the echoing moon...

"vanity guards us from introspection.

what guards us from vanity?

to think of ourselves like the moon,

dead and beautiful,

and of an origin no one can be sure of?"*

[*"Meeting an Astronomer on the Buddha's Birthday" by Diane WAKOSKI]

[the image is from a durational performance/installation entitled "Echoes" in the Audain Gallery  by Luciana D'Anunciacao, a student in the MFA program at Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts, at the MFA Spring Exhibition "Syllogisms", March 27-Apri 6, 2013]

emily carr grad show:: rounding down

As the creative and critical tensions ramp up every wet spring to culminate in a veritable cornucopia of graduate work, the studios and galleries of Emily Carr University of Art and Design are worthy of an afternoon of sensory feasting on the output of minds and hands still mostly untainted by commercial determinants and by the jaded pronouncements of art world pretenders. 
These wide-eyed grads may be wandering into the apathetic consumerist desert, leaving their coddled cocoons of nurturing teachers and supportive classmates, giving up their delusions of artistic freedom - but they will have rounded up an expensive education in hit-and-miss guided experimentation in the arts and if nothing else, find themselves a little more well-rounded for their years immersed in institutional playtime...

Here's a literal round down of some of what caught my savage eye at this year's grad exhibit...

starting with a single unfired bowl sitting on a rough and tumble bed-slab of dry cracked clay...

 "It All Depends Upon" by Stefan Sollenius

 to multiple ceramic shelves holding configurations of round vessels of varying  shapes and sizes and drip-glazed in the palest tint of celadon...

"Stack" by Sam Knopp

[Winner of the Circle Craft Graduation Award for Ceramics]

 to these tiny colourful fruit-loop pieces crawling up the upper wall from a much more frenetic installation flowing down to spread upon the floor...

"Stones Shaped by Chance" by Allison [Sunny] Karon

 to stacks of ceramic rings strung up in random number of hoops and suspended as a floor-reaching mobile...

"Chronology Manifested" by Heather Lippold

 to a lacy net of linked black elastic bands webbing its sinister way up the pristine white wall...

 Untitled by Irene Lim-Khung

 to an abstracted seated figure of salvaged wood cradling an ominous metal phallus secured by a loose coil of woolly rope...

Untitled by Corrina Suveges

to the puffed-up pride of an oversized pillow case as metaphor for la tête idéale, its skinny red legs weighted down by un coeur de rocher...

"Mlu" by David Yen-Fu Lin

Emily Carr University 2013 Graduation Show

May 5 - 19

PiDGiN PARK PiCNiC:: a poetic persiflage

PiDGiN PARK PiCNiC

on a redoubtable corner of east hastings central

the blankets are spread out on the pavement and

a few bottles of cooking wine have been uncapped.

some loiter and wait for their promissory meal -

not expecting much, not having studied the menu. 

the smell of searing drug-free angus wafts out

and whispers of foie gras on taro chips are

rather too incomprehensible for most to bear.

some lit the candles in anticipation and some

lightly polish up their pure plastic cutlery.

others strut up in their tailored redemption

averting eyes and holding righteous breaths -

not there to join the picnic upon concrete grounds

and certain other well-oiled principles...

"feed them pigeon pie, let them eat crow! -

no need to brine/purée/infuse/foam

for the unindoctrinated", they sneer,

swishing into the white indemnified room.

no, not until they lay down their arms,

their un-artful and belligerent signs,

their flaring convulsive anger - and not

until they stay down on their filthy blankets,

will this fusion picnic ever happen...
if ever.