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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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These pictures are from our summer road trip through British Columbia. This guy was at the roadside by the gas station in McBride. Chetwynd, further north, is without a doubt the go-to town for chainsaw sculpture. They have an annual competition and the main street is lined with super intricate and ambitious works (see some here). I kind of preferred these modest, smiling animals. I regret that I did not get the artist's name. I was afraid to chat with him in case the words, "I will buy that great big rabbit" popped out of my mouth by mistake.
Some images from makingROOM
curated by Heather Nicol more info here
(closes Sunday at 5pm)
"King Juda" by Michael Bartosik
"Mr. Nobody" by Tanya Read
"The Eye" by Lisa Neighbour
(details from "The Eye")
"Big orange Bird" by Ed Pien
I'm totally nightblind, so the 20 images I took with my video camera of Lisa's work were all badly out of focus. Will replace with something better tomorrow. Excuses. Excuses. Ed forgot to bring a better camera for me to use. It's all his fault.
[eta: Ed has redeemed himself by providing me with a better image of Lisa's eye]
Party Party Party! Liberal leadership race on this weekend.
Remember to guzzle a rye & ginger whenever you hear the word Trudeau. (and remember that you-know-who-from-somewhere-else-with-that-nuanced-view-on-torture bears no resemblance to he that was cool, but still may invoke the name.)
I want to see the country governed by fabulous dead people.
Check out the front pages of the current issue of Prefix Photo for my digital project about the Muskwa Kechika. We have an exhibition coming up in February at the Dawson Creek Art Gallery showcasing work by everyone who participated in the Muskwa Kechika Artists Exploration Camp. I'll be showing a dvd with a little bit of narrative and a lot of goofy home-style effects.
Fascinating story in the Globe yesterday about the Canadian art magazine Blackflash. The next issue has a story by Kyla and James Legard called "The Last Taboo: Childhood Sexuality and Censorship." After what sounds like quite a bit of contention, Backflash has decided to print the story with blank spots & urls in place of the intended illustrations. The "self-censored" images include Mapplethorpe as well as a cutsie painting of a little girl on a park bench by Millais called Cherry Ripe, which the Globe did reproduce online. Globe writer James Adams describes the painting as, "one of the most popular images of the late Victorian era, with prints displayed in millions of homes throughout the British Empire. In the last 25 years, however, some have argued its popularity 'bespeaks the existence of widespread covert pedophilia in Victorian society.'"
I just read a very good essay, "The Folly of Defining 'Serious' Art," by Amy Adler in a book about the complexities of censorship called The New Gatekeepers. Adler says...
"...even in this most justified area of censorship law, the legal solution has proved problematic in two ways. First, in our rush to protect children, we have expanded the definition of child pornography dramatically. It has become so broad that at its borders it endangers speech that almost all of us would agree ought to be protected. For example, the definition is so broad that now something can be 'child pornography' even if the child depicted is wearing clothes. In this way, child pornography law has come to threaten ordinary family pictures as well as important art that depicts children."Hey teacher! Leave those kids alone.
[...]
"Even as it combats the sexualization of children, I believe that child pornography law has also contributed to a world in which we scrutinize children for sexuality in a way that we never did before. In this way it inadvertently fosters the sexualization of children."
Note: I feel a strong affinity to the last statement, above, by Adler. I have decided not to repost the Millais painting, nor to make links to contemporary artists who I feel have unjustly come under this particular legal lens. I don't like the inevitable scrutiny that this context would impose, and I don't want any part of it. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Blackflash took the action that they did...if so, I think I understand the decision.