By Rod Mickleburgh One of the early things I did after ending my daily journalism career of 119 years, besides endless Googling of past Montreal Expo games, was take in the Vancouver public hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in September, 2013. The experience was overwhelming. It’s one thing to read about the unspeakable […]
Colville: Canada’s other great small town chronicler
By Rod Mickleburgh Like many, I knew the works of Alex Colville almost entirely from the ubiquitous reproductions of his most well-known paintings. The blonde woman on the PEI ferry staring out with her powerful binoculars at who-knows-what. The haunting image of a large horse galloping down the tracks towards an approaching train, its searchlight […]
Coupland all gummed up
By Rachelle Stein-Wotten Apply gum at your own risk. I pull my stick of chewed-up Stride Double Mint gum out of my mouth, and slowly, steadily press it into Douglas Coupland’s cerebellum. We suggest you wash your hands immediately after touching this sculpture. I dutifully heed the advice of the Vancouver Art Gallery and apply […]
Bad first compression
A BoB Short When residents of a Northwest Saskatoon neighbourhood heard their street was slated to receive its own piece of public art, many were ecstatic. But when the big reveal finally came last November, the piece was greeted with overwhelming confusion. The result of the city’s $4300 investment, titled Found Compressions One and Two, […]
Every day is culture day
By Rachelle Stein-Wotten This weekend a lot of Canadians rejoiced in the cultural mecca that is this nation by participating in some 7,000 free activities in 850 communities. Creatively named Culture Days, the annual event celebrates, well, culture in its many forms – artistic, ethnic, regional, social – with events across the country. “Creative people” […]
Artists for the rainforest — and reality
By Rachelle Stein-Wotten Art is at the forefront of a raging energy debate in Canada. Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline – you know, the one that would travel 1,000 kilometres from Alberta to British Columbia’s coast, delivering oil to be pumped into tankers taller than monuments, destination: Asia — has created a small boom in art-not-just-for-art’s […]
Postmedia: The way the words end
By Zoe Grams Many arts supporters are just regaining their breath after the cuts, no cuts, debacle around the Literary Press Group of Canada, which sent waves of disbelief and frustration across the publishing community. But it’s not time to celebrate yet; now the Postmedia Network has announced a slew of job cuts at Canada’s […]
Fort McMurray’s Keyano College sends arts to tailings pond
By Frank Moher The sacking of four instructors in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Keyano College in Fort McMurray is creating an uproar well beyond the city better known for its resource extraction talents. Artists, of course, are well aware that their masters — whether they be cabinet ministers or academic administrators — […]
Rescued from the scrapheap
THE LIFE & ART OF FRANK MOLNAR, JACK HARDMAN, LEROY JENSEN By Eve Lazarus, Claudia Cornwall, Wendy Newbold Patterson Mother Tongue Publishing 146 pp., $34.95 Review by Brian Brennan Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman, and LeRoy Jensen were three dedicated and unfashionably tradition-based Vancouver artists of the 1960s who today are largely forgotten. Because they operated […]
Cultural games
By Alison@Creekside The City of Vancouver ordered the removal of this mural from the public artspace outside the Downtown Eastside’s The Crying Room gallery on the grounds it is “graffiti.” Artist Jesse Corcoran works at a homeless shelter: “The oppressive nature of the Games is what I wanted to capture and how the majority is […]
