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

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

"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]

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.

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

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!

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.

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)

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

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...

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.

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)

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...

... 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

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

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?

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

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?

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"

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

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.