This Week's Favourite Things! Monday November 9th - Sunday November 15th, 2015

1.  Helen Opie's new paintings.  Helen painted 4 small paintings: 3 pears and an orange, for the Christmas show at Going Coastal Fine Art and Furnishings in Chester.  The pear on the red background is my favourite.  

Helen had stopped in on the way to Chester to give the edges another coat of gold paint, and sign them, so I took a pic of them on our kitchen table.  This photo isn't the best and doesn't capture the juiciness of the paint, but the paintings are lovely and you can tell Helen has been painting for decades and enjoys it very much.  They're $95 each.  Going Coastal also has a few of her landscapes, and the gallery owners make really nice furniture which are used as display pieces throughout their space.

Here's a pic of Helen signing her paintings.  She's in her early 80's - I think at that point one's age becomes something to brag about - and is still super active.  Helen just bought a nifty camper van for road trips now that her puddle duck sailboat she built is finished.  Inspiring!

While Helen was doing this we had a great art chat during which I mentioned I feel a real stubbornness about not wanting to use molds eventhough some of my sculptures may look similar when I work in series.  She pointed out that photos of art, and cast objects may be more affordable for customers and quicker to produce, but 'lack the hand of the maker' so may not have the same energy.  Good food for thought, and probably why she's made black and white cards in the past that she then coloured by hand. 

 2.  This new Lunenburg winter scene by Evgenia Makogon, available as cards (great for Christmas!) at Jenny Jib in Lunenburg.   After dropping off Helen's paintings we visited the shop, which is looking mighty fine and is always cozily displayed with lots to see, from fine art to home decor to body care and jewelry.   The original painting is also available of course, pictured below.  My pics of her work are a little blurry though, and once again don't capture the liveliness of the paint.  Best to go see the real thing!

Here's another shot with more of Evgenia's paintings, except the top middle boat, though she has others in the shop   The larger boat painting is the Eastern Star and the glare in the photo is from varnish.  The lamp and shelving in the photo give a little taste of how homelike the layout of the store is.

Since I published this post, Evgenia did her own really nice blog post about Lunenburg and her latest pieces there, her pics are much better!


3.  Strolling.  Lunenburg is a strollable town I've noticed, after strolling around after the most excellent Thursday morning Farmer's Market there.  It's nice!

4.  Gali's Healthy Kitchen.  Gali, Evgenia's mom, makes and sells really great raw vegan, glutenfree food at the Halifax Seaport Market on Saturdays.  They brought down an order for me on Thursday when we met up: homemade sauerkraut (fermented foods are full of probiotics), seed crackers full of turmeric and kale, and seed cookies and bars.  

Gali uses top end organic ingredients that she orders in by mail, and soaks all the nuts and seeds to remove the enzyme inhibitors.  She has been studying nutrition for years, really cares about her customers health, and has lots of great information for anyone looking to clean up their diet.  Her new bars with raw pistachios and goji berries are seriously delicious.  

5.  Lexicon Books.  This is a cool new Independent bookshop in Lunenburg that opened this year where the Spotted Frog Folk Art gallery was - that owner retired.  It's really nice with a great assortment of books in a variety of subjects, the children's books section looks especially fun.  The shop hosts a book club and events such as readings.

6.  Bob Dylan on the Mystery of Creativity by David McDonald.  This is a very short youtube video, narrated by Bob Dylan, on the writing of the song 'Stardust' by Hoagy Carmichael.

7.  More about aliens.   This past week while working on more ornaments I listened to a bunch of video blogs on this youtube channel: Rich2150x.  He swears a lot and a lot of people will pass this all of this off as crazy, and maybe it is, but he says some stuff that explains a few experiences I had decades ago, so, hey.  Here are a couple of favourites:
Entities.  How to detect and remove
How to hack your life, your mind, and the game of life

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.

Now Available at Jenny Jib, November 5th 2015

Here are pics of work from this latest firing that I dropped off at Jenny Jib in Lunenburg yesterday.

First up is the American Thanksgiving Turkey.   

This is the most ambitious clay piece I've ever made, it took quite awhile to do and I'm surprised it didn't crack!  Like all my functional pieces it is cone 6 stoneware and foodsafe - though I wouldn't chance putting this particular piece in a dishwasher or microwave.

The back comes off such that it can be used as two serving vessels and/or maybe a good hiding place for something precious:  

Here is its backside:

 

Next up some Whaleware - completely inspired by Lunenburg and Jenny's shop.  Four new mugs:

A bowl with 2 relief carved humpack whales and two peace signs, really happy with how this turned out:

And a sperm whale plate that is wired to hang on the wall when not in use.   

 


Here's a big moose bowl:

And a few figurines.  First a seagull and two walruses:

Next is a shepherd dog:

A sheep for the dog to herd:

And a skulk of foxes scheming to heist the sheep from the shepherd dog:

A Polar bear, who could probably eat all the other figurines, and a baby bear:

I also dropped off a few other figurines that were at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia shop, which is temporarily shut while Pavia opens a new cafe (yum!) where the shop was, and the shop moves across the hall.

Hunting season buddies: a buffalo, bighorn sheep and white tailed deer stag

Earthenware birds!  A puffin, kingfisher and mallard  

And a few more figurines, 2 sheep a bear and a squirrel.

  
Along with these pieces I dropped off 33 new ornaments from this latest firing.  Out of respect and gratitude for all veterans I'll wait until later to post ornament pics - Jenny Jib honours Remembrance Day and doesn't start decorating for the holidays until later in the month.  

Now Available at The Dart Gallery, November 5th 2015

Here are pics of some new work I dropped off at The Dart Gallery in Dartmouth, this past Tuesday November 3rd.  

The gallery just won Gold for its second year in a row, in The Coast's Best of Halifax awards.  Congratulations Jane!

Here are the new pieces from this most recent firing, starting with four bowls.  Everything in this post is cone 6 stoneware:

Skunk bowl! side view

Skunk bowl, top view

Rabbit bowl, side view

Rabbit bowl, top view.  In this firing I've started playing with using layered studio glaze effects on functional pieces and figurines. 

Second rabbit bowl, front view

Second Rabbit bowl, side view

Fox bowl

And some new figurines:

A "skulk" of foxes!

Duck

Elephant

Frog

Horse - again, as with the black rabbit bowl, there is a layered glaze effect

Skunk

Cow

Wolf

Pileated Woodpecker

Barn Owl

Suffolk Sheep

Puffin

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Shop is shut temporarily as they're relocating across the hall to make room for the Pavia Gallery - Espresso Bar & Cafe to open a tasty cafe!  The following are a few pieces from previous firings that were at the shop, and are now at Dart:

Fox Mug

Rabbit Bowl

Suffolk Sheep Bowl

Rabbit figurine

Bunny figurine

Buffalo

Two more standing fox figurines  - these are a little larger

Crow Cup

As of Tuesday The Dart Gallery is also now selling copies of my self-published rhyming storybook:  "What If Michelangelo Was A Telemarketer", $10 each.

I also dropped off a bunch of ornaments, but out of respect and gratitude for all veterans I'll post those pics later.  The Dart Gallery honours Remembrance Day and doesn't start getting geared up for the holidays until later in the month.  

This Week's Favourite Things! Monday October 26th - Sunday November 1st 2015

The firing went (mostly) really well!  Hooray!  New work will be going to Dart Gallery on Tuesday and Jenny Jib on Wednesday, pics to follow.

1. Walt Disney The Skeleton Dance.  1929. Silly Symphony (youtube video).

2.   The Biggest Scam In the History Of Mankind: Hidden Secrets of Money 4 by Mike Maloney.
Youtube video that does a good job of explaining the problem with our banking system.

3.  Fogo Island Arts call for applications for 2016/2017 residencies, deadline Nov 26! Looks like a cool opportunity 

4.  More about aliens, still my favourite 'research topic' since last week. There are a lot of interesting ideas on youtube such as that the earth is some sort of computer game, set up by black cubes in Saturns rings, and the moon is some sort of artificial antennae thing.

Some also theorize that the moon is some sort of soul harvesting plant and evil aliens have duped humans into believing in the cycle of reincarnation in order to keep harvesting our etheric energy.  Meaning the earth is actually a 'reptilian alien soul farm', turning people into batteries like the premise in The Matrix.  Interesting.  I'm of the opinion that life is whatever you think it is, and while I buy into the whole 'computer game' analogy for the earth I'd prefer to think it's something we're all doing for fun, like Houdini making increasingly complex puzzles to escape from.  It could well be that to make our puzzle extra interesting, it is populated by entities that enjoy manipulating humans as though they're playing some sort of galactic foosball game.
  
This is interesting:  Synopsis of the Alien Master Plan from montalk.net
And so is Episode 2 of Veils Afire - Alien Influence  especially the part about how these higher dimensional entities can implant bits of programming into people that cause them to self destruct - this could explain all sorts of addictions, from shopping to unhealthy foods.

5.  The quote by 32nd US president Franklin D. Roosevelt: "There's Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself", which was made in his inauguration speech March 4th, 1933 as he took office to drag the US out of the Great Depression. Makes a lot of sense from a law of attraction point of view. 

6.  Alan Watts - Don't Try.  youtube video