Everyday Boy

Uppercase Gallery Magazines & Books

 
 

I received Uppercase Gallery's magazine and book subscription in the mail this past week.  A wonderful showcase of art and design featuring a plethora of artists.  The two books, showcase eleven artists named Jenifer, and a Swedish artist, Camila Engman (part of the Suitcase Series), and issue 3 of their magazine.  Lots to feast your eyes on.  I recommend that you subscribe yourself.

An Illustrated Life

A quote for you full-time and part-time sketchers, journal makers and painters.  I found it in a book I got for Christmas this year (An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration From the Private Sketchbooks of Artists, Illustrators & Designers by Danny Gregory).

Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here.  I was hungry.  I was defeated.  I was happy.  I was sad.  I was in love.  I was afraid.  I was hopeful.  I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that's why I made works of art.

- Felix Gonzales Torres
From Christine Castro Hughes' journal.

(93)

Sunflowers

 

I love Van Gogh's sunflower paintings. We saw this version at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City last October.  I like to hang a picture of his sunflowers at the entrance of a place because, as I understand it, Van Gogh did the same as a sign of welcome to his visitors. I tried cultivating a sunflower out on our sunny balcony without any luck last month, but hope to try again.  I have been reminded of Van Goh a lot in our neighborhood, admiring rows of bright irises in a garden and looking up at the tall cypresses blowing in the wind.

Remember To Breathe

A wonderful postcard I recieved awhile back:

My research driven practice has focused upon the re-enchantment of the air - as more than empty space, a dynamic presence with an aesthetic potential.

Aiming to give nature's process a voice, my research has examined collaboration as a potentially passive encounter with nature - generating an eco-centric aestheticism motivated by a need to sympathetically encounter nature's presence through forms of storytelling.

My practice has evolved from revealing the air as a secret microbial universe that we are in constant interaction with, towards also addressing our sensory and experiential encounters with it.

A provocative romanticism often underlies a poignant ecological dynamic that drives research toward the future excavation of passive, aesthetically generative, collaborations with nature's ubiquitous, self regulating processes

Adam Clarke

Gleaners & Consumers?

A couple of summers ago I remember enjoying seeing Jean-François Millet's painting The Gleaners at the Musée d'Orsay.

Tonight on a recommendation from Karen, Annalese and I watched the film documentary The Gleaner's & I.

I did not quite make it to a reading group I have been meaning to go to, but I read some of the recommended articles: What is Wrong with Capitalism? The Problem with the Problem with Capitalism by Daniel M. Bell, Jr. and A Global Market - A Catholic Church: The New Political (Ir)Realism by D. Stephen Long.

So between the film and the articles I have had much food for thought as it comes to our world of consumerism, economics and stewardship. I recall a friend who has written about how our culture and society has seemed to accept the meta-story of economics as its' central story. Our lives can be driven by work and money and the bottom line, so much so that we can often lose our humanity.

So what is the alternative? Is it possible to live in some sort of sustainable economy of enough, where we recognize that we don't need to horde or endlessly produce, and that there is enough for everyone?

I always seem to go back to Mary Jo Leddy's words about living in gratitude. An attitude whereby we are allowed to give and receive freely, because we recognize our abundance... but it doesn't always seem to translate into life so easily. I have been challenged as to how I am respond to a friend who is poor but also an addict. How am I supposed to care for others while not forfeiting my own life. Or is my life to be forfeit? How am I to disperse my money, time and resources, be responsible and yet care for others, enjoy life yet not waste it away? Do I allow people to glean from my life? And even in these questions I see a very self-centered point of view and wonder if a more collective response is needed.

Madeline L'engle writes:

Our surroundings were not yet as unreal as they were to become. In the world of the theatre we touched on reality itself, and were shocked as the world around us seemed to reach our for the unreal. Planned obsolescence was just coming in, objects made with less than excellence, built to destroy themselves or to wear out. Plastics and synthetics were just becoming available to the public. The word synthetics is enough: unreal.

Today we live in a society that seems to be less and less concerned with reality. We drink instant coffee and reconstituted orange juice. We buy our vegetables on cardboard trays covered with plastic. But perhaps the most dehumanizing thing of all is that we have allowed the media to call us conumbers - ugly. No! I don't want to be a consumer. Anger consumes. Forest fires consume. Cancer consumes. (Glimpses of Grace, 24)

An Evening Of Dance, Film, Music & Words

I sit in shade of the trees
     of the land I was born in.
As they are native I am native,
     and I hold to this place as
carefully as they hold to it.

Wendell Berry, To A Siberian Woodsman

I went to the second performace of my housemates arts theis project tonight, called Grafted, where he merged his love and passion of modern dance, with backdrops of recorded film pieces, music by (among others), Arvo Part, Philip Glass, and Yo Yo Ma & The Silk Road Ensemble, poetry and spoken word.  It was a visual feast, and thankfully my friend Lisa was there to help clarify some of the themes running through the dance, which for me did not translate as readily. It did speak to me of our necessary births and deaths, our belonging and isolation both in nature and the city, and our growth and struggles both alone and together as community.

...each may say,
when the great experiment is done:
'Myself I could not save;
another I saved and another saved me.'

Charles Williams, The Redeemed City

Which Button Would You Choose?

 

They had a fun interactive exhibit outside the Contemporary Art Gallery in mid-May - three large panels surrounding their building, pinned with hundreds - if not thousands of buttons with words describing a range of emotions and states of being we view ourselves and others through.  It was interesting seeing the different ways folks interacted with it, some grabbing as many buttons as they could off the wall quickly, others carefully scanning all the buttons and taking them down slowly and deliberately, and of course a good mix somewhere in between.  At the end of it all you would see folks go off happily wearing their buttons or stashing them away in bags.

The favorite button among the youth at the shelter was unsurprisingly - horny, while one of our student interns wore bored, and one of my housemates chose sarcastic.  The ones I took down: aware, contemplative, curious, grateful, hopeful, idealistic, inspired, marginalized, open, playful, selfless and shy - many contrary to what I've been feeling of late - closed, tired and uninspired.  Tensions and seasons I guess.  A friend reminds me that it rains sometimes and you just have to sit through it - let it all soak through.  The idealist in me has a hard time holding negative states in hand - or even talking about them or admitting them.  Nouwen wrote about confessing our loneliness in order to make solitude possible - I find myself having to confess lethargy and depression in order to see and reach out beyond myself again.

A Little Art, A Little Food, A Little Fun

... enter into the life of the trees.  Know your relationship and understand their language, unspoken, unwritten talk. - Emily Carr (1871-1945), Hundreds and Thousands: The Journal of Emily Carr (30)

This past Saturday we visited the Vancouver Art Gallery, chock full of local artists and collections: two floors of Rodney Graham, photographs from the collection of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft, and an ongoing exhibition of Emily Carr.  I found Rodney Graham's work funny, bizarre, and rather puzzling - all of which Leroy seemed to enjoy as it gave him ideas for his own exhibition of performance art.

I enjoyed the photography of Robert Frank, with his beautiful portraiture in the everyday, and not so everyday events of life: an elderly man in a suit and hat sitting on a park bench, pondering, as a crowd of young graduates walk by in commencement; a man shining shoes in a public washroom glittering with white tiles; and the aloof statuesque beauty of a fashion model, with her head turned in disapproval.  His images tell a story in an instant and are burned into my mind.  Jack Kerouac writes: with that little camera he raises and snaps with one hand, he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.

I was pleasantly surprised to see some of Emily Carr's work on display - her charcoal sketches, and her swirling paintings of trees and skies.  My favorite was Above the Gravel Pit.  It all really made me want to pick up her journal Hundreds and Thousands:

Everything is green.  Everything is waiting and still.  Slowly things begin to move, to slip into their places.  Groups and masses and lines tie themselves together.  Colours you had not noticed come out, timidly and boldly.  In and out, in and out your eye passes.  Nothing is crowded, there is living space for all.  Air moves between each leaf.  Sunlight plays and dances.  Nothing is still now.  Life is sweeping through the spaces.  Everything is alive.  The air is alive.  The silence is full of sound.  The green is full of colour.  Light and dark chase each other.  Here is a picture, a complete thought, and there another and there...

Afterward we went to Tanpopo's for some excellent sushi, and our favorite gelato place around the corner (where they had new flavors I've never seen before: Guinness stout, rice and Vegemite!).  We then crashed at home to finally watch The Incredibles.  Good times...