Saturday, September 30, 2017

Double gallery opening last night

Last night we attended the opening of the Dunlop exhibition in which Chrystene Ells and Berny Hi worked with the deaf community, school kids in specific, to create an amazing cloth forest which expresses their subjective viewpoints. Huge congratulations to you all.
Mooky is heading out of town for the winter, so we got a last goodbye before going to the MacKenzie for the tail end of the gigantic exhibition opening there which most notably featured work by Dana Claxton. We missed the big crowd and talk but still got cupcakes and a few conversations.

Friday, September 29, 2017

Projectors

I lent some projectors to Matt today, including a very old one that I've never removed from the custom built wooden box that someone from the Board of Education must have made for it in the 1940s. It seems to work! Yeh!

We also hung art in the department and centred the Oser photo in the conference room which the asymmetrical nature of which had bothered people for some time. 

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Shooting with Levene Graduate School

This week I was able to move forward with two grad students (Ella and Xincheng) to shoot some promotional videos with students/graduates from the Levene graduate school. This went quite smoothly with everyone coming well prepared and leaving happy. 
Simon poured cement for the support to the back of the house foundation as well. Hopefully the deck starts next week. 

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

3 minute thesis

Fifteen masters students in MAP each did a 3 minute (and not a second more) talk about their thesis research. It is an international project and trains them to encapsulate what they are doing in an interesting and digestable manner, the sort of thing you could tell someone during an elevator ride. A few of my students where there, most notably Berny, Vishal, and Sandra. It went quite well. 

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Master of the Universe on Talkies

Attended the Talkies series at the RPL. They talked over "Master of the Universe". A good choice as the dialog was appropriately predictable and stupid, as were many of the situations. Not a worthless film, but close. 

Monday, September 25, 2017

Gum comic news

I picked up the framed Pud comic strips today. Test hung it in the stairway but it doesn't really work there. Amber wrote with a confirmation that the Swampy comics will go on display at her Salt space on Oct 5.
The city finally came and pruned the dangerous branch hanging over our cars.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Hamburgers with mom

William continued his homework today, only taking a break to go driving and visit my parents. I wanted a burger and mom wanted to come along and have fries. We ran some other errands to the dollar store and London Drugs, and then back to the grind. He only finished his homework at 10:45 so watching the new Star Trek kept us up late again. 

Saturday, September 23, 2017

William starts editing

William had tons of homework for the weekend. I told him to get half of it done on Saturday and then decide what to do to reward himself. He decided to edit his super-8 films. I helped with a few details as he put sound to the One Take project from this summer. He still has another super-8 film, but by 1 am I had to cut him off (he has a character voice replaced by a found walkie talkie voice so it sounds like the police are at our door as we are trying to fall asleep). We also went to a craft fair and William bought a new pocket watch. 

Friday, September 22, 2017

Orientation

Today we had our annual orientation for our first year students. I was very nervous about this as my two predecessors always seemed so much more organized than I ever can be. When I realized that man of them had to leave early to attend Charity's talk and I needed to introduce them at the very beginning, I decided to move the open greeting and cookie eating to a point just 10 minutes into the session instead of at the end. This way the students and profs are still fresh and more likely to have a meaningful conversation. My gut feeling is that this made it a more useful session than if I had spent more time explaining stuff. 

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Artist Trading Card workshop


A good launch to the ATC year with a workshop on stenciling by Cindy and special attention to ten year members Janice and Charis Muir (mother/daughter collaborators) which was commemorated through the collecting together a couple of hundred of their cards traded to, and collected by, four long time members including Margaret. William has been drowning in homework. I figured he might want to do more stenciling next term and to learn some of Cindy's techniques, so I took notes as he worked on his social studies (thanks to Janine Windolph, not only for hosting but for talking about her views on the Canadian charter of civil rights with William). We also came for the cake. William will need to take a second try at his road test in a few weeks.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

fixing basement wall


With the deck under repair, the crew moved more machinery in and trenched the side of the house and will reinforce that wall, which is in bad shape.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Tour of the new Connaught school


The rebuilt Connaught School where William had gone from Kindergarten to Grade 7 re-opened this month and they had a public tour this week. The place is a dream. The spaces are quite open but also labyrinth-like with lots of place to hang out or work or read. I am betting that the only negative would be the crowd and the noise. The old school had 350 students. When they relocated, they lost about a hundred (including William) but the new school has around 450 kids in it! It's hard to imagine that ten years ago they almost followed the study that claimed the numbers were on the decline and that a new school here wouldn't be viable. At the time of that report, enough people noticed that the statistics being used were three years old and that the city had been booming, not dying. 

Monday, September 18, 2017

Dead thing under the deck


On the first day of repairing the deck, the mummified remains of some large rodent like thing was found. We are thinking it might be a muskrat. It is the size of a small cat but the teeth are square. There are muskrats and such in the creek two blocks away, so one could have gotten this far and hidden and died. 

Sunday, September 17, 2017

"Now Showing" print/film exhibition

The long awaited reveal of four commissioned silkscreen prints based on four films was last night at the Creative City Centre. This is a new project with the Filmpool working with Articulate Ink to be presented within the context of the Flatgrafika print conference happening this week (and including the AGR show on Friday). Two of my films were selected, so I am doubly honoured. First, "Eyes of Sorrow Moon" was interpreted by Beth Liber. She worked with two layers, black and silver, to create a luminescent image that emphasizes William's character's strange eyes and the collaged German Expressionist backgrounds I used.
Gerald Saul and Beth Liber

Second was a poster for my newest super-8 film "Canister versus The Red Death", designed by Jason Thiry. This one had bold colours and a more distressed aesthetic with the image of the helmet being central but discrete unless one has already seen the film.
Gerald Saul and Jason Thiry
It was a great event and I was really happy to see the work and meet both of these artists.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Frank and the Farm

Margaret's cousin Frank flew in from Edmonton for a conference and a visit. We stopped to catch the tail end of the Dubble Bubble inspired art show by students at the north Dunlop branch before we got on the road, eating Italian Star sandwiches in the car on the way to the farm. I've not been there in over a month and am quite surprised by how dry it is. The slough, which has has been wen every year I've ever know the farm, was dry and we walked on it.



Friday, September 15, 2017

Print show at AGR reception

Reception for the incredible Japanese and Canadian printmaking exhibition at the Art Gallery of Regina.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Art Now

We went to the Art Now art fair at the Sound Stage. I don't know what to think about it. The primary intentions are two-fold: it is an event to attract customers to the big art galleries to purchase paintings and sculptures (most things that I dared look at the prices of were $1200 to 3000, so were not impulse buys for someone like me). It was also a fundraiser for the Arts Board to help fund their own purchases to their collection. It had a nice reception sort of atmosphere.
Simon was over earlier in the day to talk about fixing our deck and doing some other problem solving renos. 

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

First time back to chairing a meeting

Today was rather busy. Class was partially in the studio, partially in the classroom so that required some hustling around. Immediately after class we had our first department meeting for me to chair this year. Took just under an hour but I think we got through everything. Dead on my feet but fortunately avoided a fall by my car..
.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Cookies or fireside treat? ... or breakfast cereal?

My mom gave William a bag of these "Goldfish""s'mores".  He doesn't like goldfish crackers to he wasn't interested, but I convinced him to open these. In fact, there is nothing cheesy about them. They are tiny graham crackers, tiny chocolate cookies, and tiny dry crudy marshmallows. They are dry and uninteresting, unless you add milk in which case they would give Count Chocula a run for his money.

Monday, September 11, 2017

William back to drawing

William never stopped drawing, but this week, now that we've started getting into the rhythm of school again (and with piano lessons starting) I thought it time to give him some daily drawing projects. The first drawing was about balance but by the third, it was about 1920s villains.
 

Sunday, September 10, 2017

SwampFest

This weekend we attended (on top of the Bushwakker event) SwampFest, a music festival organized by Eric and Amber and other people we know. It was a good experience for William to be immersed into the relentless distortion of sound that a punk band creates. There were interesting art and conceptual elements to the festival including an artist sticker machine (Allan had stickers in there along with other people but we didn't manage to get any of Allan's). I think that TAB the swamp monster appeared at some point but again, we didn't spot it. Fada Dance did performances to welcome people onto Willow Island during the Saturday afternoon events. Other events took place at the German Club. William and I created a set of comics for the events which featured characters Swampy and Tree-Kill Tim. We wrapped one of these 16 comics around wrapped pieces of Dubble Bubble gum and handed them out at the events. I doubt that anyone managed to see all 16, but a few people started to get excited about it on the second night. I'll post the set in a day or two (the final versions are grouped into sheets of four and I need to edit and resave them before I post them individually).







Saturday, September 9, 2017

Filmpool 40th and Wheat Soup beer at the Bushwakker

The long anticipated Wheat Soup beer was released this weekend at the Bushwakker Brewing Company to celebrate the Filmpool's 40th anniversary. Brian and I tapped the firken, with the result being beer spraying everywhere. The place was hopping with old and new members plus friends and family.

Gordon Pepper and Mike Rollo carrying the firkin


Originating members Ian Preston, Don List Brock Stevens and MC Brett Bell

Geoff Yates, Dan Wright, Chuck Gilhooly