The Emergence Exposition: Opus 02 vernissage is coming up in three weeks and if you’re in the Ottawa area, you can drop by to see my exhibit!
The show is free. Over three hundred people were packed into the last one. I’ll be the one walking around with a camera strapped to his hand.
Four exhibition rooms, Four creative styles
Like the exhibitions of old France, the idea of this gallery-house is to have a mixture of different artistic styles.
J’ai eu envie de recréer quelque chose dans cet esprit-là. Il ya un côté intimidant et même assez froid aux galeries d’art. Les gens n’osent pas toujours entrer, mais je veux leur montrer que l’art c’est pour tout le monde, dans une ambiance chaleureuse.
— Frédéric Daty, gallery owner
There will be four visual artists — metal sculptor, ceramic sculptor, painter, photographer (me) — and three musical artists — concert pianist, harpist, soft pop musician. Featuring champagne and homemade truffles too!
For more details and a glimpse at some more of my work in this theme, you can read the description in the new photography section, as well download the invitation.
It snowed all day yesterday, and well into the night. The whiteness outside reflects the sky and has filled my house with bright light. It’s the weekend and I’m awake.
I’ve fallen in love with smoothies. They are usually comprised of three bananas, three tangerines, a third of a pineapple, yogurt, juice, and frozen 4-fruit berry or summer fruit salad. I have three a day. This makes me poo like crazy.
Life has been exhaustingly busy. The photo sessions are over, post-processing is done, and my pictures are all printed. The only thing left is to get them framed. I had my first session with my psychologist. I’m cancelling my Tai Chi tomorrow. I have to plan my relaxation, and this doesn’t make it very relaxing.
This weekend I hope to:
catch up on my e-mails
fill out a bunch of forms my psychologist gave me, including a multimodal life history inventory
Next week is going to be even more crazy, no pun intended. Monday I’m meeting with the framer, Tuesday and Thursday I have Tai Chi, Wednesday I’m having dinner at the gallery and meeting the other artists.
I haven’t been sleeping well. In the midst of all this sociability, I’ve been battling my anxiety. It’s filled me with a quiet determination, but the long exposure has worn me down.
If you gave me the hypothetical option of photographing anyone I wanted, I’d ask if it could be someone who had already passed away. If so, I’d choose a Byronic hero like Mikhail Lermontov, or another one of the 19th century Russian Romantics, or even Lord Byron himself.
If I could choose someone living though, I’d choose Tiana.
I asked Julie to come to the show with me. I did it with trepidation, because I considered it a big favour, and felt like I didn’t know her well enough to ask. But Blake was out of town and she was going out on Saturday, so it just happened that she decided to keep her Friday free.
It pretty much saved me. When driving to the pub, I was hit with an anxiety attack, which I’ll elaborate on in another entry someday.
Julie was the perfect person to bring, I imagine because she has experience with people who suffer from anxiety. I told her I may suddenly want to leave at any point, possibly even on the way there. She told me she didn’t mind coming, she didn’t mind leaving, she didn’t even mind standing outside the pub with me for a couple minutes in -16°C weather while I mentally prepared myself. I owe her big time.
We played cards to get my mind off the anxiety. I taught her how to play Slapjack, she taught me how to play Egyptian War. It worked.
While waiting for the show to start, I gave Krista the large prints from the previous shows. Krista gave us some random Larry and Bob balloon stickers she found on the bus (Julie and I think they were from a deaf person). Julie also met Cory there, her schoolmate from horticulture college, and Krista’s sister.
At the first show, I told Shane he should make an acoustic version of his album. Since I paid him in person for a pre-release EP that night, he told me he did have an acoustic version and promised to give it to me. I asked him earlier this week if he could bring it, which he did, but he forgot it in his suitcase. Quite a pity, since he told me he was in the studio making sure he mixed it right for me. He felt terrible about it, and told me he’d mail it to me instead. March 14th is when the album officially comes out.
The sets were rather short. Shanker and Romps opened for them, a garage rockabilly duo. Our view of this performance was a bunch of people who were much taller than ourselves.
The highlight of the show was seeing Shane perform It’s A Drag (and getting a video of it!), my favourite song on the album. Krista did the backup vocals. This is the only time you’ll hear such a dulcet harmony from another awesome artist, certainly something you can only experience from a tour. Krista also got Cory up on stage for the Bumblebee Song as an encore.
Julie asked me if I still had a crush on Krista. I had to think about it for a little bit, and the fact that I had to think about it made me realize that I don’t anymore.
I can’t believe it’s only Wednesday. The week is passing by at a snail’s pace. I’ve been overwhelmingly busy and exhausted.
So far, I have 11+ gigs and 1650+ photos on my hard drive for the exposition alone. I’ll be using about ten of them. As the show is about a month away, I’m trying to wrap up the photography by next week. That should give me enough time to work with the photos, then get them printed and framed before they’re hung in the gallery.
The rest of this week’s schedule is as follows.
Thursday: Tai Chi class
Friday: Show at Irene’s Pub (Krista and Shane are in town again)
Saturday: Getting some photos printed, meeting Shirley at her work, photoshoot with Jaimee
Sunday: Extra-curricular Tai Chi practice, photoshoot with Jaqui
And some miscellaneous pictures I’ve taken in the last little while that I never had the time to post.
