This Week's Favourite Things! Monday November 2nd - Sunday November 8th, 2015

1.  This little pottery cup (approx 2" tall) by France Arruda.  It's so sweet, it says smile on one side

has a camera on the other















and is green inside.  

It totally makes me smile.  I picked it up at Dragonfire Pottery and Supplies  in Burnside while grabbing supplies - the shop has a nice selection of pottery by the instructors.  It is a pottery school as well, and will be having a sale of student and instructor work December 4/5.  France has her superawesome work at The Dart Gallery as well.

2. This TED talk by artist Alex Grey: Cosmic Creativity - How Art Evolves Consciousness (youtube video)

3.  This TED talk by Jim Kempner, a New York art dealer/gallery owner - The Madness of Art (youtube video).  The cool thing about this is that Jim and pals actually produced a series of short youtube videos called "The Madness of Art" poking fun at the fine art industry.  According to the youtube channel these are based on true stories.

4.   The Madness of Art episode (Season 2 Episode 11) featuring artist Charlie Hewitt - it reminded me of some of my own experiences at Art School in Regina.  As a classmate from drawing class said, he figured he could take a dump on a blank piece of paper and get a better grade than on the drawings he had worked on for dozens of hours.  For my final sculpture project I hot glued pieces of a wax eggo waffle I had made from a mold, on to a used pizza box, in the form of a happy face, and I think I got an A.  For another assignment in a 2D class I soaked various cooked pasta in ink and flung it at a piece of paper.  Anyhow this episode reminded me of all that and made me laugh.  The whole series is entertaining.

5.  This vimeo video interview of Charlie Hewitt.

6.  This free pdf ebook by photographer Richard Bernabe that I randomly found on twitter, of photos from Africa:  "Spirit of Africa".  It's very nice and includes details on camera settings, there's no cost or weird catch to downloading it, just a free trip to Africa via photos.

7.   This vimeo video about Jane Herold, super awesome potter in New York that has a studio in Cape Breton as well.  Her work is very 'slow' as in, the slow food movement.  She turns her pots on a kick wheel without the use of electricity, and fires her pots with wood.  Here is her website with more pics of her beautiful work.

8.  Canadian Real Estate Investment Trust (CREIT) for validating this story I wrote last year, The Story of the Monkeys Who Started a Real Estate Investment Trust, with their actions.  Our favourite sushi place in Halifax (Fresh Happy Healthy Sushi on Lacewood, it has good all you can eat deals) is getting hoofed out of their restaurant, after doing major renos at their own expense and being good tenants for 5 years, to make room for a bigger business that needs more space.  Best part is they've been told the renos they did are part of the building and cannot legally be removed as they're now part of the building.  They found another spot to move to, in the Larry Uteck area by the new Sobeys, but still, that just sucks for their business and I think highlights the damage that REITs can do to the economy - in the search of more profit for investors, which ironically probably includes pension funds, more small businesses get screwed over.   I'm not sure if there's any solution for this.  But my hunch is that, left unchecked, this could inspire more people to move to smaller towns where they can afford to own their buildings outright, letting REITs turn larger urban centers into something resembling these Chinese Ghost cities.