Monthly Archives: February 2008

Last Day of the Exhibition

An article in the Metro.

There’s a lit­tle arti­cle in The Metro today about the gallery. In the pic­ture, around the harpist, is part of my Fruit and Body series. I’ve decid­ed to make it a lim­it­ed edi­tion print of 100 each at 18″×12″. So far I’ve sold four, with two poten­tials.

It’s the last day of the exhib­it. I’ll be there again tonight because anoth­er paper wants some pic­tures of the artists, and so I can meet with any guests, includ­ing one of my buy­ers. If you stop by, don’t for­get to sign the guest­book!

Psychoanalytic Reflections 02

My ther­a­pist is still get­ting to know me. Now I have books to read and work­sheets to fill out. It’s some­what strange; I’ve been putting myself through self-help for years, but I’ve nev­er traced it so far back to my child­hood. I don’t like to blame my par­ents because I see how Darren and Pat have sur­vived far “worse” but it’s get­ting more and more obvi­ous that there’s trau­ma in my child­hood that still affects me to this day.

  • Apparently, I’m mod­er­ate­ly depressed, and “mod­er­ate” is not nor­mal.
  • We’ve fig­ured out that my unassertive­ness is the result of con­flict avoid­ance. Even if I prac­tice a sit­u­a­tion in my head where I say some­thing that may bring up con­flict, I often can’t fol­low through. I feel help­less to fix this, and this leads to a self-defeat­ing atti­tude.
    • This stems from my child­hood. I’ve almost nev­er argued with my par­ents (there were two times in my life I felt strong­ly enough to stand up against them, both end­ing in me sub­mit­ting because there was no rea­son­ing with them). I’ve always felt like I would­n’t be loved unless I got good grades and did every­thing I was told. In oth­er words, it was an extreme­ly con­di­tion­al love.
    • This means I care about what peo­ple think of me, and I define or eval­u­ate my self-worth through them. Knowing this piss­es me off because philo­soph­i­cal­ly and prag­mat­i­cal­ly I don’t agree, but can’t do any­thing about it.
  • Every time I’ve been in ther­a­py, I’ve cried at least once. This hap­pens when­ev­er I bring up spe­cif­ic aspects of my rela­tion­ship with my par­ents.
  • Hearing my ther­a­pist say, “Wow, that’s bad” brings me a com­fort­ing val­i­da­tion to what I feel.
  • Aside from being slight­ly ver­bose, my ther­a­pist is great. He’s a non-judg­men­tal, eth­i­cal, open-mind­ed intel­lec­tu­al. He’s also a good lis­ten­er.

The Spot

If a woman sleeps alone, it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart but there is one sin he will not for­give: if a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.

—Zorba the Greek

There exists a spot on every woman that needs to be kissed.

It can be as innocu­ous as the curl of the lip, the web of the hand, or a mark on a land­scape of skin.

It’s the respon­si­bil­i­ty of a man to find this spot. Not as a ser­vice to the woman — some­times she isn’t even aware of such a spot — but as a ser­vice to the cre­ator of such things.

Hanging Party

I feel utter­ly intox­i­cat­ed.

Reading poems around the piano

With a ham­mer and a lad­der, we hung my pic­tures tonight, care­ful­ly decid­ing where to place each one to bal­ance the colours, the ori­en­ta­tions, the shapes, and the con­cepts.

Amongst the wine and the wood, the kids and the colours, we stopped to admire the art in the house. Adrienne dropped by to share her lat­est graph­ic poems with us, along with her alco­holic find­ings. “From The Desk Of” Penelope was writ­ten that day, dense and deep, full of details tak­en for grant­ed. The words must write them­selves, I thought.

Thumbnail: Poem reading
Thumbnail: My fruit and body series wall
Thumbnail: Old fashioned side-table
Thumbnail: Akio
Thumbnail: A hammer and a poem
Thumbnail: Old style heater
Thumbnail: Frederic and Akio
Thumbnail: Nicole Beaumont artwork
Thumbnail: Akio on the ladder
Thumbnail: Wine, ice, and salad

Misun and I seem to share a kin­ship through our appre­ci­a­tion of expres­sion, some­thing I’ve nev­er had with my friends. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with them, but I’ve always felt like they can’t relate to me when it comes to emo­tions or cre­ativ­i­ty. As I seem to be the cre­ative broth­er she’s always want­ed, and she seems to be the sup­port­ive sis­ter I’ve always need­ed, we agreed to be adopt­ed sib­lings.

In a recent inter­view, Frédéric said, in his ebul­lient Parisian accent, that one of the rea­sons he want­ed to open the Salon is to pro­mote dia­logue and inter­ac­tion. Perhaps it’s this hunger for dia­logue that con­nects us. He also men­tioned to me he was stressed out about being inter­viewed; being put on the spot made him freeze up. I told him I had the same prob­lem with pret­ty girls. “You’re affect­ed by beau­ty”, he said, some­thing I knew, but not some­thing that every­one under­stands.

I left, feel­ing like I was a part of some­thing won­der­ful, some­thing greater than myself.

In The News

On the bus today, a reporter from the CBC called me for an inter­view. She start­ed ask­ing me why I got into pho­tog­ra­phy, where I want­ed to go with it, and the like. It was strange to be answer­ing these ques­tions because as far as I’ve gone with my pho­tog­ra­phy, no one has ever asked them before. I sup­pose most peo­ple assume it’s like anoth­er hob­by, with­out pur­pose or mean­ing.

Newspaper article

There was also a lit­tle men­tion of my name in the local fran­coph­o­ne paper. I find it fun­ny that when trans­lat­ed lit­er­al­ly, the title of the arti­cle in English is “Go, all with the Living room!”.