Yes, yes, crunch time is most certainly underway. Ten days until my interdepartmental critique. It’s mainly people from our department (from the three streams of visual art, art history, and curatorial studies) who attend these but it’s open to the public as well. I’m not really nervous [yet] I guess, more of trying to get my pieces finished. I have my sculpture (“Gold Mountain”) which I put together last week in order to take pictures of it for my submission to the Art History Symposium, but it will be dismantled and installed some blocks away in another building for the crit. It’s still being added to. And then I have a small series of four black-and-white negs that I’ll be making 20” x 24” fibre prints of. Series tentatively titled “Invisible Minority.” Aside from that, my English paper is due the day before my birthday which is the day after the critique.

Open Studios is on December 7th and this year I’ve had to do quite some prep as the MFA rep (compared to little effort last year). Our evening reception is joint with the BFAs and so planning has been heightened. We put an ad out in a publication that has a readership of 70,000 (which includes that of Artforum). It’ll be tiring but hopefully enjoyable-tiring (12-9pm). I’m trying to put together another piece for then - three is a good, solid number to have. “Year of the Ox” has been a work in progress since January and is due to be completed next year. I showed some of the actual 6” x 6” sheets in the last two Open Studios but this year I’m going to try - in the next however long I have before the 7th - to present them in a more finished form. I came home this evening to eat dinner after tutoring Jerry, then left for studio, only to return home before 11:30. Tomorrow I meet with my advisors.

I checked the mail today and received an envelope containing (around) 100 copies of the bookmark (‘Hey, Nostradamus!’) I made for The Koffler Centre for the Arts in Toronto. This was in conjunction with The Bookmark Project and the 33rd Annual Jewish Book Fair, whereby the piece I made was selected as a ‘multiple’ to be reproduced 2500 times and distributed throughout books on display at the Fair from October 24 - November 1. The theme this year’s project was “Obsolete” and was curated by Teresa Aversa.

The irony is that I do not use ‘real’ bookmarks when reading, merely using the library receipt as a placeholder and post-it note to jot down interesting things. So now my version of the bookmark has been made permanent and also reproduced potentially for others’ use. Below is the project statement I’d initially included in my submission:

“The present day library check-out slip serves as a symbol of the new face that reading has taken on in the digital age. Gone are the days when each book had its own sheet glued onto the flyleaf page, to be inked with a due date by the librarian. Nowadays, even the librarian is sometimes absent from the counter, replaced by self-serve checkout machines and printed slips of receipt paper. My response to this year’s theme symbolizes that loss of the traditional form of a bookmark, which in my life, has preceded the death of the physical book. In creating photographic reproductions of two of these receipts - which I use simultaneously as both bookmark and notepad - I have made permanent both the printed and handwritten text on these slips. The ink used on the sheets will eventually fade away, as will the paper itself, but these documents will remain as snapshots in time.

These bookmarks, titled “Hey, Nostradamus!” and “Life of Pi,” are meant to be used much in the same way as I use them: as placeholder and secondly, as post-it note. Where there is room, one might wish to jot down interesting phrases or other things that come to mind as one reads.”

UBC’s AMS and AHVA Galleries present WEAREART, a collaborative show and fundraiser featuring works from Faculty, Staff, and Students from the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory at UBC. WEAREART is a mixed media event centered on each artist’s interpretation of the grey monochrome.  The exhibition and fundraiser will also display and sell protest posters and T-shirts, designed by 4th year BFA and BA visual arts students. The opening event will include a silent auction of all the works held at the AMS Gallery from 4-7pm, on Friday, November the 13th, followed by a show at the Gallery in Koerner Library from November 18th–21st.

The use of the grey monochrome is inspired by the work of the group “greysquare.ca”, an organization dedicated to restoring public support for the arts and culture in British Columbia.  This show takes place in the shadow of the announcement of devastating cuts to arts funding in B.C.  The use of grey is meant to symbolize a future without art and culture – “a future we are working to avoid.”

Silent Auction: 4-7pm, Friday, November 13: The AMS Gallery is located in the main concourse of the Student Union Building (SUB), 6138 Student Union Boulevard, UBC.

Works on Display: Wednesday Nov. 18 to Saturday Nov. 21: the Gallery is located on the first floor of Koerner Library

________

This is the piece I made for the fundraiser and am going to get it printed tomorrow (44” x 15” in size). I felt the idea of the grey monochrome and what it stood for (the loss of art and culture in BC) related well to these grey monochrome paint samples from the Disney Color paint collection. The provincial government’s cuts to the funding of the cultural sector, juxtaposed against the Disney corporation (mass produced and mass consumed entertainment) speaks to me of the disjuncture between what we are spending money on and what we should be spending on.

So, that was my little ‘sneak peek’ on the latest thing I’ve been working on. It was a little bit of a last minute notice but this was one of three ideas I had. I know I’ve been really lacking in sharing my own stuff on here. I’ll do that more.. soon.. promise.

(via smeadows)

K cut his hair after weeks and weeks of anticipation. Two and half years of his life on the floor of the unoccupied, gutted apartment down the hallway from his. Soft curls clumped like a long wig. Sonny shaved it off with clippers while I shot 4x5 and digital stills and filmed it for his movie. Thursday p.m., he gave me a hand photographing pseudo-portraits of me after I finally asked for help; I’ve assisted him in shoots quite a bit, most recently being second camera on his newest short films. A cloudy and dark Sunday afternoon in front of balcony doors where the light kept fading. Mountains hidden in the distance. Just the other day near the sports field at school, I noticed that they were heavily snow-capped. He looks younger and simultaneously older (more mature), though mostly the former. I think. The picture is from June in Ontario, when he showed me more of home.

“I think this was taken just before touch down. It’s insane and robotic looking. The windowseat is good because you get to see the perfectly manicured fields and freeways and strange crop circles and where land begins and the water ends. But it’s bad when you need to use the loo and you don’t want to disturb the person in the aisle seat. I also heard this song [The Flaming Lips, Do You Realize] on the in-flight radio. I never associated it with anything before (except maybe a movie) but now I will. In the same way that I will always join Phantom Planet’s California with the plane lifting off a few years back.” (2006)

I wrote the following text in August 2005. I don’t know what I was saving it for..

“My mother took both of these pictures in July. I think about my grandmas sometimes, moreso when I see their pictures of them.

The left is of my materal grandmother.
We share a birthday on the second of December and I remember one year when I was six or seven we had this super long log-like birthday cake. It had strawberries and all my cousins gathered around us singing happy birthday. She lives in a house by herself with a caretaker and her dog named Baby. There used to be chickens in the backyard and I think a parakeet/cockatoo’s still there as well. The upstairs of this house used to scare me when I was little. I don’t really remember it at all, save for it being really dark. I see myself in those picture albums on the table. I’m the one in the pink top at the bottom left hand corner of that photo closest to her. My mother sometimes tells me stories, especially when she comes back from staying at this house. One of them is about how my grandma got into a little bit of a situation with an uncle and my grandpa somehow let his presence be known by slamming a cupboard or something like it. I believe that. I vaguely remember visiting my grandpa once. I was little and it was in a garden and the only thing I remember from that visit was looking up but not really seeing the nook that his urn rests in. My grandma came to visit us here in Canada a little while after we’d settled in, 1997 I think. She even came to my sixth grade graduation. When we finally came to visit her in 2003, it was past midnight when we arrived and we headed to her house for a quick hello. She had sugar cane and barley water there for us, and we were dead tired but excited to be returning to our first home. I’ve always remembered how she has these kind eyes framed by her silver hair and the way she kind of purses her lips to say my name in an ultra sweet and soft way.

The right is of my paternal grandmother.
Up until I was nine I lived five minutes away from her house. She would make dinner for us after we came home from school and work and at the end of the evening we’d walk or drive back to our own place. For two years, after school I’d spend afternoons with her. I would get there and she would have made me lunch. Sometimes it was noodles and soup, sometimes she had french fries and fish fillets out for me, and ketchup in a glass bottle. She’d read the newspaper or peel beansprouts with my grandfather in that chair right beside her. We always sat there in silence, the three of us. It’s doesn’t help that there’s a language barrier between us. I don’t speak Cantonese and she doesn’t speak English. Three years ago when we were on holiday in Singapore, I was the only one in the house with my grandparents. I spent at least a good twenty minutes trying to come up with the words to tell her that I was going out. I knew how to say it, I think I just wanted to be very very sure that what I was saying was correct so that I wouldn’t embarrass myself. When I finally went to find her she was in the bathroom with my grandfather, helping him shower. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that image. It’s left me forever touched. The following year my grandfather passed away. I wonder what she thinks about. She’s the strong and silent type, I’m sure my family would agree. I’ve always remembered how when she smiles the gold in her teeth flashes right back at you, and the jade bangle that she wears. I also remember how she laughed at me when I had my first wiggly tooth (she ended up yanking it out because I was too afraid to do it myself) or when I found a household lizard in the bathroom (she ended up smacking it with her slipper and flushing it).”