm also partway started the next issue of Underwater Cigarettes, which might get a name change along the way, but it's still looking to be the same sort of structure, that is crazy pen drawings leaking onto stream of consciousness writing and so forth. I would give my teeth for a typewriter or a printer! But I would also settle for giving away my jaw. I have killer TMJ right now. Not that anyone cares, but it hurrrrrts. :(

Okay, okay... montreal art. I saw a movie at Articule last Saturday called La Grande Bouffe. Oh my goodness it was fabulous!!!! It was about these four frenchmen who decide to eat themselves to death, which naturally requires hiring prostitutes to notch up the decadence. We're talking feast after glorious feast after ridiculously mindblowingly rich and rare feast, with greasy roasts and vats full of "puree" and always always these strange over-iced gateauxs. Oh, and it was funny as well. And there was a love story. And the funniest bits were so horrible. It won at Cannes in the 70s and I'm of course recommending it from the tippiest bits of my curling-in-horror toes.

I suppose the important bit is that Articule needs a new floor though. It really is the sweetest little artist-run center that ever existed 4 minutes away from my house. I hope they make enough to replace it, and if they continue these events with the movies and vegan squash soup + toasty almonds on top (and grilled cheese that I couldn't eat but smelled nice) I think they will.

with a pretty bow, we take a bow

2009-01-26T16:52:00.000-08:00

This could sum up the tune in my head these days very well.

"Lately - and I think this is a cultural observation - I've replaced the post-romantic metaphor with one of a knot. I see individuals now as knots, in say, the piece of lace that one of Vermeer's lacemakers is making. Things go through us - the genetic code, the history of the nation, the language or languages we speak ... the constraints that are put upon us, the people who are around us. And if we are an individual, it's because these threads are knotted together in this particular place, and they hold. I also have no metaphysical sense of the self, and I see this knot as vulnerable; you could cut one or two threads of it... or you can, of course, get an unwieldy know where somebody has had so much put in that the knot becomes a large and curious, and ugly object. We are connected and we also are a connection which is a separate and unrepeated object."
-- A. S. Byatt (1987; 26)

Last week we had our first taste of actively doing some performance art together for class:

There were other things done too - that black circle of tubing was filled with hundreds of downy pillow feathers that we sent cascading through the big glass sleekness of the new art building. Multiple times. I don't think the janitors were even chagrined! We also carried a couch into the big maintenance elevator and had a little hoedown in there, hoping that this time maybe we would get more random people to join us... and of course Kathy Kennedy (sound artist/professor extraordinaire) shows up with her sound class along with some guy eating takeout noodles and the place goes wild! The video's too long and unedited to show right now, but I may later when I get the final piece.

In other news I AM SICK. Oh woe, to have a head so full of gak! I'm probably not communicating very well if blog-land is anything like real-land, but you're bearing with me if you've gotten this far and that makes me happy enough to keep going.

Notably at the end of that class some of us got randomly invited behind the glass gallery of the FOFA to take part in a real (that is, meaningful) performance piece - Angela Silver's Accrétion where she takes outmoded pieces of writing equipment and gives them new life in contemporary ways. In this case, basically, she was wacking a wall full of carbon paper with a typewriter ball over and over, making strange partial constellations of letters and signs all over the wall. You also had to walk through Amelie Brisson-Darveau's jungle of knotted-up crimson fabrics to get to the action. (I think that also had to do with re-purposing objects - turning old clothing into measuring tools, borders, social nets, et al)

It was fairly neat, and a good denouement on feeling healthy I think. 30 minutes after this I was horking and trembling like a big 'ol microbe, but up until then... art. As it should be. :)

The next assignment for Perf. Art is to take on a different persona for a whole day... I was just thinking of switching gender, but now I think I might go a little wilder in concept. Any ideas? Mythical beasts, muses, barons and superheroes are kinda the wildness I'm aiming for. Moustache wearing is a highly amusing plus!

graar! I come from a swamp... to look fashionable at you

2009-01-15T18:49:00.000-08:00

Went to a wig-making workshop today. Can we say fabulous? I wasn't even allowed to go and then I get an email saying I'd been pushed up from the waiting list to the list of lucky stars who got to take glue guns to creepy hair weaves for an afternoon. Improvement of situation, yes!

It was pretty cool, not terribly informative or mindblowing, but a neat craft session. It got me thinking actually about making shaman masks or wigs later on. Hearing Kali's name so often in my religion class that came right before must have informed the black disaster I'm so expertly modelling up there, and I kinda wish I'd had a whole head of the stuff to work with, you know, really push that crazed medicine woman primal tresses thing. I can see a series with this...

Oh yeah, and in other news people don't hate my watercolour work. Neat buckets!

I thought they were disparate as hell but no, apparently they're all quite equally strange and loveable. :)

(if you click on the picture you can see them close up on my flickr set)

on lizards, and wizards

2009-01-08T16:32:00.001-08:00

"All that I made before the age of 65 is not worth counting. At 73 I began to understand the true construction of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes, and insects. At 90 I will enter into the secret of things. At 110 everything -- every dot, every dash -- will live."
- Hokusai

I've been feeling inevitable lately. Full of piss, vinegar, and only slightly sick from the intense effort of living to the fullest. I even managed to sleep last night! Finished 10 watercolours for draw studio, which I'll post later for sure. My performance art class is also looking to be that class that actually teaches something about art (there's always one, if you're lucky). I skipped ahead in the online syllabus and found some links to Miranda July on Youtube, which made me squee, because gosh darnit I think she's adorable. Yeah, I know, whatever, she's a privileged art-heiress, but I think her work is actually really sweet, and anyone with eyes so freaky crystal blue just has to be good, right? Of course.

Keep watch for some performance art going down over here, too... I've got ideas up the wazoo, which actually surprised me but I think I might take to this like a fly to jelly, so to speak. It's just too ripe for, well, anything. I will not mail you real spam in the mail, though, I promises. :)

I've been reduced to this? bollocks!

2009-01-04T23:01:00.000-08:00

It's strange to think that it's actually been almost a year since I've given this blog any thought. Similarly, New Years came and went without my taking stock of anything that's happened during 2008, leading me to almost believe that I'd done nothing.

This couldn't be any untruer. Most notably and perhaps most quietly... I found my artistic voice again. I recognized it as the secret joy of feeling the creaminess of graphite scribble as I worked feverishly into wee hours of the night... it would have been since grade 9 that I'd felt so in love with just drawing for it's own sake. The rekindling of this was due to meeting a remarkable person who has since moved on and through my life to her own adventure, and while this person will probably forever BE 2008 to me, I move on to the other small areas of note.

I finished the 10-day Master Cleanse in the spring, and thus quit smoking. Okay, that one IS pretty big.

I published a few zines, including the relatively successful Underwater Cigarettes #3 that got reviewed in Broken Pencil. This led to a busy mail life that involved some packages and mail art and old school enveloped fun. I might dive back into it sometime, when the mood strikes.

I started an Etsy shop, which I had been thinking about for a while and made a little over 100$ out of stuff that was laying around in my drawers. Not bad!

I decided to minor in Religion, and join the ranks of all those with useless degrees and too much propensity to think about things that probably function better when they're not under scrutiny.

I became ridiculously skilled in the kitchen. woohoo!

Um... what did I not do? Talk to people. Take some risks. Say yes to things. Be open? And this is what the new year is about now. This is travel year, in whatever form that comes in. I haven't decided where or how (exchange through uni or WWOOFing), but I'm taking whatever skanky boring job I can get with the express purpose of saving up a plane ticket. Some places are really cheap! Ecuador, Japan, wish I could go to New Zealand... anyway. That is this year.

Not to mention drawing my wee heart out, as if I could ever put that pencil down.

Other things 2009 will bring:
* at least one date
* a table at Expozine
* a plane ride
* breakdancing
* a performance art class!
* participaction in an art show (crossed fingers for Art Matters)
* doing one thing that scares me every day. Today I called someone. :)

I'm back!

2009-01-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

Hmmm... the layout needs work. Stay tuned...

Day 3 & 4

2008-05-26T16:16:00.000-07:00

All the sketches are actually from today, I was bad and went to see the Cuba exhibit at the Musee des Beaux Arts yesterday instead of drawing. I found an Ideology Detector, though (*snicker*)

People smelled really wonderful there, like bubblegum and sunscreen. I almost didn't mind how ridiculously overcrowded it was. ALMOST didn't mind, I admit I skimmed over some stuff due to claustrophobia, but that's what a free day at a museum will get you, I guess. It was a good day to be outside and wandering in breezy downtown sun, at any rate.

["Ideology Detector" Lázaro Saavedra, 1989]

Day 2

2008-05-24T20:56:00.000-07:00

This has nothing to do with anything, but I ADORE Jeffrey Lewis, is all. I'm listening him sing through the History of Punk on the Lower East Side right now, and he even threw the Silver Apples in there, and it's comprehensive and fun and full of his scratchy boyish monotone. Wee!

I had a day full of disappointments but none of them were that disappointing -- gross energy bar, gross diet blackcurrant soda, gross um... seitan dinner. Okay, it was all food disappointments. And I did find this awesome bracelet for a dollar.

My life IS the embodiment of excitation.

Day 1

2008-05-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

All right. I cook too much and I don't draw enough... and it's time to switch the balance. For some reason I'm even getting sick of imagining kumquat cupcakes and goji toast all the time... so I'm hereby promising myself and the world one (1, uno, une, a) drawing per day. At the very least. I just need to get back into the habit of using my pencils as therapy, release, entertainment, and stress-free noodling. Like a kid in a sandbox.

Anyway, she's called leafbutt candlehead ---

Expect more tomorrow!

gah, no ideas, I cut and paste instead...

2008-05-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

"the fruit is health and life"

"...one in a million"

Okay, I'm a lazy dreamer and completely without focus right now. Other people have no idea what they're doing, right? Should I run away to Malaysia? Send away for an apron and my choice of acceptable addictions? Continue on living... slightly mechanically? DROWN IN DIET CRANBERRY SODA??? This is only because I don't have an idea for my summer drawing project yet... I'm so predictable. *eyeroll*

And indulgent. :D

a spoonful of sugar...

2008-04-03T16:58:00.001-07:00

We had to make trinkets for our last day of drawing class - a "useless accessory" to trade, while we drank from jugs of wine and basically reveled in the least drawing-y assignment ever assigned. I got my days mixed up and only just finished mine this afternoon, but they will get handed out later, during one-on-one evaluations. Aaaaanyway.... they're spoons. Printed with sobering thoughts, dipped in candy apple sugar coating and only slightly burnt. Medicine for the soul! Chicken soup need not apply. Did you know that plastic melts like a mofo if you're not careful about dipping it into boiling pots of sugar?

Sweeeeet.

angelus... or like, maybe doctors.

2008-03-28T16:36:00.001-07:00

Just a quick piccy for now... the last few weeks of school are involving a lot of studio time and stress and not so much in the way of carefree blogging. Plus I'm feeling nicer these days and not so willfully ambiguous, so I'll even tell you straight up that these are angels. Sort of. Anyway, I'll post my final painting series later, not that anyone reads this page (schroedinger's ending statement or just horribly ironic???? true logicians are laughing at me). Ta!

lesgo to the belgo

2008-03-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

when I talk to you, I absorb your manner into me

and I hear snippets of conversational echoes from the kids across the city

you say it's probability

and it might be science

and it might just be that we're not so different

/hit the floor,wham,thankyoudrunknow/// :)

he wrote poems to people on the bus and managed to make those suck, too

2008-02-24T19:00:00.000-08:00

"...we danced with the tin in some exhibition rooms and were strangely unimpeded by every security guard in the place. Except when liz touched some hollow truck, I think it was james angus's hollow truck. I don't like his work all that much."

*** EDIT: it wasn't James Angus's truck, it was Geoffrey Farmer's. I saw more of his annoying art at the Musee d'art Contemporain today, and it was bloody interestingly boringly annoying, which is just the reaction I'm sure he'd be pleased to know got elicited. Why does he refuse to say anything but still use everything to say it? Why do I hate his work so much when he's basically succeeding at the lame-ass intention I had for my art when I was a pink-cheeked yea-babe of the studio? A reasonably aware person says "duh. that's how it works, hating things much like yourself and yet more annoying than yourself." Maybe I just suck at liking stupid art. Gah.

I was pleasantly enchanted by Yannick Pouliot's furniture, however, and I stared at Riopelle's the Landing for as long as a pretense of sanity would allow. That painting is a speechless expanse of awesome and I lurrrrrbe it like kitties (gimme any Riopelle, yes!).

ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow my head no seriously fucking ow

2008-02-07T19:31:00.001-08:00

Mineral spirits cause debilitating headaches. Who knew? I don't feel like I'd be spastic to wear my shiny new ventilation masks either - I saw a veritable surgeon in painting room B-whatever slapping paint around like a mad beekeeping science man.

Anyway, new stuff. the contrast in the photo is shit, but squint for appropriate effect.

WEAR YOUR MASK, FOOOOLISH CHILD!

TSK.

laughing at the 'wall of fire' in person

2008-01-29T05:15:00.001-08:00

The one and only time I tried spam it pretty much blew my world apart. This was pre-vegan, still being an idiot days, hanging out in downtown Ottawa and being a general bad influence on sane people. The other liz and I bought some spam at Giant Tiger and cut a hole in the bottom of the tin with a knife, so I could make a lamp out of it later, and we sat there at the top floor of the rideau mall eating spam and mussels and playing go fish with spiderman cards. And scowling at children.

Then we went to the national art gallery, still eating the spam (did I mention yet that it tastes really good, like buttery salty ham? I think it has potato flake in it. anway.). It was kind of an honoured guest, we danced with the tin in some exhibition rooms and were strangely unimpeded by every security guard in the place. Except when liz touched some hollow truck, I think it was james angus's hollow truck. I don't like his work all that much. But yeah, spam.

There was a microphone set up, I think it was around Valentine's and you could walk up to a platform lit all nicely with golden blue lights and profess your love for whatever you wanted, and they must have been recording it for something later I think. I went up and I tried to express my love for the salty meat, but I got too emotional and started to cry. Liz grabbed me off of there, looking kinda scared, but the moment wasn't ruined or anything, and we watched some more art-house movies like this cool one about wonderwoman spinning and exploding and being generally deconstructed to a nice disco beat, and then we went home to drink.

double vision, paralysis. no naked dreams, though.

2008-01-28T04:44:00.001-08:00

"the boat? it's not a boat, it's the room. it's not a fish open your eyes but what's outside? it's water and it's black and there's a reflection rippling in the boat that's actually your bedroom. wake up. film over eyes, fishies biting rocket launcher is only a lamp. wake up. I can't I'm stuck the music is drowning me"

I've been finding lately a fun game in trying to adequately rope together (in words) the strangeness of a lingering dream, right after waking up. It's really does feel like I'm in some sort of poet's rodeo (not that I'm a poet, maybe I'm the clown?). This isn't the most nightmary of the nightmares, or the best-written thing ever, but it's the one you get to see, k?

Note the BMO (I believe) making a happily congruent appearance, happy considering I grabbed the nearest pen and paper I had around and it, uh... worked.

many hands, more white paint (maybe bird shit?)

2008-01-28T03:45:00.001-08:00

Throwaway sketch, notions of erasure... the german professor seems to understand.