Nikolski, a novel by Nicolas Dickner

…and I finished the book.

I am now highly caffeinated, and deliciously taken away. It’s Sunday morning, the dawn of my weekend, and since the dogs push me out of the house very early in the day, I was able to brew up a bodum of dark coffee and settle under the covers with my new book, “Nikolski”.

Recommended by Stef (read her review here), this book is pure magic. It’s an English translation from the Québecois born Nicolas Dickner. It’s about three people, leading separate but slightly connected lives. It’s about ‘getting up and going’, travel, maps, searching, self discovery, chance, coincidence, Canada, and much more. The language is always a surprise. Dramatic, witty, well-informed.

The book design is scrumptious - just take a look at the cover. But inside is just as good. The pages are velvety soft, and smell fresh and bright like an unopened magazine. I love the wide margins on the outsides of the page, with pagination shifted a quarter of the way down and to the side. At the start of each part is a spread simply adorned with the year to date, and an illustration of a fish.

Inside "Nikolski", a novel by Nicolas Dickner

Join the debate on CBC Radio One for Canada Reads 2010. Nikolski is one of the five books chosen for debate between five panelists backing up their favourite Canadian read. I’m hoping Nikolski comes out a winner.

"Eurotium", 2005, oil on canvas, copyright Catherine Beaudette

It hasn’t stopped snowing for 3 days now, so it’s a little strange that I would be googling “Newfoundland Retreats”.

Discovering Helen Gregory (last post)  reminded me of how much I wanted to go to Newfoundland and paint. I first got the idea in 2007, when one of my thesis teachers, Catherine Beaudette, talked about staying in Newfoundland in a little 100 year old historic fishing house, and painting all alone, collecting things on the beach, visiting natural history museums etc. I was enthralled and TOTALLY wanted to do it and thought it the most romantic thing in the world.

This morning, (2 1/2 years later) I’d been googling Newfoundland retreats, and came across this right away:

http://www.newfoundlandretreats.org/duntara.html

Imagine my surprise when I saw the contact. I had no idea she owns the place and rents it out - to artists. My heart is thrumping.

The first time I saw Catherine’s paintings at OCAD, my heart dropped kerplunk to my knees. If I could paint, I thought, that is exactly what it would look like (while glancing with approval at her well-worn blundstone boots).

Here are some of Catherine’s paintings. I’m not sure what she’s up to now, but I believe she is still  Associate Professor at OCAD. Maybe I’ll know soon enough, when I contact her to escape to that little fishing hut in Newfoundland.

"Amoena", 2005, oil on canvas, copyright Catherine Beaudette

"Laccaria", 2006, oil on canvas, copyright Catherine Beaudette

Helen Gregory's Blue Tanagers courtesy of the artist and the Rooms

I discovered Helen Gregory in the National Post on Thursday and I haven’t stopped thinking of her since. She has a show in Newfoundland (where she’s from) at the Rooms called Unrequited Death: Helen Gregory and it is curated by award-winning novelist Lisa Moore.

Helen has a fascination with collecting things (be still my heart). What she collects is organic detritus - bird’s nests, eggs, skeleton’s, dead flowers, rocks, and the like. What is dead and repulsive, is at the same time, exuisite.

Apart from the image above, Helen uses lush Victorian designs as back drops for her still lifes. Think natural history, William Morris, Darwin, Victorian museums and Dutch Still Lifes (be still my heart, again.)

Aside from looking at her own collection, she was able to study the collections from natural history museums - at the Rooms in St. John’s, the Redpath Museum in Montreal, and the Canadian Museum of Nature near Ottawa.

You can find a really great video of Helen’s process on You Tube. I’ve already watched it about 20 times. The exhibition continues until May 16.

You can read the Q & A in the National Post here. I think this is a condensed version. And P.S. Leah Sandals who wrote the article has a pretty cool blog.

Waldo at the AGO

Part of a collaborative project. More about that later when there may be more to tell.

Rivelino Díaz Bernal "AUTORRETRATO 1"

How loaded is this image?

This piece will be shown in a special exhibition “Residentes. Artistas Latinoamericanos
en España”at Art Madrid.

Superviscous: Works In Glass, OCAD

This looks pretty interesting and worth checking out. It’s on Level 2 at 100 McCaul St.

From the press release:

Haunted by fragility and an uncertain identity (ultra-thick liquid? amorphous solid?), glass rests uneasily at the intersection between art, design and craft. Including works drawn largely from Toronto collections, Superviscous brings together artists exploring this tempermental medium’s unstable nature. Jon Kuhn’s dazzling cubes are compacted universes full of colour and light. Tim Whiten’s subtle cast broom stands quietly in the corner,  contrasting with Sandra Rechico’s satisfyingly crunchy shards on the floor.   Through these and other works, the show explores the contradictory associations we bring to glass. Its eye catching beauty is both strength and weakness. Is this inevitable attractiveness just a cheap - or costly - trick?

“The artists here explore the unique properties of glass in works that range from kitsch to conceptual,” explains York Lethbridge, Operations Coordinator at Onsite and Co-curator of the exhibition. “Their works reflect art’s historical use of glass and suggest how its application might continue to evolve as new technologies emerge.”

Superviscous also encourages connections between generations and locations by mingling mid-career and mature artists like Rechico and Whiten with much younger practitioners such as Tyler Clark Burke and Matthew Eskusche, and by including work from a range of cultural contexts throughout eastern Canada and the U.S.

Featured artists:
Do Ho Suh, Tyler Clark Burke, Matthew Eskuche, Mark Roeder, Nestor Kruger, Jon Kuhn, Scott Lyall, Sandra Rechico, Colette Whiten and Tim Whiten.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/09/margaret-atwood-birds-review

and read the article by Margaret Atwood.

It’s very important.

P.S. so important, I’m actually posting this while I’m at work…

Work In Progress

Who knows when this will be done. I haven’t worked on it in awhile, and then this weekend I can’t stop. Starting to delete a lot of elements to work out a lot of compositional problems.

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris is filled with food. I’ve never read (gasp!) Chocolat (yet!), but I imagine that it was also filled with food, although of the sweeter kind. Five Quarters starts out sweet, then almost half way, gets dark and then darker and then a little mysterious. It’s about pleasure and repression. About family feuds past and present, innocence and experience, guilt, lies, and bold, fiesty hearts.

The writing is the best part. It’s simple but sumptuous and very real. And goes deliciously well with a stack of home made chocolate chip walnut cookies.

Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies (not to be eaten with lemons)