Viewing entries tagged with "art"   //
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House Show II

8

I’m still catch­ing my breath from the awe­some­ness that was the sec­ond House Show. So much plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion, and prac­tice went into one night that I felt like I’d given birth when it was over; I didn’t know how to feel, or what to think.

Darren came up the day before to hang out, and along with Shane, Blais (his son), and Chris, stayed until Sunday. After the show we stayed up talk­ing, pick­ing Shane’s brain about his com­po­si­tion process and influ­ences. Everything went bet­ter than I could have planned, and I’m thank­ful that so many of my friends were there to share the expe­ri­ence with me.

cupcakes

Meet the cupcakes (from left to right):

Black and White (Belgian dark choco­late cake with vanilla frost­ing and choco­late sprin­kles), straw­berry (pure straw­berry cake with sweet cream cheese frost­ing and red sugar flower on top), hazel­nut choco­late (hazelnut-chocolate cake with Belgian dark choco­late frost­ing dec­o­rated with a toasted hazel­nut on top), vanilla (vanilla cake and frost­ing, flavoured with Madagascar bour­bon vanilla with sprin­kles), and key lime pie (lime-infused cake and cream cheese frost­ing with lime zest).

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Date  October 21, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life Video

House Show II: Invitation

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Owing to the suc­cess of last year’s house show, I’ve invited both Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously to come and per­form again next month. Not only will there be awe­some music and an assort­ment of mini-cupcakes hosted in my liv­ing room, it’ll also be Jesse’s birth­day party.

This will be a col­lab­o­ra­tion across Eastern Canada, as Shane will be com­ing from Montreal (with a poten­tial secret guest), and Rosie will be trav­el­ing from Halifax on man­dolin to join Audra, Nic (also com­ing from Montreal, as Rockefort F. Loopfrog, the beat­maker), and I as part of the Dangerson Famile. However, I don’t think Dolly will be mak­ing an appear­ance because the sheer num­ber of peo­ple in the house last time really freaked her out.

second house show flier

I had a lot of fun mak­ing this flyer, fea­tur­ing Mr. Cupcake. The great thing about Avenir is that it sup­ports so many vari­a­tions of the type­face, which lets you make movie and con­cert posters in the clas­sic style of a full-justified col­umn of information.

Date  September 27, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life

Transplant

0

I got the chance to work with Team Emily to doc­u­ment their lat­est artist vision, titled Transplant. The bril­liant concept:

This sum­mer, Emily Comeau (a fibre artist from Quebec) and Emily Cook (a book and paper artist from Ontario) will be col­lab­o­rat­ing to cre­ate an immense and inter­ac­tive tun­nel book made from local plant mate­ri­als to install in a bar­ren patch of city.

Transplant is an out­door liv­ing book instal­la­tion. Constructed from found nat­ural mate­ri­als both liv­ing and dead, this instal­la­tion is sub­ject to the whims of nature and the designs of man. Each page of this book resem­bles an arch invit­ing the audi­ence to enter the immense tun­nel book. Within the pages are paper pock­ets where seeds will begin to sprout as the struc­ture is grad­u­ally beaten down by the weather. Additional arches/pages will be added through­out the exhi­bi­tion as the evo­lu­tion of decay and growth take over. This evo­lu­tion speaks to the ebb and flow of con­struc­tion and decay as the man­made world inter­acts with the nat­ural one. The story of this project is one of trans­for­ma­tion and recla­ma­tion of the urban land­scape by nature. It is the story of a cycle of decay and rebirth and of a bal­ance that can be achieved when nature’s col­lab­o­ra­tion is desired rather than fought

The sun­light com­ing through the seeded paper is such a won­der­fully strik­ing image. This is just the first arch­way, con­structed on the lawn at the Ottawa Arts Court, which is a very high-profile place (you can see the Rideau Centre right across the street). More details and orna­ments are planned as the project con­tin­ues over the next year.

My desire to record things comes from the fact that most things in this world are so ephemeral. This being a struc­ture that can dis­solve in the rain, as well as being an area fre­quented by drunks1 and home­less peo­ple, meant I was pretty adamant about doc­u­ment­ing the whole process.

  1. As we were leav­ing the area at the end of the day, some guy just up and peed into the bushes next to us. [↑]
Date  August 17, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life Video

Art for Haiti

6

Thumbnail: Art relief

There’s a fundraiser for Haitian earth­quake sur­vivors at the Cube Gallery hap­pen­ing in two weeks. An auc­tion will be held after the view­ing, and any money raised from the auc­tion will go to the Red Cross. I’ve donated one of my favourite pho­tos, the very first print of “Carrot Feet” (to which I hold much sen­ti­men­tal attach­ment), to the cause. I’m also going to per­son­ally extend this to all other prints from my Fruit and Body series, so if you pur­chase a print between now and the auc­tion, I’ll put 100% of the sale price towards the fundraiser.

If you have art­work you’d like to donate, please con­tact me and I’ll get you in touch with the appro­pri­ate peo­ple. When peo­ple can walk away with amaz­ing art­work while help­ing those in need, it’s a win-win sit­u­a­tion. I’ll be attend­ing to meet the other artists and hope­fully pick some­thing up for myself if any art­work speaks to me.

From the Cube Gallery web­site:

Haitian Disaster Art Fundraiser

In light of the dis­as­ter that has befallen the peo­ple of Haiti, Cube Gallery and AfrikArt Konnection, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Paul Dewar, MP are call­ing Canadian artists to rally together to assist in the efforts under­way to make the lives of Haitian sur­vivors better.

Event Date: February 9, 2010
Event Time: 6 pm view­ing; 8 pm auc­tion
Location: Cube Gallery, 7 Hamilton Ave. N.

Artwork view­ing: begins at 6pm
Fundraising Auction: 8pm

There will be a recep­tion, music, light foods and enter­tain­ment at Cube Gallery on Hamilton Ave. The event is hosted by Oni the Haitian Sensation.

Date  January 27, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life

More Couple Photography

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Kissing in the grass

Thumbnail: By railing
Thumbnail: Butt grab
Thumbnail: Face to face
Thumbnail: Couple in leaves
Thumbnail: Looking back

Cradling

Thumbnail: Embrace
Thumbnail: Girl eyes
Thumbnail: Guy body
Thumbnail: Guy fetal
Thumbnail: Posing

Girl with legs crossed

It’s SO great to work with a cou­ple who appre­ci­ates art…enough to be will­ing to get naked for it.

Date  December 17, 2009
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Categories  Photos Random

University of Toronto Photographic Art Show

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University of Toronto Dentistry art show

If you’re in Toronto, you can check out one of my prints at the University of Toronto Photographic Art Show. Rita Bauer, to whom I owe so much in sup­port, asked me if she could sub­mit the print she bought from me. Also fea­tur­ing the work of some of the amaz­ing peo­ple I met the last time I was down there, such as Jeff Comber, who does awe­some work with skate­board­ers, and Kate Tarini, whose work with panora­mas won her best in show at Maximum Exposure last year.

Date  November 6, 2009
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Categories  Daily Life

Summer House Show with Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously

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House show invitation, featuring Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously

Update: Sign up for the Facebook event!

Attention Ottawa peo­ple! I’m hav­ing an indie music con­cert at my house this sum­mer1. That’s right, it’ll be an inti­mate night of folk and rap songs with Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously. Remember these two from the con­cert I went to ear­lier this year, where this awe­some and impromptu col­lab­o­ra­tion happened:

You also may have read about Jesse in an Ottawa Citizen arti­cle last month, or seen Shane per­form­ing with Krista Muir over the last few years. Well, I wanted to see both these artists per­form again, so I invited them to my house. Not only will it be a night of authen­tic music (with another col­lab­o­ra­tion, I’ve been told!), but there will be free ice cream, and you’ll get to meet my cat, with whom you’ll fall in love2. Shane has also hinted that he might bring a spe­cial guest for the night. So come and meet the musi­cians, sup­port local Canadian tal­ent, and have a fan­tas­tic time.

  1. Click the pic­ture above to down­load the invi­ta­tion. [↑]
  2. No, you can­not take her home. [↑]
Date  June 2, 2009
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Categories  Random

Large Print

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Large print

Large print

I finally got a large print made for myself, of the frozen lake from my trip to New Hampshire. You really need to see the orig­i­nal from the entry (on black) to get an idea of what the pic­ture looks like, because the shot I took above doesn’t do it jus­tice as I was expos­ing for the gen­eral area in my liv­ing room, los­ing much of the detail of the pic­ture. At over 48″ wide and 32″ tall, it cost me a pretty penny, but it was oh so worth it.

After some extra tweak­ing on my end to bring out the con­trast, my awe­some printer brought out the trunks of the white birch trees in the left for­est using Photoshop, adding a touch of con­trast and detail. The pic­ture was lam­i­nated with a matte fin­ish, so there’s no glass to reflect (and hence dis­tract), from he win­dows. Then my framer used one of her new fram­ing tech­niques where she takes tex­tured fab­ric and stretches it over an inside bor­der (instead of a mat board), then adds a frame that’s smooth but not flat1. The colours fit right in with the walls, while the bor­der and frame matches the couch.

It’s the first pic­ture I’ve used to dec­o­rate the main floor of my house, because I’m really picky about the stuff I put up on my walls. This one was cho­sen because the sky, the sun­set, the ice and the pat­terns in it, all speak emo­tion to me, which is what I try to achieve in my pic­tures, and some­thing I enjoy look­ing at.

  1. This means I sign, stamp, and num­ber the pic­ture on the pic­ture itself, since there’s no mat board to write on. [↑]
Date  April 15, 2009
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Categories  Photos Random

Welcome Home

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Joel and Charlotte agreed to take care of Dolly while I was in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the com­bi­na­tion of another cat, a dog, a new envi­ron­ment, and my absence, stressed her out. She started mark­ing her ter­ri­tory (on their couch), even with her own lit­ter box in a secluded area, so they decided to bring her back to my house, and let Julie take care of her from then on.

Cat drawing

I found this draw­ing on my white board when I got back. Along with an espe­cially affec­tion­ate cat, it was a nice lit­tle thing to come home to.

Date  April 12, 2009
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Categories  Random

(Mis) Understanding Art

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Few peo­ple in my fam­ily seem to under­stand my art.

When they look at my pic­tures, they make com­ments about the qual­ity, or whether or not they’re smil­ing, or ask how much money I make. It’s never about the mean­ing, or my intent, or what I’m try­ing to express. Only one of them saw what I was going for in com­pos­ing this photo of my grandma and aunt with the poster in the background.

They also talk through my videos when watch­ing them, when every bit of pac­ing is impor­tant, miss­ing sig­nif­i­cant estab­lish­ing shots.

Maybe it’s the cul­ture. Very few Chinese kids are allowed to be artists, as it’s seen as too risky or imprac­ti­cal. My gen­er­a­tion of fam­ily seems to be full of accoun­tants, and engi­neers, pro­gram­mers, or any­thing else with secu­rity. Even though piano or vio­lin lessons are com­mon (I can’t think of a sin­gle Chinese friend who didn’t take piano lessons at one point), it’s more of a sta­tus sym­bol to be able say that you can afford the pri­vate lessons and instrument.

This is prob­a­bly why I feel like I don’t relate or can’t speak to most of my fam­ily. When they don’t under­stand my art, they don’t under­stand me.

Date  April 3, 2009
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Categories  Random

Name My First Painting: Winner

4

Before I announce the win­ner, I wanted give a HUGE thank-you to every­one who par­tic­i­pated in my paint­ing nam­ing con­test. It’s sim­ply amaz­ing, the num­ber of ways dif­fer­ent peo­ple can see the same thing, even from dif­fer­ent angles. I par­tic­u­larly liked the lit­tle bird in the left-hand cor­ner that Julie noticed.

Even though there were a few con­sis­tent themes, like flow­ers, and dancers, the types of titles sub­mit­ted were widely rang­ing, from:

…the abstract

  • “One” (by Nick)
  • “Life” (by Sabrina)
  • “We All Do” (by Xibee)
  • “Gogh’s Brain Child” (by Servant)
  • “Groupies” (by melissa)
  • “empower enflower”, “Mondrian Chickens with­out Wheelbarrow. Hold the Rain.” (by Pearl)

…to the straightforward

  • “Happiness in the dark” (by Edrei)
  • “Beauty in Black and White” (by Lucy)
  • “Daisies” or “Headlights” (by Joe Lencioni)
  • “Dancers wear­ing fedo­ras” (by Robin)
  • “Eruption” (by Lloyd)
  • “road­side daisies”, “rocket full of posies and bil­i­ties” (by Pearl)
  • “daisy Pop Rocks” (by guili)
  • “Black-eyed daisies” (by Pelf)
  • “An Aerial View of Sufi Spinners Bringing Spring” (by der alt­modis­che, schwarze Bär)
  • “flow­ers and squares” by bya
  • “Impact” (by Melanie)

…to the creative

  • “Sunny Side Up” (by Tiana)
  • “lush brush rush” (by Pearl)
  • “A muse, a spark, a dozen(?) daisies of inspi­ra­tion” (by Jason)

…to the sci-fi

  • “Celestial Blooms” (by Julie)
  • “Stellar Bloom” (by Steph)
  • “silent hill daisies” (by Rob)
  • “gen­e­sis” or “let there be light” (by John)

The Winner: "stroke of pluck" by Pearl.

I chose this as the win­ner because of how well it describes the paint­ing to me in such few words, while being wrapped in a clever pun. Congratulations to Pearl on win­ning the paint­ing! I’ll fig­ure out a way to get it to you this week.

To show my appre­ci­a­tion for all the par­tic­i­pa­tion, any­one who sub­mit­ted a title is eli­gi­ble to receive a 5″×6″ print of the paint­ing. If you’d like a copy, just e-mail me and include your con­tact name and postal address. Since I’ll be num­ber­ing and sign­ing each lim­ited edi­tion copy, I’ll need to know if you want one by the end of the month so I can fig­ure out how many to make in total.

Date  March 1, 2009
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Categories  Random

Name My First Painting

32

The dead­line for name sub­mis­sions is over, and the con­test is closed. I’ll announce the win­ner over the week­end. A big thank you to every­one who participated!

My first painting

This is the first paint­ing I’ve ever made. I’ll suf­fix that with “in my adult life”, because I prob­a­bly did some­thing with my hands when I was a kid.

Julie, who’s very famil­iar with the medium, got me to sit down and paint with her. I was able to play around with dif­fer­ent tech­niques of strokes and the like. It was inter­est­ing to dis­cover the way the colours bleed, the con­sis­tency of the paint, and the tex­ture of the canvas.

It’s def­i­nitely abstract. I agree with Dan’s astrol­ogy read­ing, in which he said that I see colours dif­fer­ently, but that doesn’t mean I can cre­ate them. Frédéric once told me that it’s eas­ier for him to paint than pho­to­graph, because if he needs a cer­tain colour, he can just add it to the paint­ing by hand, whereas you can’t do this with a scene in pho­tog­ra­phy. My forté seems to be in cap­tur­ing instead.

Painting doesn’t come nat­u­rally to me. In ele­men­tary and high school, I went direc­tion of music (gui­tar, voice, flute, and piano) instead of visual art. In uni­ver­sity, when I wasn’t play­ing in bands any­more, I stuck with the writ­ten word, and even­tu­ally moved to pho­tog­ra­phy and video when that wasn’t enough.

So the paint­ing cur­rently remains unti­tled. Partially because I can’t put a name to it, and par­tially because I haven’t decided what it is. Which seems a lit­tle silly to me, as my need to cre­ate has always come from the need to express. Even though Jackson Pollock once said, “When I am in my paint­ing, I’m not aware of what I’m doing”, his paint­ings still had a direc­tion, a life of their own, much like an impro­vised jazz solo.

What do you see, and what would you name it?

Leave your sug­ges­tions in the com­ments, and I’ll choose a win­ner next Friday. The win­ner will win the paint­ing! Yes, I’ll even ship it to you. The dimen­sions are roughly 8.5″×11″ (or 21.6cm×28cm).

Date  February 20, 2009
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Categories  Random

An Opera at The Met

4

When I watched Moonstruck in my uni­ver­sity “Music in the Movies” class, we stud­ied a scene where Ronny Cammareri (Nicholas Cage’s char­ac­ter) has a date with Loretta Castorini (played by Cher) at the Metropolitan Opera. She takes off her coat, and he says, “Thank you…You know it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Opera”.

In his face, you see that he’s not talk­ing just about the opera. After los­ing his hand and fiancée, he’s at the Met, arguably the most pres­ti­gious opera house in the world, with a beau­ti­ful woman in a black dress, and he’s missed this.

Even in the screen­play, there are set direc­tions for the scene when they arrive:

CROWDS OF PEOPLE in beau­ti­ful clothes fill the plaza cre­ated by the three great build­ings. A glo­ri­ous foun­tain filled with lights forms the cen­ter­piece. Behind the foun­tain, grand and splen­didly lit, is the mag­i­cal Metropolitan Opera House.

Ever since, The Met has been this place I’ve dreamed of attend­ing. Unfortunately, it’s in New York, and decent seats can cost over $100.

Orfeo ed Euridice

So when my local movie the­atre started offer­ing live HD broad­casts of per­for­mances there, I decided I should go. To ful­fill a dream in spirit, if not in the flesh.

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Date  January 25, 2009
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Categories  Daily Life

Design By Chocolate

4

Design by chocolate

Date  October 31, 2008
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Categories  Photos

Pregasaurus

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Pregnant with hope

Tiana asked me to take some pic­tures of her dur­ing her preg­nancy so she could have a record of what her body looks like com­pared to the rockin’ body it was before. In return, she posed for some other projects I had in mind.

Pregnant body

It was an exer­cise in colour tones and mood. As I’m get­ting more com­fort­able in work­ing with RAW files, I wanted to try my hand at adjust­ing tint, expo­sure, sat­u­ra­tion, and contrast.

At one point I asked her how to spell “pre­gasaurus” (a term she came up with to encap­su­late her girth), and she reminded me that it was a made-up word, with no com­monly accepted way of spelling it.

Pregnant and sleeping

The media makes preg­nancy out to be such a glam­orous affair, with designer clothes and celebrity births, that it seems to be dele­te­ri­ously affect­ing the younger gen­er­a­tion. I wanted to por­tray preg­nancy in a much more casual, nat­ural light. Hence the ghetto T-shirt and the belly stick­ing out.

Pregnant eating poutine

Thanks goes to Tiana for not only get­ting nude for me, but for being so pho­to­genic at eight months through the preg­nancy, and work­ing with me on these ideas.

Date  August 2, 2008
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Categories  Photos
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