Ok. So since the last time I wrote, emblazoned with this fabulous strength from my schizophrenic angel’s advice, I have been back home for exactly a month and that feeling is well, not really there anymore. How time flies! With no time for anything, while each day seems agonizingly long. This is the subjective pace of my adult life. I apologize for a few weeks of artpost MIA but as I said the weeks have flown and I hardly even knew as I have been caught up mind body and spirit with teaching printmaking and sculpture to 70 children a day at Cedar Ridge Creative Centre, which is basically my second home in Scarbs. My brain lies somewhere within the realm of 8-13 year old fixations such as clapping games, Alice in Wonderland and Justin Bieber. I’ll admit I’ve been pretty frazzled with adjusting to Scarborough life as I do every time, from moving back in with the lovely fam and being HOME, setting up the show at INDEXG, taking it down, trying to get organized, home renovation, a million chores etc. Not so exciting but extremely busy, bitchy and exhausted. Basically, I am on a really different angle these days.
But you know what, last week for the parent’s night installation I created a 10 foot painting of Paul the psychic octopus from the FIFA world cup, attached to painted tubes where balls rolled down onto a rotating carnie wheel that answered questions with ‘YES’, ‘NO’, or ‘maybe’. I was pretty proud of that: my first fortune telling, motorized art made with the help of teenage volunteers, cool! At the end of this 12 hour day I nervously asked Paul whether I would someday be able to worry only of art and not pay, and Paul answered YES. Bre, my workmate, gave me a congratulatory high five of relief.
On another good note, I have also been working (with some of the kids) on a group project with my Canadian art collective the YPF, of which we will be presenting our yearly art installation at Osheaga music festival in Montreal. I participate whenever I am in Canada and I’m so psyched about going back for a weekend reunion with all my friends there alongside a free pass for the two days. I’m excited to see Sonic Youth, but almost more excited to see Snoop Dogg…
In terms of art I have seen only a tiny bit since I’ve been back in Toronto. I did check out ‘The Empire of Dreams: Phenomenology of the Built Environment’ at MOCCA, which unfortunately revealed no such thing to me (a title like that kind of sets up the sucker punch for disappointment doesn’t it…) All the work were one liners… I mean I think An Te Liu’s air conditioner’s grouped to suggest a cloud was ok, and I did like the idea of the video work by Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak but was bored by it to stay too long (I know that’s bad of me to say, but I swear I often love slow video art!). The car with the video projection by David Han reminded me too much of the hearse by the Bruce High Quality Foundation that I also didn’t like in the Whitney Biennale, so my opinion was already biased for that one. And the little piece based ‘after Asher and Huyghe’ of a few layers of paint scraped off the gallery wall, turned aesthetic, was a lame derivative yawn.
Ola kala (aka OK) I promise to sound more optimistic about contemporary art in the coming weeks... It's just that at this point I am having way more faith in the creativity of 8-13 year olds!
