bones, wax, and rusty metal things

OK - an update on the fund raising end of things.

We are holding a second fund raiser for CORTEX on June 30th, at Naked Cyber Cafe, 103 St/Jasper Ave.

Here's the Scoop:



TablaRosaCrustacean: An Evening of Multidisciplinary Mayhem

When your mind is a clean slate, anything can happen! Expect the unexpected ... and be prepared to see something new.

TablaRosaCrustacean is a night of music, poetry, visual art, performance art, and video jamming hosted by the curators of CORTEX: a multidisciplinary event.

WHEN: Saturday June 30, 2007
Performances begin @ 8pm

WHERE: NAKED Cyber Cafe
10354 Jasper Avenue

ADMISSION: $5 at the door* (donation) - cash bar available (ID required)
*Funds raised from TablaRosaCrustacean will be used to present CORTEX: a multidisciplinary event, during the Edmonton Poetry Festival this September.

TablaRosaCrustacean features a number of artists involved in CORTEX, including:

Music: John Armstrong Video: kelleY boleN
Michelle Boudreau Philip Jagger
Thom Golub (TBC)* Gary Lee
Don Ross
*(to be confirmed)

Poetry: Philip Jagger Visual Art: Jenny Keith-Hughes
Gary Lee Tedd Kerr
Catherine Owen Sydney Lancaster
Nicole Pakan Marian Switzer

This event also features the opening of a series of 37 photographic self-portraits by Catherine Owen:
An Apprenticeship in Distance: Discursive Self-portraits.


The ARTSHAB fund raiser "The Sweaty Ball" is running the same night at the Masonic Temple just down the street - so Philip and I are looking into the possibility of cross-promoting our two events.

I think it would be great if tons of people came to our event, and then walked down the street, and went to theirs. There's a certain logic to it ... if you look at the name of our venue and the name of their event ... .

ALSO: we are in the process of confirming CJSR as a sponsor for this event and for CORTEX as a whole ... we may be recording parts of the fubnd raiser for re-broadcast, and CJSR will be helping us promote CORTEX in the Fall as well. More details to follow!

So - the looong gap here indicates tht I have been far too busy in ever so many ways, and have not been able to begin to keep up.

All good - but sheesh, what a ride this is turning out to be, this life.

Things progressing well with the CORTEX project - almost all the submissions up from participants now, and lots of amazing work to ponder at length.

Getting ready for the first fund raiser for CORTEX, coming up on May 23rd, co-hosted by the Raving Poets. It's going to be a good night, I think.

Second one will be during the Works - at Naked on Jasper. That will be a blast, I hope. And with a little luck, we'll make some money to finance the show too.

PACE awards coming up in less than a month. Wacky. Who knows?

Have new studio space~~~!!! JOY JOY JOY. can actually get some work done! (need to desperately - not only to honour commitments, but for what's left of my sanity :) )

Set to go for the Works this summer - 13 days in a tent on the square again. Wheeee!
IF the weather's good, it will be a blast.

Got a show confirmed for Calgary in March of 2008!! So I REALLY have to produce for this. Exciting. and in a commercial gallery, so a different market twice over. Will be an interesting adventure.

Going to Winnipeg for the long weekend for a conference. Doing a lside show of my work, and participating in a panel about the intersection of spiritual practice and art-making. Looking forward to this very much. And in a city I've never visited too. Get to see another part of this ridiculously big country of ours.

Working on show proposals too ... come collaborative work with Catherine Owen which is very interesting a challenging. I am finding that being around poets again - through CORTEX, and the relationships that have begin to develop from that experience - that I return t words again in a more direct way. Wanting to write again, as a way to express what I can't through visual media - or in combination with it.

Feeling rusty and old on that score - it's been so very long since I've really worked at writing the way I used to. Intimidating, in the face of such fine talent here. There really are some brilliant writers in this city.

Homefest planning coming along well too. Lots of work, that, but worth it in the face of such flagrant disregard for people's security as shown by the government. It's beyond sad - it's getting scary and not a little sick. The 'prosperity gap' is gettign to be the size of the Grand Canyon - and the powers that be seem content ot keep their heads in the sand, and stay on their side of the chasm.

Yes. So. I've obviously been sitting on a chaise, eating chocolates all day and whiling the hours away with trashy French novels. I wish sometimes, but only occasionally.

I would like more sleep. and much much more time to make art. So it goes.

I had the honor and pleasure of sharing a stage last night with Bassist Thom Golub, at Catherine Owen's 44th Avenue Troubadour's Series (a multidisciplinary salon just starting up in Edmonton). Thom was the musician for this inaugural version of the 44th Ave; poet Douglas Barbour read from a selection if his work, and I presented a talk and slide show on my work.

So - to the point - Thom is involved in Hidden Fortress - and so if you're in Edmonton, Calgary, or Seattle, you should check the concert out when it comes your way.

From Thom:
Hello All,
I'm really excited to tell you about this premiere Edmonton performance of Hidden Fortress. We play each other's compositions as well as pure improvisations. The group consists of Shane Krause on baritone sax/ clarinet/bass clarinet from Vancouver, Chris Dadge on drums from Calgary and Thom Golub on bass from Edmonton. In Edmonton we play at the Mile Zero Dance Landing Pad #201 - 10923 - 101 St., April 12, 8PM doors, 8:30PM show. $10 at the door. For more information on our mini-tour please check the bio attachments below or visit: http://myspace.com/bugincision
http://geocities.com/chris_dadge
http://myspace.com/shanemk
http://myspace.com/standardgreyeditions
Opening for Hidden Fortress on April 12 will be Daedal - a duo featuring David Hoyle on Saxophones, recorders and hurdy-gurdy and Thom Golub on bass. Daedal will feature some of Hoyle's compositions as well as improvisations.


Also check out a video conversation I had with D. Jeffery Buchanan as part of his Sound Of My Own Voice series broadcast on CJSR Monday mornings (er Sunday nights) and on his website at http://asparagusgreen.ca/somov.html. There are many interesting interviews archived here with lots of local artists of all walks, I urge you to check it out.

And for all you Kate Bush fans out there:
π
Sweet and gentle and sensitive man
With an obsessive nature and deep fascination
For numbers
And a complete infatuation with the calculation
Of PI

Oh he love, he love, he love
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity

3.1415926535 897932
3846 264 338 3279

Oh he does, he does, he does
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity
But he must, he must, he must
Put a number to it

50288419 716939937510
582319749 44 59230781
6406286208 821 4808651 32

Oh he love, he love, he love
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity

82306647 0938446095 505 8223... (From Ariel)


... shamelessly stolen image from aenre's live journal.

you know - I have less time now than I did when I was working at the Market. What's up with that??

oh ya ... I've been getting on all the things that have not been getting attention due to work, that's what!

so ... working on CORTEX (http://www.thecortex.ca) in earnest, writing more applications of various kinds for various things (the Works for a tent this summer, an AFA Art Acquisition by Application form), working on a talk for the end of this month, working on a slide show for that, and another one for May in Winnipeg ... got a gig this Satuday at the Powerplant for St Paddy's ... so I'm trying to fit some singing time in too, looking at starting a grant a to fund my work right away here too ... .

Not impressed with this whole daylight saving gig. I miss MY hour (yes it was mine, all mine, and the sleep stealers stole it from me).

Gotta get the taxes done PDQ too. Gah. Well it should only take a day or so to get it all together to ship off to the accountant, which is good - I'm just dreading it.

So it's out there, in print and everything ... the interview I did for the Mile Zero Salon show was published yesterday.

It's a very bizarre experience seeing yourself quoted in an article.

Very bizarre.

It's here: http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=5937

That's all.

My visual art will be featured in a multidisciplinary event hosted as part of Mile Zero Dance's Salon series. The March Salon is entitled "Alter Egos."

Look in my picture gallery in "Upcoming Exhibitions" to see the flyer.

I am excited by this prospect - and a little panicked, since I have work that I MUST finish, and things got slowed a bit (!) by having to pull out of my studio.

Ah well - I shall persevere!

Ya ya I've heard it before: "one door closes, and another one opens" ... but really.

More press. It's getting ridiculous!

Standing in the (seemingly endless) line at the Art Gallery of Alberta this Saturday to drop my submission to the "Free for All" show ... and a City TV cameraman spots me and my work ... and decides to interview me.

I've also got an interview with Vue Weekly tomorrow afternoon - about my work, and having it in the Mile Zero Salon "Alter Egos" in March (9th and 10th by the way).

And then there's the new job. Editing. For a real magazine. Actually using some of the skills I developed in university. Who knew! And what's better - this is an arts-focussed maqgazine (the same on that did a feature on me this past fall - called Alternative Trends. Loving it. I get to do it on my own time, whenever, I like - as long as I get the work done for press deadline, of course. It's not paying all that much, but I'm enjoying it more than other paid work I've had over the last few years, that's for sure. And I think there's room to grow into something more lucrative in time too.

And the door closing part? Well that's less fun, although something of a relief. I quit the Market last week, and pulled out of my studio. All in one day. The place is going down financially - what prompted this was a phone call from the City, looking for the "owner" of the Market. Seems there was a problem with unpaid property taxes ... to the point that the bailiff was going to be called in at the end of that day if nothing happened. Nuff said - time to go. I gather that for the time being everything's been sorted, but it's impossible for me to feel any kind of security in the place, so I had to go. Not really a choice in the matter - if they are shut down by the bailiff, who's to say it wouldn't be a huge hassle getting my art & supplies out of there ... never mind getting paid (which I'm hoping will actually happen, since I'm owed hours and money form painting sales right now). I just really feel for my (former) boss - she's worked so damn hard to make that place go, and has offered the owners ample viable suggestions to make it work - and all they've done is treat her like crap. They never even contacted her once during the entire day when the City had called to let her know what was going on - so she had no idea if she had lost her job that day or not. Unreal. Not the kind of business practices I want ot be supporting with my work.

Still, it's terribly sad. It's such a great building, and I really believe that (with some change in focus) the place could be made viable as a center for arts events and such.

And now I have no studio. This has complicated getting work done somewhat. I'm not sure how it will all pan out yet, but I'm already figuring out how I'm going to manage to make the same kinds of art I've been making for the last two years here at home;at least I'm going to save some money on rent and bus passes for the next while.

Ahhh ... the next phase of the adventure begins.

OH hooooorrayyy ... the AFA Grant app is IN, date stamped, officially received.

DONE!!

I am fried.

Still, I think it's pretty good - hope the AFA does too! I've had some really valuable feed back on it from Todd and Gerry and Alice (which I've implemented), so I think it's about as good as it can be.

SO we should hear in about six weeks.

And between now and then, I've got a heckuva lot to do :) Big surprise.

But right now, I'm going to stop thinking. For just a little bit.

So I downloaded an album from itunes the other day, and have been enjoying it thoroughly ... stupid title, no more than stupid, but some good cuts.

Yes, it really is called 'Bollywood Rocks'... but that aside.

I highly recommend one track in particular - called Mantra (Om), performed by Angaraag Mahanta, Sourain Roy Choudhuri & Zubeen Garg ... a traditional chant, set to a solid bass/percussion/synth/etc line, that I find utterly impossible to sit still through.

... deadline for the grant app is thursday.
things are falling into place beautifully, so I just have to trust that we get the money, and then I'll be so freakin happy I won't know what to do with myself. Everything's going so well - it feels 'right' - like it's going to work out and all that.

We got the venue we wanted ... and it's fully sponsored!! Which is beyond what I'd hoped for. SO that translates into a $1200 'donation' towards CORTEX. Holy crap. I'm still not sure that's real.

WOW. Ok - I am running out of whelm to be over ... amazing things keep happening and it's really exciting.

I posted a while ago about a painting I did, that seemed to me to be a bridge between the work I did for the solo show and the threads I'm following now ... well, it sold. Hooray for sales (and being able to pay studio rent) ... funny thing is - I hadn't even got round to putting an official price and title on it - it was all a done deal over the phone to Kelly at the Market. AND I didn't get a chance to photograph it either. Drat. But i do have a sketch of it, as I worked it out beforehand, so that's ok.

Things are really really coming together well for CORTEX - lineup is almost FULL (!!) ... and we're in the last stages of negotiating for a great venue ... . I can see this project getting to be a real going concern, bigger than I ever imagined. And the amazing thing is that there are all these fabulous people who are interested in participating. I feel so lucky to be able to work with these people.
Go the domain name registered, and Philip's setting up the web site ... and on it goes!

So ... off to studio-land!

Wheeeee!

and it looks like it 's going to be a good bit of fun.

http://pics.livejournal.com/cailleachsidhe/pic/0000br28/g7

I'll be selling my Celtic wares over the weekend, and I've been invited to sing on the Saturday night, as part of a larger roster of musicians on stage that evening.

More info at http://www.womengathering.com

The second installment of “CE N’EST PAS UNE PIROUETTE”

   Salon series

    “The Look of Love”

  8pm, Feb 9th & 10th

Edmonton’s heart is overflowing with Love, and Mile Zero Dance is no exception.  In the latest installment of their visceral Salon Series, Mile Zero invites audiences to come in from the cold, and get intimate with some of the brightest stars in Edmonton's booming arts scene.

Performers have been asked expose their hearts by investigating the nature of love in all of its beauty, excitement and pain.

What does love look like?

“Obsessively Bawdy” raves The National Post about poet Catherine Owen, who will be reading selected works that Broken Pencil says are “like being smothered in someone's cleavage”.

Poetry is joined by the heart warming antics of Molly Flood's  “Love L'Amour”, a polka-dotted and persistent romantic clown with a heart of gold, Filmmaker Shreela Chakrabartty's short film “Marriage and Chocolate”, which was nominated for the Best Experimental Award by the Alberta Motion Pictures Industries Association.

In case you missed him when he opened for Sarah Slean a few months back, rising rockstar/heartthrob Christian Hansen will seduce your ears with his velvet voice and truthful lyrics, while Karen Porkka and Brian Chan combine music and poetry in “And Love” a song all about “heartbreak, bubbly viruses and gratitude”.

Drag, dance and drums come together in an evening featuring dance by White Buffalo Dancers and Drummers society and up-and-coming choreographer Anastasia Maywood.  Hosted by real life Romeo and Juliet Sheldon Elter and Kristi Hansen, “THE LOOK OF LOVE” is a showcase of emotion not to be missed by Edmonton audiences.


                       Seating is limited and reservations are encouraged.
                       The show starts at 8 pm.  Friday February 9th and Saturday February 10th .
                       The Landing Pad is at #201-10923-101 Street.


http://www.milezerodance.com

For more information please contact
Gerry Morita, <info@milezerodance.com> or 424-1573


Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:hugs.JPG (JPEG/«IC») (000CF553)

So a CBC reporter anda cameraman came into the market today ... they'd just shot a series of short segments for "Everything Edmonton" next door at SNAP.
And she asked if I wanted to do the same for the Market, right then - apparently she was going to call us to arrange this anyway, but since she was already there ...

hell yes!

So ... I shot 4 segments, to be aired starting in about 3 weeks or so I think (she'll let us know). They'll air along with segments from 15 other places around town ... for the next several months. OY.

And there's still Friday to go ... what a week.

And it's only Tuesday.

the TV spot went well, I think - and I was actually asked some reasonable questions; the kind that actually allowed me to say what I wanted rather than having to reply to some inane comment.

I quite liked the presenter - she's on the ball, and seemed to have a down to earth approach to things; that was pleasant (and refreshing).

SO that's done ... and I'm sleepy. Have been all day. Yanno yer gettin' old when 45 minutes less sleep leaves ya whacked and yawning all day :)

Got a bunch more stuff done for the grant app and for Cortex in general - mostly emails - inquiries and firing of information to people so that we can all have a picture of where we're at and what needs to be done.

All good - and not much more I can do until I hear back on this stuff - then it's the next step.

Thursday is another meeting day - this one about a potential venue for the event. If that falls through, plan B is already in place, and we'll take it from there.

Also got stuff submitted to the art panel for GG this May - so we'll see if that flies or not. IF it's a go, then I'll be bringing a powerpoint slideshow of my work for display, and perhaps as a supplement to the panel discussion. So I'll have to wait to hear about that, too.

Time to veg out with a book and then sleep. Yup.

Tomorrow's anotehr day, and I suppose I should actually stay awake and participate in it!

is going to come waaay too early tomorrow. But, that's when I have to get up to get my crap together enough to be vaguely coherent for the TV spot at the Red Strap.

Gah. That extra 45 minutes I'd usually get will be sorely missed.

I'm not really nervous about this, although I suspect I should be. Well, at least I suspect I will be tomorrow when I get there. Never know what kind of questions you'll be asked, so it's a bit of a crap shoot. So is remembering all the things you want to say, and then saying them in a coherent fashion. I can see that I'm most concerned about expressing myself properly - hence the repetition of the word 'coherent.'

We shall see. Anyone who's interested, this little blip in TV-land will air live Monday morning, sometime between 8 and 9 am on CITY TV, Breakfast television.

In other news ...

Will be able to get the venue finalized this week for CORTEX - either Latitude or City Hall (!) ... and so that will get written into the grant app I'm trying to get finished. THAT is nerve-wracking; waiting to hear, waiting for information, waiting ... argh. Need to hammer out the final details on the budget, and am still needing info on musician's union rates. And the people that were going to provide the info haven't got back to me. Sigh. I just really really want to get all the bits in place so that I can start getting people to look at it before I submit it.

Looks as though there will be some money available for fees for the poets from the Festival itself. This is good news, and lends some weight to the grant, as I'm asking for CARFAC fees for the artists and dancers, and union sclase for the musicians. So - sent in the request tonight - and hopefully will get a (positive) reply right away, so I can factor it into the grant app.

This is all quite overwhelming in some respects. I had no idea my life would take this kind of shape so rapidly, or that I'd be involved in projects of this scope. I really love it, but it is an awful lot of work, and it eats into studio time and thinking time so much. I feel very much like I'm behind schedule in some respects - I haven't been nearly as productive in the studio as I was this time last year - but I also wasn't working on these other projects. It's such a balancing act; there's all this behind-the-scenes stuff that needs to happen to faciliate the art-making ... but it takes time away from the very thing I want to be doing most. That's just the way of it I guess.

I still maintain that cloning myself would help.

Uploaded some more pics of my work - go to my profile page; click on pictures - fixed the bug that was preventing them from linking to the top level directory so they could be viewed properly.

... I was having lunch with an old friend today - we haven't had a good yack for eons, so it was a good session of catching up and comparing notes. We were talking about all sorts of things, including the process of deciding "what we want to be when we grow up" - and what it means to focus your energy toward that goal - how that really shapes the way life and reality play out for each of us. Well ... the rest of the afternoon (so far) has been punctuated by opportunities dropping into my lap!

I had a call before our lunch date about the possibility of a TV spot featuring my work on Monday morning, on Channel 7 with Bridget Ryan ... that was confirmed. AND ... I stopped into my fave art supply store to pick up a couple of things on my way home, and Kim the manager there asked me if I wanted a couple of my small wax pieces featured in a TV segment they're taping next Friday!

So this means my work will be on TV twice in one week. EGAD.

Talk about manifesting the notion of "getting the work out there"!

Sometimes, ya just have to shake yer head and laugh...

I realize I have a bunch of stuff I have to document. urk. Ok, add that to the 'to do' list. Well, might be able to do that this weekend. May have to get J's help there ... the big stuff is a bit of a pain to do solo, and it's best with some of it to shoot flat with hte tripod, so we'll see how all that works out.

In other news ... too many ideas in my head, but the good thing is that they're trickling throug hand forming themselves into what will become solid threads of work/research to pursue. Some of it may be collaborative - which will also be fun and a new kind of challenge, but one I'm looking forward to immensely.

There's the whole cells/hives/hexagons thing happening ... and I can SEE the work - some of it sculpture, some of it paintings, each piece 'talking' to the rest - so really, it would operate as a mixed media installation, that would occupy an entire room.

The wing/bird/raven thread is developing, and taking some interesting turns, starting with the piece I'm currently working on, and one I just finished. The finished piece is a real bridge between the body of work I did for the Corpus, Spiritus, Anima show this past April, which is nice - it opens the door to this particular avanue of thought, which was a late development in the Spring show, and one I explored more in the digital collages than in the painting/mixed media stuff. Worok that follows from it has become essentially a diptych, matched wings, both carved, one in relief on a thick slab of wax. I'm just letting this one happen - I don't know at all whre it's going to go, but I'm really happy with te results so far, especially with the relief carving. The feathers on the wing (which is about 12 to 14 inches high) are all individually carved, and are almost ready to take some colour. The real (and unresolved) issue will be mounting it to some kind of support to ensure it doesn't get mashed.

I've also come back to some ideas that are circling around the relationship between culture and identity ... as a function of, and natural outgrowth from, the work I was doing with alchemy and transformation, and the uneasy relationship between the role of technology in our lives and the natural forces of change and transformation. The whole cult of youth thing really strikes me as being an extension (of the most perverse kind) of the thinking behind the Industrial Revolution. We can now employ lasers, surgery and such to "reverse" the aging process ... to make us over into the image of something other than what we are meant to be, but is arbitrarily deemd by marketing people to be an ideal of beauty. (Not just women, but still predominately so - men are as much victimized by this, although in a different way). So, we are capable of creating these Frankenstein's monsters of surgically 'improved' beauty. And what does that do/say about our relationship to our selves and our bodies? (yes the question is rhetorical) But really ... we seek to modify and 'perfect' the female body in the the same way industrial development changes the landscape to 'improve' the of quality of life by extracting raw materials to create consumer goods ... . The natural world is not enough in and of itself, and its beauty is discounted as incidental to the raw materials it can provide; inherent in it is process and change and the pattern of life and death, birth, decay and rebirth that is the essence of existence on this plane. it's those very processes that technological advancements seek to circumvent, whether it be in building a better, onger lasting structure or machine, or in developing ways to alter the human body to make it last longer, or appear younger.

There's another thread in this too - and that's the issue of language and identity; the stories we tell of ourselves that literally re-create our selves in each telling, and the connotative quality of the words we choose to describe our selves to our selves and the rest of the world. The semiotics od being, if you will. Our bodies are signs of one order, culturally encoded and signified, just as the terms by which we are described and which we each use to describe (inscribe) our selves is loaded, and also continually shifting in meaning. This leads me to think of ciphers, and vessels and what they can (or can't) contain as a metaphor for self and identity, and also the sheer impossibility of fixing identity in time and place, or within language ... andat the same time, we become the vessels that house the sum total of all htose terms that have been used to deifne us within the cultural milieu. When do we know we're full? How do we pour off what no longer serves us well? Can we in fact eliminate the signs for our selves that have been imposed upon us from outside, or is there some part of the body that will always retain those marks, those signs, so they are always contained within us? How can we hold those things (that may be ugly or hurtful in any number of ways) within the vessel of self and aspire to be other than what they signify?

not enough hours for all this. must think on't much much more.