Elmaks contacted me recently to let me know that there’s a Swap Box movie in the works! A short film, actually. He and the filmmaker are seeking input from Swap Box users: they want to hear your Swap Box stories. Find out more at the brand new official Swap Box blog.
I miss having a Swap Box somewhere along the route I walk to work. Swap Boxes come and Swap Boxes go, and right now there aren’t any in my life. While it makes me sad when one disappears – especially one that I visit daily and feel personally connected to – I try to remember that the ephemeral nature of the Swap Box is integral to the concept.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, Swap Boxes are a form of interactive street art. They can be made and installed by anybody. They are small hand-decorated boxes, attached to public places like telephone poles or boarded up storefronts. Instructions are usually written on the Swap Box: Take Something, Leave Something. So you peek inside, take something you like – maybe a bus ticket or a finger puppet or a sketch on the back of a business card – and then you rifle through your bag to see what you want to leave in its place – maybe your secret decoder ring or a quarter or a red pencil.
My favourite Swap Box was the Mayor Larry Swap Box on Lisgar near Bank Street. Every day for several months I left one of my own Artist Trading Cards in it. I always wrote my blog address on the back of the cards. One day an art student found one of my ATCs in the Swap Box and she contacted me and told me she was leaving a print in the box for me. I still have that print on my wall.
The Swap Box concept originated in Ottawa with Elmaks, who has been building and installing swap boxes for a few years. He encourages others to build and install swap boxes too, and now Swap Boxes can be found around the world.
What I love best is the serendipitous nature of the whole thing, the random connections to other people. We pass each other wordlessly, avoiding contact, as we slog our way anonymously through the urban landscape. We’re all so isolated in the crowd. The Swap Box is a rare point of connection, a place where we can safely share a tiny bit of ourselves with some random fellow traveler in the endless stream of strangers.
Posted by zoom! on February 6, 2009, at 10:40 pm |
The weather’s been kind of erratic lately, eh? Thirty-three below zero yesterday morning with the wind chill, and a forecast of seven degrees above zero tomorrow. For those of you still do Farenheit, those are Celsius degrees, and Celsius degrees generally make things sound colder than they really are. But the two scales converge at forty below, so 33 below actually is almost as cold as it sounds.
This is me, yesterday, walking to work.
Even the dogs wear coats and boots in this weather. But for those of you who are unfamiliar with our winters (I’m thinking about you Nurse Myra), I don’t want you to think it’s all about snow and ice and shivering miserably. Sometimes we actually go outside and play. Here’s GC, playing in the snow behind my house.
He could practically fix my clothesline from up there. The snowplow driver snapped it in half one night, and then tried to throw away the evidence. I stomped outside and marched over to his snowplow and banged on it til he shut down his plow and talked to me. He pretended to have every intention of returning to fix it in the springtime, and after a few minutes I grew weary of being assertive and pretended to believe him.
Bye-bye clothesline.
You know what I like best about winter? It gives us Canadians a great excuse to just stay in and do whatever gets us through. We can drink or read or play with our toys or watch movies or whatever we want. Winter’s actually pretty great if you don’t have to leave your house.
This is what my art room looks like when I’ve been snowbound and feeling creative.
Posted by zoom! on February 4, 2009, at 11:07 pm |
Several people have told me that my blog is taking way too long to load since I switched themes. I’ve tried to isolate the culprit by deactivating various plug-ins and widgets, but the problem continues to elude me.
I have a couple of other things I can try, but I won’t have time to get to that before the weekend. So, in the meantime, I’ve reverted to my familiar old theme, which doesn’t have as many bells and whistles, and which can’t take advantage of all the features and functionality of WordPress 2.7. But my heart went pitter-patter when the site loaded and the three big familiar sheep peered down on me. I hope yours does too. Those sheep were never meant to fit inside a 200 pixel high banner. They were meant to be big. And now they are.
Speaking of hearts going pitter-patter, I was working my shift at the Shepherds of Good Hope tonight, and one of the clients found a slice of pineapple at the bottom of a pitcher of juice. Her whole face lit up. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed, “A pineapple! Can you believe it? I am so lucky!”
I was so happy for her. Not just because she got a treat, but because she has that rare capacity to find joy in small things, which must come in handy when life’s circumstances are such that you’re eating at the soup kitchen. (Although I have to say, I’m constantly surprised by how many of the clients at Shepherds are smiling and upbeat.)
I saw Dave X at Shepherds tonight too: we argued about politics. For a homeless guy, he’s weirdly conservative. Good old Dave X – it was good to see him again.
2. In fact, you don’t need any artistic talent, although it would probably come in handy.
3. You just keep throwing stuff at the canvas until a happy accident happens, which it inevitably will.
4. You use other stuff to cover up the parts you don’t like, because layering is a huge part of mixed media.
5. You can make art by stealing borrowing elements of other people’s art and combining it in unique and creative ways.
6. You get to play with any number of materials: watercolours, acrylics, oils, blood, markers, magazine cut-outs, sand, eggshells, ink, boxes, books, metal, minerals, rust, wax, or anything else you find intriguing. The world is your great big art supply cabinet.
7. You begin to see artistic potential in everything, so you stop throwing things out. Smarties boxes. Sticks of RAM. Old magazines. Broken glass. You start scavenging other people’s trash too. (Not everybody will see this as a good thing.)
8. You’re not limited to flat, two-dimensional work. You can make towers and boxes and sculptures and assemblages.
9. You get that kindergarten art feeling from doing mixed media. You just put on your smock and dig right in and your teacher comes around and lavishes praise on you and your glitter-encrusted macaroni necklace.
10. The people who take mixed media courses are quirky and eccentric, as are the people who teach mixed media courses. (My teacher, by the way, is Dipna Horra.)
Here are our works in progress after several three-hour classes. As far as I can tell, nothing is finished yet. Click on any of the images for a larger, scarier version.
Posted by zoom! on February 1, 2009, at 11:00 am |
My friend Donna invited me over for dinner last night and we drank wine and ate fish and talked about Romanian orphanages, Columbian drug cartel prisoners, child abuse, depressing movies, Karla Homolka, addiction, poverty, prisons, Stephen Harper, the economy, child slavery, puppy mills and post-traumatic stress syndrome.
One heavy topic seemed to lead into the next and we kind of got trapped in that pattern, which is odd because we’re both pretty upbeat people. Despite the unrelenting lineup of dark topics, we somehow managed to laugh and have fun. Not everybody can do that with that particular set of topics, but Donna and I pulled it off. Yay us!
Afterwards I came home and went to bed with just Duncan. Duncan liked that he had me all to himself, but he liked it in an intense, face-licking, pointy-clawed sort of way, and I had to hide under the blankets for my own protection.
In other news, we made it through January! Does anybody else think the end of the bus strike was kind of anti-climatic since it hasn’t resulted in any actual bus service? I can’t believe it’s going to take them 10 days to get some buses on the road and it’ll be “April or May” before normal bus service is fully restored. (And frankly, normal bus service left a lot to be desired.)
As you might recall, there was a bit of a re-org here last week. Sheep #2 was fired, but he had it coming. Duncan was promoted but lost one of his ears on the Photoshop cutting floor. Duncan taught the other two sheep how to meow, albeit with Norwegian accents.* There was quite a cacaphony echoing all the way down to the comments.
Not everybody liked having Duncan up there in the header. There were aesthetic objections and concerns about things like scale, proportion, Duncan’s dignity and possible infractions of labour legislation with respect to the displaced sheep (I’ll say it again: he had it coming).
In my typical indecisive Libra style, I’ve decided to put the header up to a vote. You tell me which header you like best. You can elaborate in the comments if you like.
*For those of you who are relatively new to this blog, Duncan is a Norwegian Forest Cat. (But he insists I refer to him as “a Norwegian Forest Cat of some considerable substance,” so there you go.)
I’m having a very bad day, and it’s very bad for reasons I’m not at liberty to discuss. But take my word for it: I need you all to send me truffles and red wine and good vibes. Thank you.
Anyway. Enough of that. While I’m waiting for the truffles and red wine and good vibes to come flooding in, let’s do a round-up of our earliest memories.
Do you ever wonder why we can’t remember being babies? I sometimes suspect we store our earliest experiences somewhere in our bodies in a form that is un-recallable but not quite forgotten.
Another thing: have you ever noticed that toddlers are intrigued by repetition? They might show no interest in watching television until the commercials come on, and then they stop whatever they’re doing to focus intently on the commercials. I think it’s because they remember them, and they’re not used to remembering stuff. They’re fascinated by the absolute unwavering predictability of commercials. This fascination seems to coincide with the age at which the toddler’s ability to store and recall memories is emerging.
Anyway. Earliest memories. I’ll tell you mine, and hopefully you’ll tell me yours.
My earliest memory is from when I was two or three years old. At that time, my mother was going to school. She would drop my sister and me off at the sitter’s every Monday morning and pick us up every Friday evening.
Strangely, my earliest memory is of a dream rather than an actual experience. In this dream, my mother came to pick us up on Friday evening, and I was angry about something. I stomped my foot. My mother got angry back and said stomping my foot was bad, so I couldn’t come home for the weekend.
The next thing I remember is the babysitter and I were standing on the front porch, and my mother was leaving with my sister. She was pushing a stroller. I was supposed to be in the stroller, but the babysitter’s child was in it instead of me. My sister was holding onto the side. They were walking away, across a field.
I tried to call out to my mom, but I had no voice. I looked over at the babysitter and she had this huge crack in her neck. Her head started to wobble, and then it fell off and rolled across the porch towards me.
Posted by zoom! on January 29, 2009, at 12:06 pm |
The silent art auction was a blast. We ate, drank, socialized, and we got some phenomenally good deals on art too, since the blizzard and bus strike kept a lot of people home.
Me, by Scott Amey
That doesn’t mean we got to waltz off with everything we wanted though. Scott Amey, who runs Irene’s kitchen, submitted a painting called Me. I loved it, but I wasn’t the only one. A small crowd of us gathered around that painting in the final moments of the auction and the bidding got pretty intense. I didn’t win it.
After the Rain, by Gwendolyn Best
But all that last-minute bidding action on Scott’s painting distracted everybody from a couple of others that were selling for far less than expected. I got this abstract for next to nothing, and GC picked up the cello player for peanuts. Not only that, but I got a bright cheery encaustic by Susan Monty for a song. I love it.
The Cello Player
The City: an encaustic by Susan Monty
The Regulars, by GC and Zoom (on the left)
As for the art that GC and I donated to the show, both pieces sold! The first one, called The Regulars, is a mixed media piece that GC and I made together. It’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast with text, paints, transfers, coloured pencils and hidden images, but we kind of liked it. It got five bids, including one from the owner of Irene’s and one from my friend Tish. I don’t know the guy who won it, but I was told he is a regular.
Urban Urchin - digital collage by zoom (on the right)
The other piece, a digital collage entitled Urban Urchin, also got five bids. It went to someone with mysterious connections to the blogging underworld, the village of Maynooth, and Irene’s Pub. I saw him but I don’t know him, and it was all very intriguing.
This, by the way, is Pat Golding, who works at Irene’s and who came up with the brilliant idea of Everybody’s Art Show. Someday she’s going to be a podcaster, and she’ll be the best damned podcaster ever. She’s smart and funny and nobody tells a story better. I love listening to her.
What: Everybody’s Art Show
Where: Irene’s Pub, 885 Bank Street, in the Glebe
When: Wednesday January 28th, starting at 6:30 p.m.
What exactly: A silent auction of about 35 pieces of original art donated by various artists and regulars who frequent Irene’s Pub. It includes Zoom and GC’s first collaborative piece, and another piece by Zoom.
Why: All proceeds go to a 2009 graduate of the Ottawa School of Art.
My understanding of how this works is you need to show up around 6:30 and get registered to bid. Then bidding will open for half an hour on the first wall of art. Winners will be determined and then bidding will move to the second wall. And then the third. And so on.
GC and I are very excited about this. We’re not artists, but we just started taking a mixed media course at the Ottawa School of Art. Our teacher is CBC Radio’s Dipna Horra. Every time we see a poster advertising Everybody’s Art Show, we elbow each other and giggle, because it’s kind of preposterous that our art is hanging in an actual art show.
So anyway, if you’re looking for something to do and somewhere to go during a blizzard in a bus strike tonight, come on down to Irene’s!
Word on the street is that talks between the bus union and the City have broken down again. This is getting ridiculous. If the so-called negotiators on both sides of the imaginary table are incapable of carrying on the kind of serious and sustained discussion that leads to a successfully negotiated contract, they should get out of the way and let better people do it. Grrrr.
As far as I’m concerned, there are only three good things about this strike:
Some people are discovering they love walking to work.
There is no third thing.
By the way, you might have noticed that I made a few changes around here, including firing one of the sheep and promoting Duncan. There’s still lots of tweaking to do, but I have decided not to indulge my erratic perfectionist tendencies at this time.
More changes are forthcoming. For example, all the posts have to be re-tagged, and I have to do something about making some more space around the images.
Speaking of erratic perfectionist tendencies, Duncan likes that I promoted him but he doesn’t like that I accidentally chopped off one of his ears and replaced the other one with a sheep’s ear.
Elmaks contacted me recently to let me know that there’s a Swap Box movie in the works! A short film, actually. He and the filmmaker are seeking input from Swap Box users: they want to hear your Swap Box stories. Find out more at the brand new official Swap Box blog.
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