a film about the roerich garden project in montreal
Found this on you tube about a project by a local artist i know. Emily Rose Michaud & company built it in the winter. Miss Janet made this excellent 6 min doc about the day Emily and a team of volunteers set it up together over the course of one very cold day. The Garden lived on, you can keep up with their progress here. It's pretty damn cool.
Been taking it easy but for me that still means making art most of the time. Made first dent in the rock that is the next project, feeling pretty good about that. So, This is PG 1 of my next book.
This is full bleed art, the book will be 8.5"x10", i think B&W. It was done with Pebeo encre de chine ink, Pelikan White Gouache, and a cheep #2 brush. Kind of sick of pens for a bit right now - what i used mostly to draw the last 154 pages of art. This is slow, but it's were im at right now so...
I was inspired for the this sequence in the book by two sets of photos, one recent pictures taken of the sun, the other of deep sea life around volcanic vents. The set will run for 4 pages contrasting the two settings then move into a dream sequence.
Radical Transparency has been one of those ideas that's wandered about in the back of my head for a long time, and i remain pretty conflicted about the idea.
On one hand I have lived a portion of my life online for going on 14 yrs now.
Computer camp to Bulletin boards to email to the web I was not much more than a dabbler till around 99, but from then on it's been a significant part of my carrier as a artist to use this forum as the primary way of getting my work out into the world.
In part it's also why I've had a not so secret identity - a bit of a joke with myself and a bit of a shield for the ego to make dealing with the ups and downs of self-promoting a bit more manageable.
I've fumbled around the balance of public and privet and tend it seems to favour privacy in my own life.
At first this was a consequence of minimizing my self-conscious embarrassment over the obvious side effects of being dyslexic - even with the red lines, revealed & reviled still look at times the same to me.
But over time I've also had to discover where my comfort zone for being any kind of public personality lay.
I've had missteps and resolved a lot of questions for myself about this, and it remains an issue that captures my wandering attentions frequently.
I've also watched as people around me have revealed themselves via the net, to varying degrees, with all kinds of unexpected and not always good consequences.
Objectively - and there fore abstractly - I have come to prefer the ideal of Radical Transparency in our civic lives without question.
Actually I would not be surprised if Clive will talk to Warren for a piece like this if he gets onto the ways cyber punk fiction has forecasted these trends and clashes between secrecy and freedom of information on the net.
Today marks the 17th anniversary of the death of 14 women, shot dead at Ecole Polytechnique.
Genevieve Bergeron Helene Colgan Natalie Croteau Barbara Daigneault Anne-Marie Edward Maud Haviernick Barbara Marie Klueznick Maryse Laganiere Maryse Leclair Anne-Marie Lemay Michelle Richard Sonia Pelletier Annie Saint-Arnault Annie Turcotte
This morning when I woke, the clock radio was tuned to the CBC as usual, and Sounds Like Canada host Shelagh Rogers was talking to three people who had called in responses to a segment from the day before, about the book Remembering Women Murdered by Men. One of the thoughts that was expressed by two of today's guest was a general unease with the title of the book itself. No one wanted to say it was wrong -the numbers are unquestionable.
But at the same time, the title seemed to make even Shelagh and one of the female callers a bit uncomfortable. It seemed to sit as not quite right to them, and thinking on it I think I have a theory as to why.
I think that it needs to be acknowledged first, that while rare, it does happen that physically abusive behaviour in relationships is sometimes perpetrated by women, and emotional abuse is common enough from both sexes. I think those exceptions help to illustrate that the problem has very little to do with anything hard wired. I think it's a gendered problem. As in the rolls assumed to be conventionally appropriate to men and women based on their sex. Its about dominance games, and the acceptance of our opposite sex as true peers, and not the other side from another planet.
In the end I agree with Shelagh's guests, who concluded that the book title is not objectionable, but makes them uneasy somehow. I think we need to listen to the twinge they had, and I do as well, whenever we feel this problem is being simplified in a way that may undermine finding a solution.
The book title works well to do what it should; Making us think about this truth and begin to ask questions. But we should not let it simplify our view of the real problem.
And I think that problem is the popular notion of dealing with the opposite sex as an alien species, one that needs to be controlled or held at arms length, and put down, either literally or metaphorically when it's seen as out of line. It seems to me this common model will inevitably lead to abuse regardless if the one holding those ideas is a man or a woman.
The truth is that so far, as far as we know there are very few real behavioural differences hardwired into the sexes, and that many of those we take for granted as being male or female are as much the result of social conditioning and roll playing as biological gender.
These ideas are pervasive because of the way people are raised, not wired. They are taught to see the opposite sex. And this is the responsibility of both sexes, of society as a whole, not just men. And they can change.
So for today that's my two cents. Take a moment to think about all the assumptions you tend to hold about the opposite sex, and really everyone else while were at it, and question why you would think they would apply to all individuals.
Why is it that we tend as a society to be so reluctant to take on a little more work in our day to day dealing with each other, by putting aside our time saving assumptions and actually get to know the others that you meet. Are we really that lazy?
My friend Cassandra has just started classes at Concordia in the arts program, she's studying performance art, as so has quite an interesting range of classes.
When we can find some time to spend together she often has interesting experiences to relay to me from her classes. Some has been of the too predictable Art School egomania and competition, but a lot has been more interesting and at times she's enjoyed some profound moments.
She's posted one account of these on her blog here, the post titled Judgments and Class Discussions - Found her post refreshing commentary and view of the incidents earlier this month at Dawson, which neighbours Concordia's campus in downtown Montreal.
It's too true, our culture, our species still is too easily led and prone to react in astonishment and disbelief, followed by protectionist fear when things like this go down. We push further away those we push away daily, and when our society gets colder, our media echoes the cries of many people astonishment that the obvious happens.
Gill illustrated a point in his randomish choice of targets: Any human behaviour can happen in any Human space, including the most selfish violet lashing out of the ostracized.
Gill saw himself as a dark figure, but none of us is the sole author of our self-image. Rather it's a by-product of both the way we see ourselves, and the way others do and respond to that. Somewhere along the line others helped to project this persona on him, and others still helped to confirm it time and again. Eventually he simply did what all humans do, he acted out his perceived roll in life.
This truth should not make you fearful, but respect the consequences of taking things for granted, and of pre-judging.
It's true that instinctively humans will make conscious and unconscious judgements about others within the first 10 seconds of having met. But we also posses one of the most powerful thinking devices in the known universe, and are quite able to use it to stay off that judgement till we know more, and even better.
SALGOOD
SAM's WORK DIARY | an account of endeavors
and random musings | the web-log of Max Douglas, a
professional cartoonist working and living in Montreal Qc Canada
max at salgoodsam dot com atom feed
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SALGOOD
SAM's WORK DIARY | an account of endeavors
and random musings | the web-log of Max Douglas, a
professional cartoonist working and living in Montreal Qc Canada
