A Pretentious, Biased and Uneducated Art Review

To the confession: art makes me feel dumb. I don't really understand the different between a really good painting and a poor one. Like everyone else, I like some paintings, and I don't like others. I have some basic concept of technique and composition, but visual art usually makes me feel like I'm going to be exposed for my plebeian tastes.
Poetry used to make me feel the same way. I was nearly 30 before I finally felt that I "got" poetry. A startling confession for an English PhD candidate, I know. Give me a novel or a short story, a play or an essay and I'm a critical fish in water. But poetry... I'm still getting used to it.
And maybe it's because we're all so used to seeing photos, but my visual arts anxieties are somewhat lessened when I'm looking at a photograph. So I'm pretty excited that this month's Cargo & James exhibit is part of the Photopolis Festival. Until the end of October, we will be showing Scott Blackburn's Religious Views by a Non-Religious Person. And you know what? I look at his photos and I think, "I get it..."
And so right now, I'm going to offer a critical review of some of his paintings. Don't judge me if I get it wrong.
My favourite photo is of a Madonna statue from a church in Church Point, NS. The statue is remarkably lifelike, and her eyes are turned to heaven, only Scott has managed to capture her gaze from a downward perspective. As you look at the photo, you feel an uncomfortable sense of voyeurism--like you have somehow got between her gaze and God. In addition, the statue, and its gaze in particular, is uncannily lifelike--I continually forget that I'm looking at a photo of a statue. It's both beautiful and usettling.
Scoot has also taken a composite photo of a church that is falling into ruin; the amazing thing about this photo is that the images suggests iconic heaven-and-hell imagery: beams of sunlight falling through the ruined roof, and darkness showing through the broken floorboards.
Other images expose the often decaying pageantry of religious imagery: beautiful statues feature cracks and faults, and the guilding on haloes is tarnished and rusted.
Okay. I'll stop being so bloody pretentious now. You can trust me when I tell you that tese are beautiful and haunting pictures, or you can come to Cargo & james to see them yourself, and then tell me how utterly wrong I am about them.

Sure, They SAY 70% of Communication is Non-Verbal...

You can smell it in the air... stale beer and acne medication. That's how you know this year's crop of first-year students is in town, settling in for, y'know, school and... stuff. Today, all the street corners are dotted with Shinerama volunteers: 17-to-19-year-old standing at every intersection, collecting money for Cystic Fibrosis research. Some of them have rigged up boxes on sticks so that they don't have to step out into traffic: they just poke out the box, and drivers roll down their passenger windows and throw money in. Problem is, I'm a luddite withour power windows, and a pickup truck I can't reach across. So at every corner on my way into the city, I'm making this exaggerated rolling motion with my right arm, and hoping that they'll understand that the motion, coupled with my pained "I'm-sorry" grimace, means, "I don't have power windows, so I can't give you money right now, but I feel really, really guilty about it!" and not, "I'm a miser and think charity is for suckers!" Fianlly, finally, I'm headed down a quiet street and I see more Shinerama kids. I pull over, reach across the gigantuan cab of my truck, roll down the window, hand them all my change, and I explain my predicament and ask that they stick one of their Shinerama stickers to my passenger window, thinking that would help explain things on my way home. And it would have too, except that on the drive home, all the Shinerama kids were on the driver's side. Sigh.

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If this is a practical joke...

there will be some crying.

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I Want Your Brains! BraaAAAAAIIIIIIiinnsssss!

Here's the skinny: Trent had a brain child this spring, and now we're trying to get it working. Buckley's Music is donating a guitar to our store. We're going to hang it on the wall next to a donations box and invite customers to play it... for a small donation. Then we're going to match those donations, and the money will go to providing music lessons for kids whose families can't afford to pay for them on their own; the YWCA is going to help us select program participants. All is going well, except we can't think of a clever name for the program. "Music for Youth" is just so prosaic. Little help?

I'm Not Dead, I'm Just Boring

So this Blog is making me a little anxious lately. I keep trying to think of something to post. For a long time, I figured no one read this beasty any more, but then you all give me hell when I go unposted for a long time. Well, I hate to say it, but I got nothing. Life is pretty dull these days. I don't even have a good rant for you, on account of I'm pretty happy about most things. I worry about our teashop not making money yet (though we did have a really good day on Saturday, despite the crappy weather), and I am secretly (check that: was secretly--not so secret any more) terrified that everyone will find out what a big academic slacker I am, even though I've had a really productive couple of months. I'm working out a lot lately, and even though I haven't lost any weight, and I look pretty much exactly the same as I did in my winter hibernation months, I feel prettier. Much, much prettier. Yay, endorphins! Trent and I went to Montreal for a few days. It was fun, relaxing, and I'm still trying to figure out how to get the pics off my cell phone. I wish we had more time and more money to do all the house projects we plan on doing. I wish I could take a few weeks and visit Edmonton. I wish my dissertation would go faster. I wish I would get an acceptance letter in the mail from a publisher for a change. I wish everyone who's sent me a rejection letter would get really bad hives. I wish we had a maid--or at least a house elf. I wish I had another Harry Potter book to look forward to. I wish my hair was naturally red so I could stop dying it. I wish I could afford to go shopping much more often. But I'm glad the writer's strike is over, on account of I got my BSG back. And I'm glad Trent hooked up a computer to the TV so I can watch Buffy whenever I want. I'm glad I'm not teaching this summer so I have more time for school, the store, the garden and the gym. I'm glad we're finally making good friends in Halifax. I'm glad shirts are long and waists are Empire this summer. I'm glad it's almost summer! I'm glad to hear how well everyone I love is doing. And I'm glad you guys still actually want to hear what's going on in my life--even if it's boring. I love you and I miss you.

I'm on TV!

...but am I that prissy in real life?!

Halifax Living

It's Not Really Sexism if You're a Woman.

You know what I DON'T like? UFC. You know--cage fighting, mixed martial arts, ultimate fighting, call it what you will. Two 'roided-up guys with cauliflower ears grappling on the ground, trying to make each other pass out or tap out or whatever. And don't tell me I have to give it a chance before I decide. I gave it two chances--watched two PPV events. Both times, I felt mildly nauseated and very bored. I think it's a big masculinist display of brute force and it's dumb.
It's not that I'm against violence in sports. I think boxing is stupid (we all saw Rocky IV and itwas no surprise that Stallone--er, Rocky was brain damaged), but I do like hockey fights (in a hockey game, not just staged for the hell of it). Of course, I like hockey fights because they're funny. Guys with that much padding are NOT going to hurt each other. They might as well just have a pillow fight. (Or not, because my mom says that's a good way to lose an eye.) Okay, maybe I am a little against violence in sports.
I've discovered that I have an exception: women's mixed martial arts. My friend Tannaya (yes, green drinks Tannaya) is an Ultimate Fighter. And I think that is so cool that I want Cargo & James Halifax to sponsor her next fight! How awesome would that be? I mean, tea is healthy, and mixed martial arts is a sport and sports are healthy, right? Right?
Trent, of course, is mildly perturbed by what he sees as sexism on my part. After all, if I hate watching men kick the crap out of each other, that should go for women, too, right?
Wrong. Here's why: when men do stupid things like Ultimate Fighting, I'm pretty sure it's meant to be a display of masculine prowess: "look at what the male body can do!" Or "See? I'm a man. I'll prove it by kicking some other guy's ass and emasculating him in front of a huge crowd and some TV cameras." But when women do it, they're picking at the very masculinist posturing that's behind these macho displays. Suddenly, it's all, "look at what the human body can do!" Because women are meant to be excluded from these displays of physical prowess. Or we're just supposed to watch and be impressed by them or something. Kicking some other woman's ass is an act of feminism, see?
Or maybe I'm just justifying because I think Tannaya is so cool and I want to go and watch her kick some other woman's ass.

I Oopsied.

Once again, Becca is reminded that Blogs are a public forum. A newspaper reporter found my Blog the other day and wanted to report on the trials and tribulations of opening a teashop in Halifax. Perhaps I should take this moment to clarify that this Blog is intended to form a personal conversation between me and my family and friends, and that I would really, really prefer that my comments not be republished in any other forum. However, I don't like the idea of going all secret and making my Blog by-invitation-only. I guess I just need the occasional reminder that ANYONE can find me here if they look long enough.

So... teashop is open and going well. I've posed for newspaper photos twice this week and given three interviews. The interviews I enjoy, the photos not so much. The teashop is open and it is lovely, except that we still don't have our bookshelves or fireplace (see trials and tribulations, below). My staff is fantastic, and I have my life back--I only have to be there a few days a week, and I have my comfy chair in the corner by the espresso machine where I read my trauma studies and contemplate beginning work on my dissertation. I present my PhD prospectus to the department on the 31st and generally, life is good. Except that Bear has to travel to Cape Breton every weekend until the end of February for work.

Oh--and I did a really fun thing yesterday: I'm TAing for a professional writing course, and the students have to do a presentation to the class using PowerPoint. The prof (Lyn B, for whom I TAed before, and who ROCKS!) asked me to do a demo presentation, and I figured, sure, I could do a GOOD presentation, but where's the fun in that? Lyn and I talked, and I decided to do a what-not-to-do demo. So fun! I recycled an old lecture on Structuralism and Post-Structuralism (complete with huge photo of the winner of the World's Ugliest Dog contest), except that I added slides packed with dense definitions of the terms, which I then read as fast as possible, with my back to the class. I also said remarkably pretentious and preposterous things like, "And of course, we are all familiar with Claude Levi-Strauss' seminal work in anthropology" and "I'm sure you're all familiar with Roman Jakobson's particular brand of Russian Formalism." It is just so fun to see a completely flummoxed look on a student's face! You have no idea how liberating it can be to aim to fail.

And now, just for you, the World's Ugliest Dog: (imagine it in huge PowerPoint style!)