More congress talks

We attended more Congress today including an interesting (althoug disapointingly under-attended) talk by Philippe Mather on "orientalism". 

Huge rain storm and book launch

June and I skipped out of the Congress for the afternoon and went comic shopping. While there, a huge rain storm hit and just pounded the area for 10 minutes. Nothing too unusual, but she was happy as the storms are not the same on the east coast and she misses these.

We attended the book launch and I bought Melanie Wilmink's book, hot off the presses. 

Film studies at Congress

Opening panel for film studies at Congress was quite interesting. In particular, Melanie Wilmink talked about film and sculpture and some alternative screening practices. I was really taken with these paintings she made of her film process and how she continued to paint on top of the painting as the process changes, making them weird pastiche works.

The evening included going with June and Allan to "Talkies" at the RPL where they did a really good job with "Jem and the Holograms". which I'd never seen or even really heard of. When we got home we played a round of "Microscope", this time set in an age of superheros.

June in Regina

My friend June Madeley arrived in Regina, in part to present a paper at Congress at the university later in the week. In the afternoon we mostly walked around and caught up on stuff. In the evening we attended the feminist film screening at the RPL (part of the Independents series, organized to launch film studies at Congress). The films included a retrospective of Studio D films which were shockingly lacking in innovation for all of their reputation for innovation. I've seen a lot of these films before, but never collected together, and not in a very long time.

Crazy amounts of seeds

With June arriving from St. John tomorrow, we spent much of our time cleaning house. I attempted to get the elm seeds cleared off the steps but the number of them this year is absolutely crazy. It is supposed to be due to the weather from last year and the trees trying to respond. 

Cathedral Village street fair

Was very hot today. William and I walked the length of the street fair after William drove Gertrud there. Only bought food items this year. I think the heat made me less curious about the art in the booths. Lots of jewelry, henna tattoos, bird houses (including many new and inventive ones), hand-made baby clothes, and bath bombs. Great walk.

art and art

William has been doing some interesting self portraits recently. Two of them were paintings and I was quite impressed with them, so I figured I'd tell him to do at least one per week. I don't know if that was a factor or not, but he's trying to create a self portrait image to use in his print project (a lino-cut, or something of that nature on rubber) but he keeps getting too many lines and the drawings, although good, are not suitable. Anyway, Margaret wanted to go to the Nouveau Gallery reception (the Friday night Cathedral Festival contribution by Nouveau) but then she got onto her email. While we were waiting, I had William do another self portrait. He wanted the lighting to be extreme so we dimmed most things and I put on an intense LED lamp. He got so caught up in this that Margaret actually finished her stuff first and we had to send her on her way and join up later. Opening was really good. I like Anne Brochu Lambert's paintings.

William exhibits in the YAAG

William premiered his film "David Lynch's Pud" in the YAAG (Yellow Argyle Art Garage) along with copies of the 60 drawings from the fist Pud series today. Good crowd. The weather cleared up. It was supposed to end at 7 but others kept coming after I went to painting class and they stayed open until 8:30. I think it was a great success. People laughed at the right places in William's film. I did a really quick edit job on it yesterday, perhaps tightening it up too much (although it still runs 10 minutes). William uploaded the 10 minute video we made to youtube. 

Developing cats

working on my new super-8 film but beginning with some 35mm and planning to distill it down...

Improv film event at Cathedral Festival

The power in the neighbourhood went out for an hour just before supper today but came back in time for the evening events. Allan, William, and I went to a n improv group who showed pilot tv episodes and then did a comedic discussion of them. This was more misses than hits as it felt like the guy running the improv games was throwing stuff at the other six that they had not done before or were not, for what ever reason, ready to respond to and almost seemed to know know the "rules". It made for an uneven session. We missed Shawn Bauche's curated package of films, which were mostly NBV but did include Doomed by Lowell Dean that I regret missing. 

Cathedral Festival parade

Cathedral Festival begins on the holiday Monday with the parade and continues in the park with music and events in the park around the Balkwill centre. We worked on some comic jam and collage works in the afternoon.

Gertrud's new cat

William is supposed to name Gertrud's new cat but has not done so yet. I think he suggested Svengali but she thought it was too long. 

Jana painting

We received a wonderful gift from Jana Kutarna today: a painting that she did a number of years ago from a series of "portraits" of people's stuffed toys. This pink character, who might have used to have had a name but I forget it, was borrowed from us when William was very young. 

staying home and catching up

William had the day off school so naturally he slept in until noon and I made him do homework all afternoon. I was writing mostly, but also helped procure some stuff for him to do some rudimentary printmaking with (a used rolling pin and some flat foam pads). Stayed up late and caught up on Riverdale and Big Bang. We've been behind on tv for three weeks. He found some time to draw on his new project, but the detail is getting increasingly intricate so this page has taken him all week.

Painting pointers

William got some more pointers from Donovon about his new painting. While the source image (a photo I took many years ago) is mostly about the rust, William made it more about the form and is refusing to use any range of colours but to work in only two per painting.

AGR and David Dreher

Loving the new work at the AGR by David Dreher. Margaret reminded William and I to attend their AGM before his talk this week as we are members and they might need quorum. This was William's first meeting of this nature, voting and all. We'll likely do it again in a couple of weeks for the Filmpool. Anyway, it was interesting to hear his talk and answers to questions, especially William's, as I found that as much as I like his work, I didn't agree with his own interpretations of it. I asked him about these issues afterwards (such has his feeling that the curtains around the images in these paintings indicates that they will be revealing a truth, and something about the skull and flowers over the woman's head in the image above) and we had a great friendly open conversation. 

Quick and Dirty pop up artists

The Quick and Dirty talks this month involved a handful of artists commissioned to do the pop up downtown series this summer.  Heather Cline will have paintings of downtown areas which will feature new audio recordings related to people in those areas. Audio would be heard through connecting to a link on your phone. Jeff Meldrum will be working with disco-ball planets, a surprising coincidence as Berny has also been investigating small planets as an art venture. Connections in the future? Belinda Harrow explained her printed cloth forms and how she makes concrete forms with images on them. It was really cool to see what she is doing. Rachel Rozanski was not there but did her talk as a recording. Todd Gronsdahl, whom I'd never met before, is doing some interesting stuff around a strange fictitious history of Saskatchewan that I'd like to hear more about. Evening ended early. 

William painting

The other day I took William as my sister's substitute to paining class. Went really well. His painting was not only better than mine, but he did two paintings both more interesting than the one he'd handed in for class earlier in the day.
 

Calgary day 3

On the third and last day of our really short Calgary trip, Michelle was up and about, having recovered from her full day long migraine yesterday. She and I talked at length about migraines again, this time with the added idea of reasons why I might have begun to get one last night. It seems that both her and I have encountered the problem that a migraine might be triggered by thinking about migraines. That means that, perhaps with other conditions being in place, that the presence of someone else in the area having a migraine and the idea of that migraine being unavoidable, that this could be a migraine trigger. I'm starting to look for corroboration of this but have not yet found any.

Before leaving town we did some art supply shopping and had coffee with Erik. 

Luna and Frida in Calgary

Two of our goals for Calgary were to finally meet my great niece Luna and to see the Frida photo exhibition at the Glenbow. We accomplished both. First was the gallery: I'd not done any research before coming here (Margaret obviously had) so only found out the importance of these photos once we got caught up in a tour. This is a collection of photos Frida had collected up over her lifetime, some she took, others given to her or taken of her. Due to the controversial nature of some of them (such as lipstick marked photos of her lovers) Diago had declared that they were not to be released until 15 years after his death. When he died three years after her, the executor (perhaps a friend of Frida's, but perhaps a resentful rival, declared that those photos would remain locked up until 15 years after her (the executor's) death. That ended up being 2003, so these images are only seeing the light of day this year, with Calgary being the only gallery booked on the tour. Mostly they were family images, locations for Diago's mural research, and friends. The stories give cool context to each of them.

My nephew's biological daugher, Luna, came for supper with her adoptive parents at Sharon's. Luna and William did a fun drawing together and seemed to have a great time. We need to dream up a new series of books for her as she now is learning to read. We've been sending books to them over the past few years and have gained a bit of a reputation for finding good ones, so the pressure is on. Michelle had a bad migraine all day and I also began feeling bad after supper.

Calgary, day 1

I took one day of holidays, pulled William out of school, and we've driven to Calgary. Drive was more or less uneventful. Stopped for gas and once to see what was up in the Swift Current museum:

The weather was great when we arrived and we more or less hung out and talked all evening. Sharon's gazebo is relaxing and the pond, although no longer stocked with turtles of fish, makes a calming noise. Michelle and Francis didn't arrive until after midnight so we did get to meet him and talk about tanks for a bit. 

Costa leaving the UofR

I found out that Costa Maragos, who has been the community affairs adviser at the UofR for the past few years has resigned. People come and go from the university all the time and it usually doesn't matter too much to me, but Costa was always a friendly face and open to hearing about ideas and events. He helped raise the profile of many individuals including students and members of our faculty on a regular basis. We'd talked for some time about his doing a feature on crazy faculty offices and mine was on the list. Here is my second (larger, department head) office. The other, featured in my AGR Anecdotal Evidence program, is much busier. He'll be missed. 

Remembering Geremy

Saw Geremy trading popcorn for state secrets this afternoon. He didn't remind me about his radio shot this evening but as I started making pancakes at ten minutes before six, I remembered and commented on it before continuing to cook. At twenty past six I remembered again so we turned it on and began listening to it in progress. The subject was movies about mothers (as Mother's Day is approaching). I listened to the second half with Nick on my lap.