Archive for December, 2012

Church Christmas Scene, Buffalo NY

churchbuffalo

The ToonPaint version of this photograph.

I love couples …

who complement one another … sharply.

Noise

 

noise

“Leaving on a Jet Plane”

I love this cover by Sea of Bees. (John Denver could write a beautiful song!)

Exhibitions in Vancouver

Ian Wallace: At the Intersection of Painting and Photography” is a thoughtful and sometimes moving retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery of an analytical local artist whose work is often very large and who uses found or revered media materials like movies and magazines in his own. I liked the show, and spent a long time staring at every part of it, and was happy it took up two floors of the gallery. The temperature of Wallace’s art is cool, and the feeling is academic, in the best of ways, I think. The artist makes his self-awareness, in terms of his artistic project, very apparent; there are very lengthy descriptions of his creative process printed out, in little cards on the wall, in most every room. Most artists I know aren’t so forthcoming, or so detailed.

I wish I could say that these very lengthy descriptions detracted from the overall success of Wallace’s exhibition, but they didn’t. His work needs the words. That’s OK.

Upstairs, on the third floor of the VAG, is simple and fabulous mayhem: “Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980.” These videos and pictures and paintings and all sorts of things I cannot even describe are done by protesters and F students who don’t like how art is used to pacify our amuse … or to educate. Wonderful.

Oh, sleep come for me…

“The Maureen and George Basil Award”

awards

It was a lovely evening, the School of Business Awards Ceremony, with a very deserving award winner, Danica Sladen, a former student of mine whose Human Resources practicum was successful indeed. That’s Wayne Tebb, Dean of the School of Business, and a very cool friend of mine, on the left.

I have funded the award since 2005 to honour my parents, really good people who have always supported education.

“Peace of Pai”

katsbungalow

My friend Kat Kosiancic is writing about her travels through Thailand. I love her writing. Right now she’s living in the bungalow pictured above in the town of Pai.

Kwantlen Agonistes

Christopher Poon describes for The Surrey Now what is sure to become a kerfuffle at my university. Bring on the lawyers, again. (Mr. Poon, by the way, is a Kwantlen journalism graduate who was the inaugural winner of the John Reiss Award in Journalism, an annual prize I fund in honour of a good friend of mine.)