Nice... no, not unnaughty

Everything it needs to be....

word of the day

mon·i·ker
   /ˈmɒnɪkər/ Show Spelled[mon-i-ker]
–noun Slang .
a person's name, especially a nickname or alias.

Winnipeg

-Marcel Dzama


One of Canada’s more fascinating cultural features is the spectacular international success of the Vancouver art scene. But that’s old news. More surprising is Canada’s No. 2 spot. It belongs neither to Toronto nor Montreal, but to Winnipeg. These days, when foreign art lovers talk about Canadian art, they generally mean western Canadian art.

The success of the Winnipeg scene is hard to explain because it’s exceptional in so many ways. For example, as a rule, the biggest cities harbour the liveliest vanguard art communities: New York, London, Paris, Berlin…So what’s the deal with Winnipeg?

The capital of Manitoba is known for being rough around the edges and yet, art-wise, you couldn’t call it disadvantaged. For starters, the University of Manitoba runs a decent school of art (est.1913); then there’s the Winnipeg Art Gallery, a centenary art museum now new and improved; and Plug In, a one-time artist-run centre now pushing 40, just morphed into an Institute of Contemporary Art with fancy new digs. There’s also Border Crossings, a classy art magazine that keeps a sharp eye on the home front.

If you’re into the hard-core cutting edge, though, look away. Artists here don’t go in for newfangled media much, let alone brainiac “out there” art. They like handmade representations of people, places and things. Like the Inuit art for which the WAG is famous, the local non-Inuit artists are busy describing their world simply and plainly. At least on the surface.

Winnipeg swims against the current in another respect as well. The character unique to art scenes has been evaporating for decades, scorched by the cult of originality. These days, artists are largely on their own. Not so Winnipeg; its artists demonstrate that you don’t need to sacrifice your individuality for the sake of genius loci. Aside from figuration, this “personality of place” seems to be based on humour.

Marcel Dzama is the best known of the Winnipeg-bred art stars. When I saw his recent show in New York, it was packed with people concentrating hard. There were few smiles for so darkly funny an exhibition with its depressive pull-toys and Aztec-like scrolls of modern slaughter. Recently, Dzama upped the ante with dioramas in porcelain and some scratchy satirical dance films.

Another export, Jon Pylypchuk, manages to fashion beauty out of the inane. A typical painting is an abstract mess that looks like the day after the Big Bang. Lost in the swells of genesis will be one of his goggled-eyed munchkins with collaged words coming out of its face, fortune cookies that feel clipped from the pages of Nietzsche. They make me dizzy (in a good way).

Although Karel Funk doesn’t go in for weird humour, he certainly shares the local penchant for pictures of people. Like a 15th-century Flemish hyperrealist, he makes close-up portraits of his buddies that take months to paint. The New York Times called his work “spiritual,” by which they also meant his technique: he paints hair one at a time. In the newer work, the sitter disappears completely behind obsessively rendered parkas. In this day and age, it’s comforting to see art defending privacy.

Winnipeg’s new kid on the international block, Sarah Anne Johnson, marries snapshots with modelling clay figurines. In a recent work, she accompanied a group of conservationists to the Galapagos Islands to eradicate the non-native species. Interspersed among her photos of the expedition are shots of plasticine caricatures of the same group, only this time the artist mostly makes it up. Did someone really snuggle up to a sea lion after an underwater pas-de-deux?

There are plenty more artists who live near The Forks worth knowing about, and an exciting new generation is emerging.This summer, a major French contemporary art centre, La Maison Rouge in Paris, is mounting My Winnipeg, a show that takes a broader look at this hot town. Organizers borrowed the title from a mo vie by Guy Maddin, yet another local artist with an international fan base. Move over, Vancouver!

~by Marc Mayer on Wednesday, April 27, 2011 10:40am

outdoor music...

I'm going to put "go to more outdoor music festivals" on my list of things to accomplish in 2012...

Why not start with the hollywood grand daddy of them all?

COACHELLA

Any one interested?

Food Fight

Organized food fights need to happen more....


Scratch that, food fights in general need to happen more.


winning

Second Base

Thank goodness for:

a) Chipper Jones 1502 RBI home run (without which the camera spanning to this area of the diamond would not be possible).

b) a PVR that I could rewind to make sure I saw correctly, then pause to capture to share

c) other people... I would love to know what was running through their heads...

Kevin Bacon

It looks like Ryan Golsing's abs just got one degree closer to Kevin Bacon...



I postface this post by noting this movie is a guilty pleasure not my movie genre of choice.

Word of the Day: COMMAND

com·mand (k-mnd)
v. com·mand·ed, com·mand·ing, com·mands
v.tr.
1. To direct with authority; give orders to.
2. To have control or authority over; rule: a general who commands an army.
3. To have at one's disposal: a person who commands seven languages.
4. To deserve and receive as due; exact: The troops' bravery commanded respect.
5.
a. To exercise dominating, authoritative influence over: "He commands any room he enters" (Stephen Schiff).
b. To dominate by physical position; overlook: a mountain commanding the valley below.
v.intr.
1. To give orders.
2. To exercise authority or control as or as if one is a commander.
n.
1. The act of commanding.
2. An order given with authority.
3. Computer Science A signal that initiates an operation defined by an instruction.
4.
a. The authority to command: an admiral in command.
b. Possession and exercise of the authority to command: command of the seas.
5. Ability to control or use; mastery: command of four languages.
6. Dominance by location; extent of view.
7.
a. The jurisdiction of a commander.
b. A military unit, post, district, or region under the control of one officer.
c. A unit of the U.S. Air Force that is larger than an air force.
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or constituting a command: command headquarters; a command decision.
2. Done or performed in response to a command: a command performance.


Get out there and command something people!

April, the National Grilled Cheese Month

A month dedicated to my favourite sandwich... I'm in!

A whole event dedicated to the sandwich? AMAZING!!! I know where I'll be next year.

Grilled Cheese Invitational

I love college

I think I may have missed out on something when I was in college.

Delft- Hollywood Style

Delft just made the list for May... to celebrate I made my loving husband (poor soul) sit through all 100 minutes of the movie adaptation of one of the greatest portraits... At least I feel better prepared (culturally speaking) to walk the canal streets...

Patriotism

I am so proud to be Canadian....

TIME to get reading...

ALL TIME 100 Novels


A - B

* The Adventures of Augie March (1953), by Saul Bellow
* All the King's Men (1946), by Robert Penn Warren
* American Pastoral (1997), by Philip Roth
* An American Tragedy (1925), by Theodore Dreiser
* Animal Farm (1946), by George Orwell
* Appointment in Samarra (1934), by John O'Hara
* Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (1970), by Judy Blume
* The Assistant (1957), by Bernard Malamud
* At Swim-Two-Birds (1938), by Flann O'Brien
* Atonement (2002), by Ian McEwan
* Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison
* The Berlin Stories (1946), by Christopher Isherwood
* The Big Sleep (1939), by Raymond Chandler
* The Blind Assassin (2000), by Margaret Atwood
* Blood Meridian (1986), by Cormac McCarthy
* Brideshead Revisited (1946), by Evelyn Waugh
* The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), by Thornton Wilder

C - D

* Call It Sleep (1935), by Henry Roth
* Catch-22 (1961), by Joseph Heller
* The Catcher in the Rye (1951), by J.D. Salinger
* A Clockwork Orange (1963), by Anthony Burgess
* The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), by William Styron
* The Corrections (2001), by Jonathan Franzen
* The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), by Thomas Pynchon
* A Dance to the Music of Time (1951), by Anthony Powell
* The Day of the Locust (1939), by Nathanael West
* Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), by Willa Cather
* A Death in the Family (1958), by James Agee
* The Death of the Heart (1958), by Elizabeth Bowen
* Deliverance (1970), by James Dickey
* Dog Soldiers (1974), by Robert Stone

F - G

* Falconer (1977), by John Cheever
* The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), by John Fowles
* The Golden Notebook (1962), by Doris Lessing
* Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), by James Baldwin
* Gone With the Wind (1936), by Margaret Mitchell
* The Grapes of Wrath (1939), by John Steinbeck
* Gravity's Rainbow (1973), by Thomas Pynchon
* The Great Gatsby (1925), by F. Scott Fitzgerald

H - I

* A Handful of Dust (1934), by Evelyn Waugh
* The Heart is A Lonely Hunter (1940), by Carson McCullers
* The Heart of the Matter (1948), by Graham Greene
* Herzog (1964), by Saul Bellow
* Housekeeping (1981), by Marilynne Robinson
* A House for Mr. Biswas (1962), by V.S. Naipaul
* I, Claudius (1934), by Robert Graves
* Infinite Jest (1996), by David Foster Wallace
* Invisible Man (1952), by Ralph Ellison

L - N

* Light in August (1932), by William Faulkner
* The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), by C.S. Lewis
* Lolita (1955), by Vladimir Nabokov
* Lord of the Flies (1955), by William Golding
* The Lord of the Rings (1954), by J.R.R. Tolkien
* Loving (1945), by Henry Green
* Lucky Jim (1954), by Kingsley Amis
* The Man Who Loved Children (1940), by Christina Stead
* Midnight's Children (1981), by Salman Rushdie
* Money (1984), by Martin Amis
* The Moviegoer (1961), by Walker Percy
* Mrs. Dalloway (1925), by Virginia Woolf
* Naked Lunch (1959), by William Burroughs
* Native Son (1940), by Richard Wright
* Neuromancer (1984), by William Gibson
* Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro
* 1984 (1948), by George Orwell

O - R

* On the Road (1957), by Jack Kerouac
* One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), by Ken Kesey
* The Painted Bird (1965), by Jerzy Kosinski
* Pale Fire (1962), by Vladimir Nabokov
* A Passage to India (1924), by E.M. Forster
* Play It As It Lays (1970), by Joan Didion
* Portnoy's Complaint (1969), by Philip Roth
* Possession (1990), by A.S. Byatt
* The Power and the Glory (1939), by Graham Greene
* The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), by Muriel Spark
* Rabbit, Run (1960), by John Updike
* Ragtime (1975), by E.L. Doctorow
* The Recognitions (1955), by William Gaddis
* Red Harvest (1929), by Dashiell Hammett
* Revolutionary Road (1961), by Richard Yates

S - T

* The Sheltering Sky (1949), by Paul Bowles
* Slaughterhouse Five (1969), by Kurt Vonnegut
* Snow Crash (1992), by Neal Stephenson
* The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), by John Barth
* The Sound and the Fury (1929), by William Faulkner
* The Sportswriter (1986), by Richard Ford
* The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1964), by John le Carre
* The Sun Also Rises (1926), by Ernest Hemingway
* Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), by Zora Neale Hurston
* Things Fall Apart (1959), by Chinua Achebe
* To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee
* To the Lighthouse (1927), by Virginia Woolf
* Tropic of Cancer (1934), by Henry Miller

U - W

* Ubik (1969), by Philip K. Dick
* Under the Net (1954), by Iris Murdoch
* Under the Volcano (1947), by Malcolm Lowry
* Watchmen (1986), by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
* White Noise (1985), by Don DeLillo
* White Teeth (2000), by Zadie Smith
* Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), by Jean Rhys


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1951793,00.html#ixzz1IVMrGhN2

Winnipeg LOVE hate

Winnipeg Love Hate: photography and my favourite city become one

Japan

CNN News Update



Red Cross

tulip excited

mega-quote

Just as the rainbow was God's promise to Noah that the floods will cease, Shrek- The Final Chapter was Mike Myers' personal promise to the world that Shrek movies will cease.

quote of the moment

"Across North Africa and the Arab world, people are rising up against decades of authoritarian rule. This is great news for everyone who cherishes freedom, democracy and the sight of Anderson Cooper getting punched in the head."

~ Scott Feschuk

looking down at landmarks

It is an eerie, and somewhat terrifying feeling to know that where you work looks down on a landmark...

word of the moment...

turpitude


meaning baseness or depravity


a corrupt or depraved or degenerate act or practice; "the various turpitudes of modern society"

in 2 months...

No fun anymore

Just to ruin everyone's favourite song to massacre the lyrics to, here are the actual lyrics to the chorus of "Breakfast At Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something:

And I said what about "Breakfast at Tiffany's?
She said, "I think I remember the film,
And as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it."
And I said, "Well, that's the one thing we've got."

Parkour

Parkour:
Definition according to wikipedia: Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK) is a utilitarian discipline based upon the successful, swift and energy-efficient traversing of one's surrounding environment via the practical application of techniques, based around the concept of self-preservation and the ability to help others.[1] It is a non-competitive, physical discipline of French origin in which participants run along a route, attempting to negotiate obstacles in the most efficient way possible, using only their bodies. Skills such as jumping, climbing, vaulting, rolling, swinging and wall scaling are employed. Parkour can be practiced anywhere, but areas dense with obstacles are preferable, and it is most commonly practiced in urban areas. The usage and employment of flips into the named route does not constitute parkour.


What's cooler than that?

England has a Parkour School!!! Parkour Generations... I am adding taking a class to my "things to do" on my next England trip.

Macleans even featured them in their Feb 9/2011 edition...

Parkour: the cure for obesity and boredom.

Good to Know!

The Difference between United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England.

Courtesy of my Grandma!

Setting the Mood

Golden