Mad Pride

http://www.sfu.ca/madcitizenship-conference/sponsors.htm

TwinB was pleased to note that Gallery Gachet has used her image 'Scatterbrain' on a website for a conference called Madness, Citizenship & Social Justice that will be held at Simon Fraser University in June.
She says she feels like a legitimate Crazy Artist now.

Near Death Experience

At least that's what I suspect it could have turned into had TwinB followed through on her plan to drag her little friend here downtown on the C Train decked out in this fashion. Even sans make-up and confrontational clothing I think his very presence in Alberta is risky.

On the positive side though -this is the healthiest I've seen him looking in a long, long time - due to a tendancy to keep sticking various poisons in his mouth.

- as TwinB once put it "...it's always such an egg and spoon race with him"

She'll try to be a little more careful with him in future.

Happy Place

So tell me - what does one do when 4 or 5 projects are pending over the next 2 or 3 months? I'll tell you what one does - one works on a completely unrelated painting.
Nothing innovative, nothing important to convey...just a watercolour depicting one of my favorite places to be on a hot August afternoon and that's under the jumping bridge at Hirsch Creek.
The fact that I usually have a favorite person or two with me whenever I'm there doesn't hurt either.

A Return to Sweetness & Light

Alien creatures on an alien planet with the grade 2's.
One boy chose to depict his creation living beneath the dim light of a black hole type sun, while another fellow placed his deep in an ocean.
I guide them through a process where we try to brainstorm ways to mash together characteristics from 2 or 3 very dissimilar animals, then compose an entirely new form in a (somewhat?!) believable fashion. Extra points as always for inventing a name for the organism and its planet.

Double Whammy

when the storm clouds gather in xxxx's head, it can change the colour of her hair. when the hurricane rips apart her inner landscape, turning streets into toxic streams of debris, she'll strip our surroundings down to bare, shining sterility, the smiling picture of perfect order. right now our apartment is so clean it should be bleached holy white. xxxxy cut her hair off today and swept it into the trash. these rooms are so clear, so empty you could choke. you shiver to think of the chaos inside when she's made the outside so pure.

TwinB was describing her sister 2 years ago when she wrote this, but it probably could apply again today. I wish TwinA could have been satisfied with the drastic haircut. I wish she would have remembered to call me...but then like she said, she wasn't really in a thinking kind of mood. TwinB tried to reassure me with "they're more like beginner cuts really..."
I just didn't expect there to be so many*.



*about 3 dozen - picture a 4" wide lattice from hip to ankle

A Closed Door

Kildala Elementary will be closing June 2009. Within a day of the announcement one anonymous 'artist'/malcontent contributed their own unsolicited image to our mural.

I kind of feel the same way; I almost want to build on this, however, when the weather gets warmer I will drag my paint back down there and fix it.

Once the school closes, children will be expected to walk to one of 2 remaining elementary schools and that walk includes a kilometer long hill. In our weather. There was the occassional day when my kids were young when I didn't feel comfortable sending them the half block to their school. 30 centimeter deep puddles in the snow will do that.
Many families in Kildala don't own cars. Some families don't have parents who'll wake up in time to send their kids to school.
wtf - they're expendable.
Who'll even notice?

Save Me

'member how TwinB's nice new doctor doubled her Prozac awhile back? Why, just see how it's borne fruit! She recently started writing again and was able to go a few days without certain inhaleables for the first time in over a year and a half.

The snippets she composes are directed (at least mentally) to a friend back home.


Where am I, what night is it?
...
I hate these lights on the train at night, I guess there's just never anywhere to hide. So watch me crawl into a cave. Watch me peek out that little window - the only window in my bomb shelter basement suite. Watch that slit of cracked glass under the porch. and wait for two blue eyes to appear, and a hand.
Rabbit eyes, burrow eyes and a hand at the window to let the smoke out. Then back down because it's not safe mr. rabbit, they have lights out there you can't hide from. Out there it's light and noise and EYES, eyes like gun barrels shooting straight back into yours little rabbit, straight back into your own wide black eyes.
Save me Merle Rxxxxxxxxxx - send eagles.
Save me Merle Rxxxxxxxxxx - send crows.
Save me -send the tide across the praries, let it flood out all the burrows and pull me back to the coast, all the way out to sea.
Out to sea.

And yes, it is an improvement.