Orientation

Today we had our annual orientation for our first year students. I was very nervous about this as my two predecessors always seemed so much more organized than I ever can be. When I realized that man of them had to leave early to attend Charity's talk and I needed to introduce them at the very beginning, I decided to move the open greeting and cookie eating to a point just 10 minutes into the session instead of at the end. This way the students and profs are still fresh and more likely to have a meaningful conversation. My gut feeling is that this made it a more useful session than if I had spent more time explaining stuff. 

Artist Trading Card workshop

A good launch to the ATC year with a workshop on stenciling by Cindy and special attention to ten year members Janice and Charis Muir (mother/daughter collaborators) which was commemorated through the collecting together a couple of hundred of their cards traded to, and collected by, four long time members including Margaret. William has been drowning in homework. I figured he might want to do more stenciling next term and to learn some of Cindy's techniques, so I took notes as he worked on his social studies (thanks to Janine Windolph, not only for hosting but for talking about her views on the Canadian charter of civil rights with William). We also came for the cake. William will need to take a second try at his road test in a few weeks.

fixing basement wall

With the deck under repair, the crew moved more machinery in and trenched the side of the house and will reinforce that wall, which is in bad shape.

Tour of the new Connaught school

The rebuilt Connaught School where William had gone from Kindergarten to Grade 7 re-opened this month and they had a public tour this week. The place is a dream. The spaces are quite open but also labyrinth-like with lots of place to hang out or work or read. I am betting that the only negative would be the crowd and the noise. The old school had 350 students. When they relocated, they lost about a hundred (including William) but the new school has around 450 kids in it! It's hard to imagine that ten years ago they almost followed the study that claimed the numbers were on the decline and that a new school here wouldn't be viable. At the time of that report, enough people noticed that the statistics being used were three years old and that the city had been booming, not dying. 

Dead thing under the deck

On the first day of repairing the deck, the mummified remains of some large rodent like thing was found. We are thinking it might be a muskrat. It is the size of a small cat but the teeth are square. There are muskrats and such in the creek two blocks away, so one could have gotten this far and hidden and died. 

"Now Showing" print/film exhibition

The long awaited reveal of four commissioned silkscreen prints based on four films was last night at the Creative City Centre. This is a new project with the Filmpool working with Articulate Ink to be presented within the context of the Flatgrafika print conference happening this week (and including the AGR show on Friday). Two of my films were selected, so I am doubly honoured. First, "Eyes of Sorrow Moon" was interpreted by Beth Liber. She worked with two layers, black and silver, to create a luminescent image that emphasizes William's character's strange eyes and the collaged German Expressionist backgrounds I used.

Gerald Saul and Beth Libel

Second was a poster for my newest super-8 film "Canister versus The Red Death", designed by Jason Thiry. This one had bold colours and a more distressed aesthetic with the image of the helmet being central but discrete unless one has already seen the film.

Gerald Saul and Jason Thiry

It was a great event and I was really happy to see the work and meet both of these artists.

Frank and the Farm

Margaret's cousin Frank flew in from Edmonton for a conference and a visit. We stopped to catch the tail end of the Dubble Bubble inspired art show by students at the north Dunlop branch before we got on the road, eating Italian Star sandwiches in the car on the way to the farm. I've not been there in over a month and am quite surprised by how dry it is. The slough, which has has been wen every year I've ever know the farm, was dry and we walked on it.