Filed under: Jason Sho Green, Lauren Selden, Leesa J Perry, Lizette Greco, Plush Animals, Softies, Whimsy, art, gallery, humor, personal intrests, toys, writing
I’ve been really into the whole Softie culture since high-school, when I made a plush Dinosaur for a boyfriend out of an old cashmere sweater. Things didn’t last, and I wish I’d taken the dino back, alas! Since then I’ve been admiring the plush creations of people like Jason Sho Green, Lizette Greco and Leesa J Perry – among many others.
Lizette Greco is probably one of my favorite designers at the moment, she and her husband base all their designs off of drawings done by their children. Such a fantastic idea, and with beautiful, whimsical results.
‘Duck Duck Goose’
As a kid, I was never really into the whole teddy bear thing, I never slept with one since they always ended up on the floor and I would feel guilty for having knocked them out of bed when I awoke in the morning. My childhood toy of choice was a Playmobile Victorian Dollhouse, I’d spend hours polishing and dusting the furniture and creating tangled social structures.
(What about all of you? Favorite Playthings or Collections?)
Now, with my Dollhouse safely packed away, I’ve come to adore the art of the Softie. The act of stitching the fabric and stuffing it with life is so rewarding to me, and the best part of creating a Softie is the imperfections! One eye? Five Legs? We’re not talking Teddy Bears or Beanie Babies here, we’re talking real imagination! Don’t forget that Softies can be anything! From a whale to an ice cream sandwich to a cyclops to a tea bag. The Sky is the Limit!
Currently in progress at SoftRevolution HQ? A family of Yetii and a flock of multi-coloured birds. Expect photographs!
Filed under: Lauren Selden, art, emily carr institute, installation, vancouver
noun
| 1. | the act or an instance of affirming; state of being affirmed. |
| 2. | the assertion that something exists or is true. |
| 3. | something that is affirmed; a statement or proposition that is declared to be true. |
I’ll direct you to my Flickr Page for more mock-up photographs of an installation project I’m currently in the midst of.
Filed under: Lauren Selden, art, aura, music, personal intrests, regina spektor, writing
Rain always entreats my iPod to Regina Spektor. Listening to her on the bus turns rain from inconvenience to other-worldly.
On the bus the other day, the rain made all the windows fog over. I had a whole blank slate in front of me. and behind the fog, rain water made patterns as it fell down the glass. and the whole window radiated with coolness. and I thought about what to write. the emptiness of the canvas became so great, and the rain drop patterns so intricate I couldn’t bring myself to write anything. the empty canvas said it all.
Filed under: Feed, Lauren Selden, M.T Anderson, art, books, literature, writing
” We were sitting side by side, with our legs swinging on the wall of the tower, and the Clouds(tm) were all turning pink in front of us. We could see all these miles of filet mignon from where we were sitting, and some places where the genetic coding had gone wrong and there, in the middle of the beef, the tissue had formed a horn or an eye or a heart blinking up at the sunset, which was this brag red, and which hit on all these miles of muscle and made it flex and quiver, with all these shudders running across the top of it, and birds were flying over, crying kind of sad, maybe looking for garbage, and the whole thing, with the beef and th
e birds and the sky, it glowed like there was a light inside it, which it was time to show us now.
Later, when we were flying back in the dark, lit up by the dashboard, she asked me,“ If you could die any way you wanted, how would you like to?
I said, “Why are you asking?”
She said, “I’ve just been thinking about it a lot.”
I thought for a while. Then I said, ‘ I’d like to have this like, this intense pleasure in every one of my senses, all of them so full up that they just burst me open, and the feed like going a mile a second, so that it’s like every channel is just jammed with excitement, and it’s going faster and faster and better and better, until just — BAM! That’s it, I guess. I’d like to die from some kind of sense overload.’
She nodded. ”
From M.T. Anderson’s novel Feed (p.144-145)
I don’t want to give it all away. The novel is heart-wrenching in it’s possibility. And terrifying in it’s truth.
One of the things that worries me is how the adults speak – in the slang and timbre of our generation, dude, what if this is us in 10 years, in 20. What if this is our world, our children’s world. And then there’s Violet, some sort of observer, but someone who we all need to observe.
“I missed the feed.
I don’t know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before that, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe.”
M.T. Anderson (p.47)
Filed under: Bruce Orr, Cole Johnson, Lauren Selden, Matt Fagan, Max Hallinan, anecdotes, art, comics, eavesdropping, humor, indie comics, personal intrests
Ever wonder exactly why that man in front of you in the checkout line was talking about a sale at Victoria’s Secret?
Of course you did, it’s human nature. Rebecca Abernathy explains the culture of the Overheard,
“The appeal of the overheard snippet of conversation is similar to the appeal of gossip, or a stolen glance inside someone’s medicine cabinet, or porn: it is information that you’re not supposed to have.
Overheards are a reward for staying attuned to your environment. It isn’t solely the unintentional access to (a) private conversation; just as important is the conversation itself – what is being said, who is saying it, and what all those things suggest about what you’re not hearing. A great overheard triggers your imagination and inspires you to fill in the blanks.
The best ones reveal something about our humanity; they aren’t just funny, but give us an opportunity to look at ourselves and admit that we are the ones we are laughing at.”
I came across this gem of a comic recently, and in doing so, gained a whole new appreciation for all the random overheard anecdotes I would regale my friends with. This hilariously human collection of comics was edited and assembled by Benn Ray, who has been collecting his own overheards for 6 years.
‘I keee you!!’ embodies everything I appreciate about the world of comics; strong artistic merit and amusing and thought provoking content.
Maybe these comics will inspire you to extract yourself from your iPod for the duration of your next bus trip. I know that they inspired me to do exactly that. Enjoy!
Filed under: Lauren Selden, art, aura, gallery, paris, personal intrests, theory
Why do people destroy art? There is something very powerful about the experience of viewing art. It can have such a profound emotional impact on its viewers. Recently there have been several cases of breaking and entering in galleries.
A gallery in Lund, Switzerland was invaded by a group of activists who, armed with sledgehammers and axes, smashed the glass and tore apart photographs by an American photographer that showed people involved in the sex act. This act of vandalism was unusual in that the activists videotaped their rampage and posted it to Youtube.
Most recently, after a rugby tournament in Paris, a group of drunken fans broke into the Musée d’Orsay and ran wild through the gallery resulting in a tragic act of vandalism.
” Christine Albanel, the minister of culture, said the intruders left a tear close to 4 inches, or 10 centimeters, long in the painting, “Le Pont d’Argenteuil,” or “The Argenteuil Bridge,” from 1874.
The break-in early Sunday was ‘an attack against our memory and our heritage,’ Albanel told French radio France Info. She said the intruders, believed to be four men and a woman, appeared drunk and ‘left various bits of filth’ before ‘one of them stuck a fist into the magnificent masterpiece by Monet.’
The alarms sounded and museum personnel arrived quickly, but the intruders were able to flee, Albanel said. The painting can be restored, she said. “
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/08/news/vandal.php
Is it our fear of the unknown and foreign that creates this rage and desire to destroy? Or is it our frustration with not being able to understand the cultural enigma that is modern art?
It is interesting to consider that contemporary art seems to be so separated and elevated from the average person’s life, yet pop and contemporary art has helped define our generation and the way we live our lives.
Gerard Byrne is an Irish artist who is currently having his first exhibition in Canada at the Emily Carr Institute. The works currently on display in the Charles H Scott gallery are staged video art pieces which revolve around old interviews published in mainstream magazines during the 1960’s.
The early 60’s have always been one of my favorite eras, something about the Americana lifestyle seems very comforting to me. I really enjoy the whole 1960’s Jetsons view of the future, the idea of prediction and future life is something that is at the forefront of Gerard Byrne’s current work. That being said, the progressive (and female) part of me was offended by some of the views the ‘characters’ in Byrne’s interviews presented. I seem to especially recall a conversation revolving around the upper class bachelor of the future and, among other things, where he would take his awe-struck chick out for a night on the town. Granted this is merely a reflection on the views at the time, not those of the artist or those of todays’ population.
In spite of the comments that offended my feminist sensibilities, I found Byrne’s work to be quite charming and even kitschy. The actors were all very well cast and fit perfectly into their roles, I found their accents to be particularly charming. The sets were well thought out, with my personal favorite consisting of a sort of outdoor enclosure constructed with concrete blocks (seen in the image above). I would say that from an acting viewpoint, I did find the blocking to be noticeably over-constructed, which gave the piece a feel more like that of a pre-staged “casual” interview to be aired on television. However, one could also argue that the construction of the blocking and the t.v. segment feel aided in the reception of the work itself.
Overall I was pleasantly surprised by Gerard Byrne’s work and his presentation. Although much of the credit should go to his amazing cast, whose performances truly preserved and augmented Byrne’s artistic vision.
Filed under: Lauren Selden, animation, art, film and video, jan svankmajer, literature, personal intrests, stop motion
I was first introduced to Jan Svankmajer through a friend who showed me his short film Breakfast.
Always dark and bizarre, I love the way Svankmajer uses motion and the edgy quality of Stop Motion Animation to his advantage.
In his film adaptation of Lewis Carrolls’ Alice in Wonderland, Alice, Svankmajer applies his own stamp of creativity. Including a taxidermied white rabbit, Alice is an embodiment of everything the plasticised Disney version is not.
High School bathrooms make me nervous. As a high-schooler I avoided them whenever possible, and
when I was forced to enter the fluorescent domain of the ‘it’ crowd, I would usually just wash my hands
quickly and escape, sometimes remarking inwardly the sheer vanity of the mirror’s inhabitants.
Did these girls even recognize themselves? Do they now?
