capturing december 7: bright

 Bright spot of the day was a very sweet opening for Katie Flindall's tree-house themed show at Impresario.

So bright, in fact, that one picture is not enough.

9 eyes.

On his website 9-eyes.com, Montreal artist Jon Rafman posts strange and interesting Google Street View images, a collection of the humourous and heartbreaking and everything else that make the human experience what it is. I think what makes the images different from traditional street photography is that the images are taken by a roaming vehicle on behalf of a behemoth corporation. There's a kind of robotic element of the method—cataloguing everything, framing nothing. By assembling these photos, Rafman gives some meaning to the scenes captured by reinvigorating the images with the power (via curation) of a human eye. I can see it.

dairy dreams

Dairy Queen

2000

Justine Kurland

This photograph means a thousand things and a thousand questions that stay with me long after I walk away.

I'll leave it at this.
At what point do people just start eating their ice cream inside the place where they bought it, where there are tables and chairs and other people we do not know?

Further reading on Justine Kurland is highly recommended for her ways of thinking about: girlhood, nomads, open roads, the Wild West, running away, mamahood, landscape and trains.

keeping my skates sharp

Last spring, I bought some framed pictures at the Salvation Army for $1 each. I discarded or crafted most of the pictures, keeping only the frames--except this one.

A crowd of colourfully dressed mid-nineteenth century skaters was too good to throw away. There's so much going on there. Left foreground, a man chases a young woman who looks alarmed as she skates away. On the right, a man pushes his wife on a sled while a little dog barks. I can count at least four people who have fallen. And all around, scarves, muffs and all manner of Victorian winter dress abound.

It was printed in 1862 by Currier & Ives, a large New York City printing company that advertised their products as "coloured engravings for the people." An artist would draw the image on the printing stone, the page would be hand-pressed, and according to the Met website, "handed to the industry of women at home who filled in the scenes with watercolors." Pretty romantic. 

I stored it away, and after returning home to a Canadian winter after a long trip, amidst all the unpacking and setting up life again, I set it on the mantle. It's been there ever since, a reminder that a winter day is not a wasted day.

 www.centralpark.com 

and i thought only boring people got bored

Living every week like it's Shark Week over here. 

you've got outsider art by an artist

Mike Mills is my current visual love.
I like his stuff because it is:
-simple
-heartfelt
-over- and under-wrought at the same time
-Miranda July likes it too
-he is from "Cali"
-www.mikemillsweb.com

He designed the cover of Miranda July's book "No one belongs here more than you." I didn't know anyone designed it. I didn't realize it had been designed.


I thought it was just Helvetica Light.

top of 2008

Some things that made 2008 for me. Maybe you too? 

• the new Frank Gehry-designed Art Gallery of Ontario. Hometown architect makes good: that wood spiral Baroque Stair alone is enough, but the entire building reminds me of the way the behemoth redwoods appear to physically inhale and exhale on the West Coast. Not to mention Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents or anything else that actually lives inside. 

• MGMT's Oracular Spectacular. "Time to Pretend" was practically inescapable this year, but I recommend listening to "Kids" at high volume at sunset in a sweaty apartment in mid-August. Make pad thai afterwards, and always, always share your beer. 

• The National's "Fake Empire" playing at Obama's victory rally in Chicago. As the world waited for the man himself to appear, news cameras circled the crowd finding tear-jerker shots of Jesse Jackson, Oprah and random white people, this Brooklyn band's 2007 anthem played with a promo video called "Signs of Hope". Perhaps Obama's shout-out to the PBR-drinkers across America who gave him the election? Or maybe America just elected a president who likes good music (he is basically the first presidential candidate to use a Springsteen song when it was actually cool to do so) and some insight into the magic lyrics can carry. "Tiptoe through our shiny city/ with our diamond slippers on/ Do our gay ballet on ice/ bluebirds on our shoulders/ We're half awake in a fake empire." Either way, hearing it on CNN was das unheimliche or whatever. Will.i.am's death rattle was heard by no one. 
  

• Martha Wainwright's I Know You're Married, But I've Got Feelings Too. This album is a heart-stopper and a head-turner. You know this album is bad for you, but you have to be near it because it makes you feel so alive. 

• Maybe it's just me--in fact, I'm quite sure it's just me, but nothing says "Great in '08" like that sexy sumo wrestler ad for the Subaru Forester, with Electric Six's "Danger High Voltage" in the background. 

i really shouldn't be doing this but...

My love of illustration has been growing over the past year or so, thanks in large part to an interest in the work of Lukas Geronimas and all of the projects that he is connected to (see Fecal Face, see lifetime collective, see Fighting).

Now, my travels have lead me to a new love. Zach Johnsen's work is a sort of fantastic world of monsters that are half-scary, half-cute, of sad girls with big eyes, of blue Buddhas, of casual Fridays, of bent old women, of skulls and goggles and rainbows. He works mostly with pen and watercolour, drawing hyper-real cartoons. I love it. You should too.