Archive for November, 2011

THE OPENING is all about introducing the fascinating, quirky and wonderful people working in and around the visual arts in Vancouver. Each week, we’ll feature an artist, collective, curator or administrator to delve deep into who and what makes art happen!

Neil Wedman graduated from the Vancouver School of Art in 1977, after having studied media, film and photography. Since then, he has made his name as both a painter and media artist, having shown both locally and nationally in exhibitions and film festivals. Neil spared a recent afternoon for coffee, burgers, and ice cream, and a good long conversation about his body of work to date.

Plate from ‘Burlesk’, 1999

I’d like to start by asking you about the Burlesk book. You decontextualize these tiny, single-panelled comics. You make them more realistic, and you give them this grim atmosphere. You weave them into a narrative: certain ones repeat, certain ones become more detailed.

I was really happy with it. I do think that I should have made it more into a narrative. As a narrative now it’s fairly poetic; it beats along with a certain kind of rhythm. I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t have made it more narrative. The thing is, if it was more straight-forward, then it would become a graphic novel. That doesn’t interest me that much. I guess the thing is, narrative kind of fascinates me, the function of narrative and the structure of it. It’s interesting, but I don’t care for it that much. As a painter, you always try to get away from narrative. You always try, especially as a painter who has done quite a bit of figurative painting. In fact, all my paintings are recognizable as something. People always ask you, ‘What’s the story behind this?’ and you try to disavow that, get away from trying to tell stories. I know it comes up all the time. People say storytelling is important. It’s a part of our culture, it’s a part of the way we transmit information. I’m absolutely not interested in storytelling. When I watch a movie, I consider the narrative a necessary evil.

So what is it you’re invested in?

I think I like the structure. I like the formality of it. I like the images. I can watch non-narrative films without any problem. I’m most happy with a film when I don’t know what’s going on. I just watched Planet Terror the other night. That’s a good one. You don’t know what’s going on for practically half that film. When they do finally tell you what’s going on, the reel goes missing, and all of a sudden the rib shack is on fire and everybody’s friends and everything’s been explained. I really like that. I think that’s great, and I think that film very much is about the experience of watching a film without really having to tell you a lot of story. They just use a lot of conventions, so you can follow it because you’re familiar with the conventions of the narrative, but you don’t really need that much of an explanation.

In terms of Burlesk, I think I deliberately wanted to stay away from narrative. Michael Turner was behind that project, because it was on his imprint at Arsenal Pulp Press. It was his idea to make it a novel. I was just going to make it a series of drawings. I think that to convey it as a novel and to have a certain kind of repetition in it did make it much more structurally sound than just a folio of drawings. The whole cover design was taken from a book by a guy named Walter Karig, and the book was called Zotz. It’s an illustrated story about a guy who can point his finger and say “Zotz,” and have an effect on things. The cover design was very good so I based my cover on it. The beginning of the book starts on the dust jacket like that. It makes the text something else, a little like the illegible catalogue. It becomes much more a part of the design, in an overt way that might be more noticed by people who don’t normally notice those kinds of things.

‘Untitled Flying Saucer Monochrome #3,’ 2006-7, oil on canvas, 48×72 inches

Also, Pyramid Power had a feature of cartoons in an early issue. For that, I’d done the same principle as in Burlesk, but I kept the cartoons as cartoons. They were more like collages, and they have captions on them. The captions are taken from a book called Breakthrough, recordings of dead voices. A guy named Dr. Konstantins Raudive in the 1960s did a series of experiments taking clean fresh tapes, putting them in a tape recorder in a sound-silent room, and turning them on. When you played them back, you’d hear very faint voices. It’s called …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

OBJECT: Car
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Riley Park – Little Mountain

Once weekly I bring you personified pieces of our city. Reaching into our neighbourhoods I collect images of all types of inanimate objects, then bring them to life!

CLICK TO VIEW THE ARCHIVE OF OUR “EYES ON VANCOUVER” SERIES:

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!)

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of clean, minimal compositions that feature strong lines and solid graphical elements. louis vandamme seems drawn to them too; although with a distinctly street-photography sensibility. The low sun in the sky this time of year contributes in the form of really long shadows, which it totally cool. Here is a totally Untitled photograph.

Gary

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience played at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver on Saturday 7 September 1968, just prior to the release of Electric Ladyland. His grandmother, Nora Hendrix, was in the audience, but ended up moving from the front to the back because it was too loud. “Well, I knew he had music in him,” she said in a later interview, “but I didn’t know he had that much music in him.”

In the video clip below, a young Terry David Mulligan interviews the band before the Coliseum show. Jimi briefly mentions his family connection to Vancouver and that he once attended Dawson Annex, an elementary school that used to be on Burrard Street.

Sources: Poster from Wolfgang’s Vault; video from CBC Archives via youtube

Shining the theatre light on the best of Vancouver’s comedic underground.

On November 26th, GIANTS Comedy and The Cultch are proud to present the second of six instalments of this first-of-its-kind project uniting the best of Vancouver’s comedy scene with the ambition and professionalism of the local theatre community. After a sold out premiere, GIANTS’ sophomore show features a mix of sketch, and stand-up culminating Vancouver’s first comedic RAP BATTLE where a dozen of our funniest comedians will twist rap battles with pro wrestling type characters to make one MASSIVELY entertaining experience that we at Vancouver is Awesome are proud to be media sponsors of. This show will sell out.

GIANTS is more than just a live show, it is a collaboration between some of Vancouver’s best comedic talents. The latest video offering created by Weekend Leisure, features the uber-talented Canadian Comedy Award nominee: Morgan Brayton

Morgan Brayton was the inspiration for Nicholas Cage’s classic films, National Treasure and National Treasure 2: More Treasure.  If you didn’t know that, you may recognise her from her hit shows Raccoonery and Girls Like Me which were both highly acclaimed and highly nominated.  If you’re even further under a rock than anticipated, you may know her from The Vancouver Comedy Festival, , or local stages like The Hero Show, Girls Girls Girls, and Paul Anthony’s Talent Time.  If by chance you cannot see, you may remember her voice from  CBC’s The Debaters.  I’m just saying, she’s the funniest person in my the room on a regular basis.

The November 26th GIANTS show also includes some of the golden boys and girls of the scene, many of whom have never shared the stage. Guests include: RAP BATTLE MC Taz VanRassel (The Sunday Service, Vancouver Theatresports), Ben McGinnis (CTV, Comedy Now), Pump Trolley (Chicago Sketch Fest, Music Waste), Alicia Tobin (City TV’s The List), as well as a slew of surprise Vancouver celebrity comedians battling one another in rhyming hip-hop parody.

GIANTS II is not to be missed.

Location: The Vancity Culture Lab 1895 Venables Street

Tickets: $10 Available at the door or in advance at www.giantscomedy.com

Follow GIANTS on Twitter @giantscomedy

Like GIANTS on Facebook

Find out more! www.giantscomedy.com

Vancouver is arguably the most beautiful and expensive city in the world to live in. For most, the goal is simply to live IN it. We all have to work, and work hard to keep up with Our Lady of VanCity, but there are a select few who know the score. Why not live in the world’s most liveable city and hold down one of the raddest jobs she has to offer? We all know somebody who goes to work smiling. What are these jobs and how do people get them? More importantly, are they as awesome as they sound… VOL.5 HIGHLIGHTS: 2010 Olympics, Rolling Stone Magazine & Gonzo Porn

Contributed

Award-winning travel writer and TV screenwriter, Rolling Stone contributeur and newsfeed humorist Ken Hegan was a given for this series. We first met through another writer friend, Dave Dormer (sorry Dave – you don’t get to travel for a living) and I was immediately intrigued by the Voice of Treason business card that was added to the top of my stack. A quick peek at his website revealed CTV, Discovery, W, The Comedy Network and CBC as a few of the television networks he’s contributed to. I don’t have a TV, so I can’t attest to his small screen skills, but his most recent gig as an MSN and National Post travel writer is a constant source of amusement (and jealousy) for his readers and has allowed his razor sharp sense of humor to shine. Effortlessly capturing the farcical nature of travel the way we’ve all experienced it, Hegan is one of the most entertaining writers I follow.

Hegan was also a writer on CTV’s Open Essay of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, a risky choice for the network, given he can apparently “kill people with a single glance” and has “tens and tens of fans.”

Contributed; centre: Dino Antonio

How did this writing thing happen?

When I was a teenager, my dream job was becoming a world-famous Rolling Stone journalist like Hunter S. Thompson. I loved his muscular writing style. At his best, he was lethally smart, sharp, and comedic. So I decided I really wanted to write comedic articles. I figured since I hadn’t gone to journalism school, I’d have to try five times as hard. That meant that I’d write a fresh fun article every couple of weeks. Then I’d polish it until it was so tight and funny, newspaper/magazine editors would have to say yes.

So I did it. I got up early or stayed late after work at my day job. For months and months, I kept writing fresh articles and faxing them to every newspaper in Vancouver and across Canada, like The Province, Sun, Globe and Mail, Vancouver magazine, and the Georgia Straight. I sent the same article everywhere. Soon the Sun started printing my stuff and the impact was immediate. My sarcastic style generated a lot of letters to the editor.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

It’s a new dog once a week! Click here to find out how to get your dog posted if you haven’t sent in your photos yet!

Today’s dog featured in Dogtown Vancouver is Sidney, Katie L’s pup. Here’s what she had to say about him…

NAME: Sidney. BREED: Black lab crossed with awesome and super handsome dog! HOOD: Fairview Slopes. FAVOURITE SNACK: If it was up to him he’d only eat muscle shells and seaweed…but this doesn’t go down so well. So his favourite snacks he can keep down are beef bones and peabutter (not peanut butter, which is the only thing he won’t eat… strange we know!) OTHER INFO: We adopted Sidney when he was 9 months old from the SPCA. We love him SO much for his kind spirit and loving nature. He loves people and his favourite thing in the world besides getting his tummy rubbed and eating muscle shells and seaweed is to wrestle with his dog friends! He’s the best! If you’re interested in adopting a pet, check out our Happy Tails feature. If you adopted your pet from the SPCA and would like to share your awesome story on Happy Tails, send an email to Rory.Blanchard@novusnow.ca.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>