R for rotting reliability

Your boss would never fire you, because you’ve never been late a day in your life. In high school, you went to parties with one other person in the room, because the invitation said 7pm. You were born the second the doctor expected you. If you were a plant, you would flower before the groundhog woke up in February.

If my life were you, I would have lost my virginity at sixteen, my mother and father would have been watching me en pointe in my tutu; applauding with the rest of the other mothers and fathers. my body would refuel in consistent streams of nutrients.

east-side culture crawl – guerilla strategy

The hacker stereotype seem to be web-savvy teenage boys, skipping the business suits, sitting behind a screen, discovering top-secret NASA information. Taking inspiration from their strategy, this weekend I was an unofficial fourth-floor artist at this year’s east-side culture crawl. Susan Setz of Wild Rose Tattoo Shirts and her neighbours were kind enough to allow me to take over their hallway walls at Parker Street Studios. Having limited time and money (actually, about fifteen minutes before the festival), I ran home and gathered a year’s worth of passable paintings. Unfortunately they were all on paper– unframed. So, I armed myself with duct tape. I also had no business cards, so I photocopied a strips of paper with my email address on it and plastered it on an illustration. Coming through the door, a surprise gaggle of family flew in, including my super crafty aunty Jean and her young daughter Emily. I employed them as they were drinking soup, to help me cut out all the business cards.

Parker Street Studios was packed to the rafters! I got to my own show about an hour after the festival started, and as people milled about, I duct-taped my paper watercolour paintings to the walls. The contact cards went quickly! I also ran into a lot of friends; mostly musicians and artists from the east-side. I had a few men tell me they blushed when they saw my paintings, and a drunken one got a little riled. Most viewers described them as erotic and incredibly smooth. I believe they meant the blending that watercolour tends to do.

I toured the other studios and I was very impressed with a designer-engineer’s kinetic and magnificently engineered chairs. I can’t even describe it. I brought all my friends to see his chairs and plastic-bottled chandeliers. I forget his name, but his website is www.min3d.com

A big thank you to my family and friends for all their support.

My father the sign-maker, my future nomadity

I watched my father sleep under the drafts-table when there were too many signs to finish. He bought our house, I went to piano lessons each week, and I ate well. But when my piano teacher suggested (with a smile), are you going to help take over your parent’s sign business when you’re older? Yeah, right! I cringed at the idea. It was their subject of argument, because as artists, their business never allowed time for them to paint.

As a full-time student and employee, there is not a slot in my schedule for living my dreams, but I manage to sneak in a glance into my future possibilities…

I aspire to be a nomad in five years, dressed in ringing coins and colourful scarves from India, Persian daf drum in hand, with my traveling community, drinking tea in Morroco. We pick up new friends who are also looking for the end of the earth. They will be drawing crowds in with their singing and dancing, and I will be dying patterns of ink onto their bodies. As much as I love earthly forms of art, I am an artist of the 21st century, and I will be equipped with modern technological tools for creativity.

Photography is the medium of choice when it comes to living in a highly social environment (especially when traveling), as I learned, living on residence at York University. I started out with a Canon Powershot A95– an affordable digital camera with a swivel LCD screen. It came in handy for composing self-portraits, weird angles and sneaking up on unsuspecting subjects. It takes one click, and the artist’s vision is captured. I have played with multiple film SLR cameras, and my handy Canon Powershot Pro1 since my first camera. I find that as a poorer student and artist, digital is the way to go, at least starting out, when you are still learning about colour and composition.

red stripes & hippie socks

Is singularity the simple formula to continuous art production?

When love or lust creeps in, I find that the meditative feeling that comes with painting is instantly forgotten, and thoughts of the love interest take over 90 percent of my daydreaming. Thankfully, the love interest usually admires my artwork. To draw them into the same love-eyed state, I fight to preserve continuous art creation, and all the while, love finds itself swimming in my illustrations every once in a while.