Yesterday I was invited to join EPIC at the Vancouver Convention Center, right down on the water of Vancouver Harbor, or Burrard Inlet.
The show was geared towards green living, which ranged from Tesla‘s electric cars, to Common Ground magazine, whose dedicated to health, wellness, ecology and personal growth. Continue Reading →
Taken directly from Pecha Kucha Night Vancouver‘s website: “Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame.”
Pecha Kucha is an event held in cities across the globe. You can see in the image below by the blue dots on the map how global it really is. Continue Reading →
The city of Burnaby, as well as many others around BC if not North America, started a program where every household was issued a compost and a garbage bin like the ones above. Really not a big deal for most people had the old traditional bins already, and used them every week. The major difference was that there had to be a retrofit done to the dump trucks in order to enable them to automatically load the bins. Continue Reading →
Spring time brings a plethora of excitement for people all over the world. It symbolizes new beginnings with calves being born, spring flowers budding, grass turning green, trees growing new life, houses opening windows and emptying dust pans, and garage sales just to name a few. But, most of all, it symbolizes playoffs, that is if you’re a hockey or basketball fan. Those of you that are, probably already know that Yukon took the final four tournament beating Butler a few weeks ago, but now the NBA Playoffs have started. Today has the first games. Continue Reading →
On March 4, 2011 at 6pm Becker Galleries opened their space for Unintended Calculations, a show being curated by the talented Indigo showcasing artists from around the world. I had the fortune to be invited to the VIP opening of the show, and I was blown away by the artwork and the artists themselves. Continue Reading →
Right now, it’s the middle of midterm exam season, which is great. The time of the semester where you check yourself into reality, and realize that yes, you haven’t been looking at the text books, and yes, you need to really focus now.
This mean time to turn off Facebook, Twitter, log off wordpress, stop rebloggin on tumblr, etc. etc.
It’s the middle of midterm exam season and I’m not refusing any of these social media outlets. Why you may ask? What I have learned about myself is if something is on my mind, if I’m getting distracted by it and don’t do anything about it, it just continues to well up on my mind and takes over any capacity to learn the material I’m trying to. This is a bad thing when you’re trying to learn… clearly.
So what do I do? I take care of these little things one at a time as they each come to me. I’ll go onto facebook and check to see if I have any new pressing matters to check in on. I’ll go check twitter to see whose yelling at me, and after a minute or two, I’ll begin to realize that nope, nothing urgent has happened since I looked on here an hour ago, and I’ll close it up and get back to studying.
For me, this usually takes about 5 minutes to do, and I’m back at studying. Except tumblr, that can go on forever.. that’s a dangerous beast one must watch out for! But for the majority of issues that come to my mind; little ideas, things to do tomorrow, appointments I have in a week… I can just write them all down on a little list in less than a minute, and carry on with studying, not ignoring any of the thoughts that come to my mind, as well as getting right back at more efficient studying.
So what do I do now that it’s the middle of exam season? I get back to studying, this has been a great 5 minutes 🙂
Today I finally used my two year membership to the Vancouver Art Gallery (aka VAG) for the first time since I got it in October. To be honest, I was a little bit disappointed. I have been a membership holder before, and I will most definitely be again, but the show this time wasn’t to the caliber I had hoped it would be.
To me, an art gallery is there to illuminate marvelous pieces of art, expression and meaning into a whole new world of wonder. One should leave wondering what they had just seen, and how it was even possible. AND, with an incredible urge to attempt that art themselves, or at least write a lengthy blog about it. But this time, it wasn’t until I reached the 4th floor that I was mesmerized. This is the first time this has ever happened to me at the VAG, but no doubt, something of the sort will happen again.
I often ponder how I can be a critic, when art itself is pure creative. It’s everything from preparing, thinking, seeing, believing, and determination that goes into each piece of art, but there is also something about great art, and something about just art, which I feel there is a line between.
In the same breath, how can I dare criticize something so delicate as the past? It is not really my part in this world I don’t think.
Please don’t misunderstand my sentiment; there were many many pieces of Robert Adams that absolutely floored me as pieces of extreme beauty. The one above wasn’t in the collection, but many others were. It was explained that Robert spent most of his time photographing North Americas West, but there were other photographs in there too.
Apparently his work is interpreted to be of how man has altered nature. Glorious (some may think) blemishes on the otherwise vegetative landscape that are labelled with the words of progress. Do you believe this is progress?
Who knows. I do not dare decide that answer for myself, for I feel if I were to say no it’s not progress, I would be turning my head away from everything that is in my day that builds up to bring me here today. I am in fact writing this to you on the premise of progress: a computer. And if I were to say it is progress, how could I explain the way we neglect mother nature, blindly turn away from the facts of overpopulation, or waste, or poverty. Or what about the great class spread that we (my fathers and mothers before me) have worked so laboriously ahead of me to eliminate?
That shall be my rant for today on the world.
On to the rest of the gallery. The second floor was an instillation done by Song Dong. They say he’s an ‘avant guard instillation artist from China.”
Walking through his exhibit, it felt like I was walking through one of the millions of pawn shops, or junk stores you come along on the road. It was amazing how it was organized though, like a maze of dominoes. It was all just JUNK, displayed along the floor in neat symmetric matrices arranged according to function. From toothpaste tubes, to gardening tools, to old cardboard boxes used for pills, to teddy bears, to shoes and clothes, and plastic bottles or even the re-useable bags they’re making us buy at the grocery stores now. It was pretty wild to see how he arranged everything. Just taking the random things we all know and see and turning it into a fantastic spectacle of absurdity!
The one thing that caught my eye, at the very end of it, was a chalk board, with a girl drawn in chalk on it, partly smudged out along the edges, but for the most part still very visible. I wonder how he came to have these things?
The 4th floor had an exhibit that was ‘In Dialog with Emily Carr‘, which was astounding. Over the time that I have spent getting to know Emily through the Art Gallery, it has made me greatly respect the woman.
Today there was a place to sit down and you could hear a dialog between one of the artists and her (I suspect it was an Emily impersonator since she’s been dead for some 60years) about the difference between now and then. It was amazing to hear her amazement about how one of her paintings sold for just over 2million dollars! Apparently there was lots of time how her paintings couldn’t even sell. Where she had lost all hope, and how she struggled to make ends meat. I guess this is the woe of all artists isn’t it?
$2.16Million Piece
The guy illuminated how green never sells paintings… It kind of made me think a bit about my next paint purchase!
Emily‘s work is both exact and abstract to me. It has a remarkable beauty in that it illuminates certain aspects of the life, without forgetting the other parts of the picture, while still remaining somewhat… well, just amazing I guess is how to explain it. Her work has now become very recognizable to me, since the VAG houses the biggest and most extensive Carr collection known.
What makes me sad is knowing how an artist like this was never appreciated in her time because of the fact that a. she was a woman in a mans world, and 2. she bridged a racial barrier that hadn’t ever really been attempted or valued at the time.
One is very tempted to say we will never come across something like this again in our time, but that would be much to naive for a person that knows better. Most certainly it is happening now as we speak. Who knows, maybe we already know the person personally!
Three soldiers ventured into the BC Royal Museum one fine November day. We were summoned to duty as soon as we stepped in the door. We suited up and hit the road looking to take out the trash…
Post brought to you by McGog.
Seeing Dragonette in Surrey for the ‘Biggest outdoor Canada Day Celebration in Western Canada’ was kind of weird.
Photo Credit to John Bollwitt
To me, it seemed like a lot of the people were there for the fair rides, or decided with the family that it was a good day to go out and socialize at the outdoor party on this particular Thursday.
But, none-the-less, Dragonette made me smile the second they stepped onto the stage, until long after they left.
I have previously reviewed their latest album, Fixin To Thrill, here, which in my mind is absolutely killer.
The guests I brought with me to the free concert in Surrey hadn’t been introduced to Dragonette as of then; needless to say, they left fans.
Photo Credit to John Bollwitt
The band came out, with the casual splendor a band getting big carries with them, exclaiming: “We’ll start as soon as Martina gets here.” I’m curious if they are starting or have always carried giant ego’s necessary for rock/pop stars… I waited patiently, which wasn’t long.
Martina’s singing was spot on for nearly the entire show, clearly showing that they were a professional well-trained band, which I was very happy to see. Some of the songs, some of the transitions and swings Martina must go through with her voice-box are truly magnificent, which is mainly the reason why I love this band so much. Her body movement on stage is what sets her and her band into a category all in its own. Yes, young pre-teen fellows were all around me, dropping their jaws.
Photo Credit to John Bollwitt
Martina mentioned at one point that they were going to do a world premier of a song, which was the only song that I didn’t feel she had down perfectly. I think she knew this, and was a bit nervous, which you could hear it in her voice, and see in her movements. Have you ever felt that feeling where you’re a little unsure, so you don’t put forth 100% because your nervous such effort would amplify your errors? The song did have a weird beat, and even weirder transitions, but did have a nice chorus. I am interested to hear it soon on their next album.
In all honesty though, this was the perfect venue to tackle a new song at, most of the people there probably hadn’t heard of her before. I’m happy somebody in the planning of Canada Day has though, it made my Canada Day a great one!
My only regret of the event was that I didn’t get myself a media pass so I could take photographs from sweet locations, they looked stunning up there.
Photo Credit to John Bollwitt
I’m listening to Two Sisters, by Tom Waits. Some of his stuff just rocks me to my soul, but this one in particular makes me think of the old west when I was a young lad (no, really I was never involved), but it makes me remember a time when men wore dress pants every day, top hats were in fashion, and so were mustaches.
But most of all, this time makes me think of the spring time. How there is always a hope beyond all recognition that things are going to start looking better, but still one knows that tomorrow will come and drag on just as the last have come. Thats ok though, because we did, and do have cherry blossoms to keep our spring time hopeful.
They just look so beautiful all over the place, sticking out against the cold grain of the leaf-less brothers and sisters out there.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how cities and citizens decide that its in their best interest to chop down trees everywhere. This, without a doubt, makes me feel sad for what we have lost in our expansion as a society. Today I went for a hike today, in support of WildNed through the woods, which just brings back so much feeling of health and wealth that is beyond any currency that exists. The fact that we chop down all our trees to put up concrete is understatedly sad.
A house just around the corner from where I live, was for sale and gated up for the longest while, but finally did sell. So, what does the new owner do as a first priority? He chops down the row of trees that spanned the entire length of the lot side to side, must have been about 20ft tall those trees, most about 2ft apart.
Keep our trees, keep our nature, keep the earth so that tomorrow I can go out for a walk in it and see flowers blooming and children playing in the fields. Please join my fight in stopping people from cutting down old trees on their properties just because the insurance company says its a risk, and it’ll save you $20 a month on insurance.
Besides, they help us all breath!
