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Showing posts from May, 2012

ebook covers

Drew/designed a new cover this week for the ebook version of Dead Beautiful , which C is publishing through Upstart Press . Ebook covers are extravagant icons, since half the world is looking at them on small or handheld devices.

ottawa race weekend, in which i ran 5K out of spite

I think this one's called daddy's heart attack . * * * * * Overcast and holding Saturday morning, out to do the groceries. People in the supermarket wander around, a kind of wide-eyed look, staring up in a crooked way, trying to think of everything all at once. Etiquette to cart traffic -- make a little back-and-forth motion to indicate you need to go by, do not say vroom vroom . People always claim not to see you. I don't know why they play Pat Benatar to a crowd of over-40 white people at 8:30ish in the morning, but I'm sure they have their studies. Leave for Ottawa late morning. Yawning, could go to sleep on the 401. Bad idea. Oona denies wanting or needing a nap but is snoring by Brockville. Go for lunch once we reach the capital city, one of those peameal bacon places where the waiter writes his name in crayon on the brown paper tablecloth and they play the kind of music that you've heard on the radio a thousand times but cannot place a name to. Sa

May 23rd, 2012

Walking to work, listening to the news. An election in Egypt that's supposed to be important, regardless of the fact that the army will still run everything. More demonstrations in Montreal, something bigger now, Charest says the new laws are no different than Toronto or Paris, which is a bit like comparing your backyard dung hill to the garbage tip down the street. CPR workers go on strike, which will make everyone angry, in a general way, because it's easy. A Toronto woman dies while descending Mount Everest, the newsworthy aspect being that she had never climbed before. Three other climbers also die. 

a long weekend

Saturday Supposed to run first thing but who does this but storm troopers, psychopaths and middle-class professionals? Next weekend will kill me. Shower, breakfast, coffee, newspaper. Read the Globe in about ten minutes, which is still too long. Make lists, clean fridge, get groceries at 8. Aisles already busy with organized white people. Home, unpacking, day getting very warm, break out the shorts. Lunch, Oona resisting her nap, as usual. In the afternoon we all take a big walk through our neighbourhood and then downtown. People out on their front steps, out in front of their houses, on the porch, on the sidewalk, walking around, looking at everybody and nothing. They might not know how many provinces are in confederation but they are up to the minute on who is renting that house down the street and what their story is and how long they've been there and how long they'll last and why doesn't that woman work, maybe she's on disability. Downtown i

lights going out

I've been making these art cards, these blank postcards I call illuminated art cards , 6.5 x 5 inches, textured card stock on the one (message) side and a kind of gloss laminate on the other (I won't bore you with the mechanics/process). Anyway, I always include one or two in anything sold from the shop . In other news: I'm feeling a bit tired these days, possibly near empty, a little burnt out. A small backlog of things to post and share, but probably veering (like a car, towards the ditch) in the direction of a break in the next few weeks, maybe for the summer, maybe longer. Have a good long weekend (Canadians).

the national rational international

* * * * * A few things I've put in the shop lately. In other news, I've been thinking about rationality. People like to think they are rational. They are not. In fact, they are highly irrational. For example: if I was rational, I would eliminate sugar from my diet, get more aerobic exercise, quit making art, quit writing, and quit the graphic design industry (the last three for the reasons of: no money, no money and -- wait for it -- no money). I would have invested early (intelligently, with study). I would never have attended university (college only, in the trades). Also, I would *never* have had a kid (also: no one would have kids, except for people in upper-middle-class-and-above range, because the expenditure-versus-hugs graph is skewed entirely out of whack). But I am not rational. I have ideas about experience, and the nature of knowing things. I am optimistic about a few (a very few) things while invariably being negative about almost everythi

Oscar

Oscar from Denmark ; mixed media (charcoal, conté, chalk pastel, pencil and watercolor) on heavy paper, 11 x 15 inches. By Sheri Larsen , otherwise known as Everyday Louise . I think this fellow is very dignified, in a picture that has real Impressionist charm. And I'm a sucker for deep reds.

o look -- failure *is* an option (a failure alphabet)

no problem ; mixed media on canvas, 6 x 6 x 1.5 inches. * * * * * •) Option A, Regular Fail •) Option B, Hard-To-Watch Fail •) Option C, No-More-Tears Fail •) Option D, Epic Fail •) Option E, Going-Out-With-Style Fail •) Option F, No-Problem Fail •) Option G, I-Never-Wanted-It-Anyway Fail •) Option H, Hell-With-It Fail •) Option I, How-Do-You-Like-Me-Now Fail •) Option J, Jackass Fail •) Option K, Take-A-Few-With-Me Fail •) Option L, That's-Nothing Fail •) Option M, Time-To-Get-Fat Fail •) Option N, I'm-Still-A-Good Mom/Dad Fail •) Option O, Build-It-And-They-Might-Not-Come Fail •) Option P, It's-Only-Second-Life Fail •) Option Q, She-Said-She-Was-Sixteen Fail •) Option R, Wine-With-Lunch Fail •) Option S, Listened-To-My-Wife Fail •) Option T, Blood-Sugar Fail •) Option U, Just-Burn-It-Down Fail •) Option V, Emotional-Feminist-Vagina-Poetry Fail •) Option W, You-Gotta-Fight-For-Your-Right Fail •) Option X, Believe-In-You

and never coming home

just tell him I'm driving ; black acrylic on text book paper, 9 x 6 inches. For my project with Ariel Gordon . * * * * * This is going to be the kind of Friday where I type in the wrong password seven times in a row, then look up to see I've typed in the wrong username, too.

dead beautiful launch

So we (as in C, as in Upstart Press ) is putting on a book launch two weeks from today at Novel Idea, for Melanie Dugan 's new book, called Dead Beautiful . It's about a love and Hades. I'm serious. In fact, I originally drew two versions of Hades for the back cover, two classic notions of sinister male magnetism (in my mind, sort of English versus American -- and we went with the American). May 23rd, 7-9 pm, Novel Idea, reading and signing by the author, refreshments served. Go for a walk in Kingston's downtown and drop in on us!

seen scene again

cigar-tin story #131; in the shop , (with all that other stuff) * * * * * End of the university year, for days everywhere I walk downtown there are parents parked illegally halfway up the sideway, stacking boxes into trucks or little trailers, students always kids looking like kids taking broken chairs a little ways down the street, it's like garbage day times ten and then run, of course it's gloomy what do you expect, with its minute or two of rain, just spitting, here and there. You walk around stuff. More boxes and detritus, dish drainers and grimy binders and dressers missing one leg. Blue boxes everywhere, whole trails of dropped ideas. Across the street from my daughter's daycare, someone has spray-painted "MEGAHITS" in pink fluorescent on a white garage door. Actually Oona and I are walking almost every day now, about six blocks to "school", two-and-a-half and deep into the repeating-every-thought-and-sensation phase, I see people I s

summer movies we need more of

superhero movies zombie movies superhero ensemble movies zombie ensemble movies superhero zombie movies zombie superhero movies zombie superhero ensemble movies zombie superhero ensemble movie musicals anything with the word "coed" in the title

i'm not afraid of meteors (today)

i'm not afraid of meteors (today) mixed media on canvas 6 x 6 x 1.5 inches in the  shop -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   - i'm not afraid of meteors (today) -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   - We escape. We are always escaping, Tanner and me, we go over walls like they're velvet ropes. Stupid guards! Tanner says we cannot be contained. We like breaking into places too, so you could say that we don't like containers of any kind. If only we could live in a free and open society, Tanner says. Tanner is a prophet and the megahits are RIGHTFULLY HIS. Only Tanner isn’t saying anything right now. He's in a bad mood and he won't tell me why. In fact, he shakes his head at the very idea, denies that he's in a bad mood at all. Which is the first indicator of the worst kind of bad mood, the look-right-through-you-shrug-I’m-fine kind, the I’ll-get-over-it kind, the kind that makes you nervous in the space between your lungs and leaves

hey hey hey

I hate book launches. I hate the idea of taking this thing, this work which has been produced in isolation, as an extended meditation, and struggled with over a long period of time, and turning it into a glorified birthday party. Yet there it is all the same -- seemingly the only way we can think of (or at least the only way that works) to get books out into the world. Okay, fine. And, of course, when it's a friend of yours, you're glad enough to go, and happier still to see the event turn out well. So it was with my friend Leah's launch on Saturday night, for her book Romancing the Buzzard , when Oscar at Novel Idea put on his usual good show, and Leah came off like a star.