This Week's Favourite Things! Monday March 23rd - Sunday March 29th 2015

1.  There's a new website for Annapolis Royal Artists put together by photographer Dan Froese:  ArtistsOfAnnapolis.ca   Bravo to Dan for taking this on to promote all the arts in the region, he did the photos of the artists which are just excellent.  My painter friend Helen Opie forwarded me the link.  Here is Helen's page on the site.  I think she looks vivacious!  Helen is in the process of getting her website updated to show off her awesome paintings, as at this point in time, she represents herself.

2.  Helen Opie's lovely paintings.  Helen traded with me back in 2010 for this painting of Young's Mountain Road which I absolutely love. It hangs in our bedroom so I get to look at it every morning.  It's one she did with a palette knife and is full of great energy:

And this is the other painting I have by Helen: Bear River Outflow which hangs in our living room.  I love it too!

I love the frame colours which Helen chose to compliment her work and painted on her quality, locally made wooden frames. 

Like other artists and curators I've spoken to, I share the opinion that not all art looks good in a black frame.  Frame selection is an artistic choice and part of the piece, such that it would be an affront to one's creative freedom to have to adhere to any sort of edict mandating the use of black frames in a gallery setting.   

Moreover, mandating that works must be presented in black frames puts a financial burden on emerging artists, especially where there are other methods for displaying works on paper, such as earth magnets and print bins. 

I have to agree with Helen that for the most part, her work does not look as good in black frames.  I realized this after I looked up this older blog post from 2012 I did in order to confirm that it is indeed tomato seed planting time.  I forgot this post has pics of a bunch of Helen's pieces when she displayed them on the side of her house!

3. Society 6 I just found out about this in the past week and think it's a neat idea.  Why not put one's art on shower curtains, clothing, high quality art prints, throw pillows, etc, people are buying this stuff anyhow from various stores.  

It appears that this site is run by creative types with careful selection of quality products.  Eg, the clothing is American Apparel.  Good for them!  Artists don't make much per sold item, but then they also don't have to do much other than upload pics of suitable quality.  Perhaps it could also be a way to order one's own products to resell.

4.  New research topic: demonology including the "Jezebel Spirit".  I listen to a lot of random stuff on youtube while making stuff, and someone in a video about how to deal with narcissists mentioned that narcissism is caused by the Jezebel Spirit.  Interesting! Never heard of this before or realized there are different 'spirits' that correspond with different behaviours.  Most of the videos are rather preachy but here's one of the better videos I found about the topic: What is the Jezebel Spirit.  

I also listened to this interview with a demonologist which made me wonder if these different symptoms of demonic possession could possibly be explained by parasites.  My hypothesis is that if higher dimensions do exist, with things like angels and demons, then maybe demons manifest in humans via parasites.   Eg, some of the symptoms of demonic possession mentioned in the interview (like bruising) are also symptoms of parasitic infestation.   Hmmm.

5.   The movie Fallen was mentioned in something I listened about demons, so I watched it.  It was pretty good.

6.  On the topic of evil, I found   This interview with the author of "Who Financed Hitler?". to be rather interesting.

7.  Jamie Johnson's 2 documentaries, 'Born Rich' and 'The One Percent' which talk about the lives of rich families in America.  Interesting subject.  These films got me thinking about the velocity of money and what impact these vast pools of wealth might be having on the world's economy: maybe these dollars are invested in big corporations with profits getting funneled up to executives and shareholders, thus exacerbating the problem.  Maybe someone could come up with a big corporation that specializes in providing affordable housing and affordable spaces for small businesses, especially small businesses that promote the sale of locally produced products, in order to siphon some of the money from the one percent back to down to the 99 percent in a fun, businesslike way that doesn't rely on government handouts while making the planet an healthier place for everyone to be.

8.  This Chronicle Herald article about 2 local families that suffered the effects of fraud .  It is an unfortunate story but a good reminder that lying to people to get resources from them is a crime.  I'm glad this story was published as it raises awareness of this issue. I like that the authorities involved have been empathic about how how traumatic being the victim of fraud is.  As well as being bilked out of funds and suffering those consequences, there would be grief over lost time and opportunities.  I imagine that these folks would also have bad feelings from realizing they had been suckered, especially where they were clearly kind-hearted and thought they were doing something good at the time.