On the last Friday of every month, a phenomenon sweeps the downtown core of Vancouver. At 5:30 pm, the height of rush hour traffic, humans of all shapes and sizes and fashion sense, huddle over their handle bars and from the Vancouver Art Gallery on Georgia Street, set out to for a mass bike ride that brings car traffic to a complete standstill and renders pedestrians live Froggers, dodging and weaving across intersections.

Many of us simply stopped wherever we were and gawked at the seemingly endless mass of abiked humanity as far as the eye could see. Many of us took pictures.

This gentleman took it upon himself to be the traffic cop, and he appeared to relish the job. I must have taken twenty pictures of him and his entertaining gesticulations and expressive face.

I love the slightly mischievous twinkle in his eye. I hope I have as much sass when I reach his age.

Well over a hundred men, women, children, babies and everything in between participated in the most recent Critical Mass at the end of July.

Momentum Magazine describes the concept behind the Critical Mass Event:

we ride together in a big mass because together is more fun. That means we don’t go too fast and occasionally the front of the ride will stop and wait for the mass to bulk up so we don’t all become spread thin. This also helps make the ride safer and less confusing for those stuck in cars because we stay together. We don’t cut the ride in half at red lights but volunteer corkers stop and talk to drivers to get them to wait for us to pass. Since there is no leader of the ride, we are all responsible for watching out for ourselves, other riders and keeping it fun and safe.

I love the term “corker” for the official road rage diffuser position. I guess it’s like corking the bottle so nothing spills out – like homicidal urges to run over a cyclist.

I was impressed and a little surprised at how tolerant motorists were during the thick of it, at the intersection of Granville and W. Georgia where I took my photos and cars sat perfectly still in their lanes for well over 20 minutes. That’s probably 200 minutes in frustrated car driver time. Maybe they were as intrigued by the whole spectacle as the pedestrians. I’ve never seen anything like this in my city, and it was definitely inspiring to witness this temporary takeover of bicycles in our car congested city.

Everyone was having such a good time, the positive spirit of the event was contagious and strangers standing around began talking to one another. A man asked me if I would take a picture of his girlfriend who was somewhere in the Mass, and she appeared at the tail end, grinning ear to ear.

I got a few decent shots and her boyfriend was so pleased to receive them.

Lots of participants dressed up in various degrees of costume. From Superman, to pretty girls in body paint, the atmosphere was celebratory and light hearted.

Next time around, on the last Friday of July (July 31st) I intend to be right in the thick of it, butt on bicycle seat, helmet headed, and taking photographs this time from the inside out. I haven’t been on a bicycle in at least 5 years, so this should be a positive reintroduction to the two -wheeled beast. It’s something I used to enjoy so much, it’s hard to believe I haven’t cycled in so long.

Vancouver has a large, vocal community of avid cyclists, like VACC (Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition) who lobby for better cycling infrastructure such as more designated bike lanes, wider roads to allow for safer road cycling in the city, and more bike lockers.

One wish that has come true for member of VACC and others is the Burrard Bridge bike lanes trial, that begins today, closing an entire lane on the bridge to cars and devoting it to cyclists.

Today (Monday July 13) there will be various celebratory inaugural bike rides across the bridge, and the best one by far sounds like this evening’s ride organized by Momentum and the VACC for a ride over the bridge, followed by a picnic at Vanier Park, and a “Bike-in Movie” at the Museum of Vancouver (film will be “The Triplets of Belleville”) Meet at David Lam park in Yaletown at 6pm and it’s suggested you bring a blanket, food to share, and your own plate and utensils.

Critical Mass is opening up…the conversation about how we live and move around. This is not just transportation, it is about affordable housing (people “must” drive if the only choice is suburbia), the environment, and much, much more.

*Seymour St. sign and our pseudo coliseumVancouver Public Libary in the background. 

  *Even Morrissey-esque hipsters participate…

 …alongside the melancholy…

 …and the elaborately body-painted

It’s billed as “the craziest, wildest, most insane even of the year,” but organizers of World Naked Bike Ride have thrown in a serious message to balance out that decadence, lest the powers that be discover that people are biking around the city starkers for no better reason than because it’s super fun.

We face automobile traffic with our naked bodies as the best way of defending our dignity and exposing the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians as well as the negative consequences we all face due to dependence on oil, and other forms of non-renewable energy.

My special correspondent/life model extraordinaire, Guy, documented his day of naked decadence at the Annual World Naked Bike Ride.

I asked Guy if he wasn’t concerned about serious chafing in his bejeweled kingdom, but he shrugged and insisted it was actually quite comfortable riding a bike naked, and the more sensitive participants are encouraged to cover their seats with a towel. Personally, I wouldn’t opt for anything less than goose down, but then I don’t foresee a day  I would ever doff my chub camouflage to join the two wheelin’ nudies.

I guess I can vicariously enjoy the liberation that comes with shedding one’s inhibitions along with underwire bras.

Check out the trailer for the film by B.C.’s Conrad Schmidt about why he and hundreds of others around the world cycle naked once a year in cities around the world.

Check out the little promo video set to the appropriately chosen song, “Goin’ on a Naked Bike Ride,” by Dan and Kirsten Kaufman.

And here’s footage from Vancouver’s World Naked Bike Ride a few weeks back.

My Favourite View:

Happy to report nothing cracked, burned badly, or exploded! 

My no-hands technique is going to need some work…my model definitely had hands.

No disasters for my first time out sculpting in clay, and I’m ready to keep foisting my humble Dollar Store tools onto another unsuspecting 10lb chunk of clay.

Shadbolt has drop on workshops for true beginners like myself, to those who are honing their craft, 3 days a week all summer.

Mondays, from 1:30-9:30

Wednesdays : 1:30 – 5:30 and

Sundays: 1:30 – 5:30

I’m looking forward to seeing my first film at Pacific Cinematheque, a non-profit arts center that showcases local films, as well as the best in international cinema, film festival offerings, and now a monthly even developed in partnership with the Institute of Mental Health, and UBC Department of Psychiatry to promote education on issues surrounding mental health.

In addition to the movie screening, there are presentations and panel discussions following films shown every third Wednesday of each month.

June 17th will be the Vancouver premiere of Prodigal Sons, a documentary by Kimberly Reed, described by Variety as “Compelling…Tennessee Williams looks like Sesame Street compared to this.”

“A fascinating study of family dynamics…”

With that, and the old black and white photo of three cheerful looking kids in a family portrait, which for me is always an ominous foreboding of tribulations ahead.

The full excerpt from Pacific Cinametheque’s program:

A fascinating study of family dynamics, Prodigal Sons traces the history and disparate trajectories of three brothers who grew up in Helena, Montana, in the 1970s. Mac, the oldest, was adopted; his new parents, the McKerrows, thought they weren’t able to have biological children, and then quickly proceeded to have two: Paul and Todd. Paul, the middle child, was a golden boy: excellent student, captain for the football team, class valedictorian. Marc, held back in kindergarten and always under the shadow of his younger brother, had a harder time. He dropped out of school, was in prison at 19, and at 21 suffered a serious brain injury; given to emotional instability, he seems never to have gotten over his resentment towards Paul. But Paul had his own demons to contend with: After graduation , he moved to San Francisco and became a woman, transitioning into Kimberly Reed, director of this documentary. Prodigal Sons opens as Kimberly travels home to Helena for a high school reunion – her first time back as a woman, and her first visit in years with Marc. Add to the mix the recent discovery that Marc’s biological grandparents are Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. And that a family Christmas with youngest brother Todd, a gay man now working as an architect, ends with a 911 call to police…

I’ve been discovering some fascinating websites lately. In  A Journey Round My Skull, a blog self-described as “unhealthy book fetishism from a reader, collector, and amateur historian of forgotten literature” His recent obsessions are illustrations and graphic design.

One caught my eye: a gem a friend of his found in an old 1923 edition of stories by Edgar Allen Poe, one of my favourite writers.

The creepy yet sort of cheeky illustration is by Harry Clarke, (1889-1931) – only 42. He was a stained glass artist, in addition to his work as an illustrator.

Another delightfully bizarre nugget from those wacky humans circa 1920s: Poems For Melting Children from a 1925 collection of poems for children by Russian poet Osip Mandelshtam and illustrations by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (1875-1957), also Russian, from the book Primus.

Tim Burton could do some serious damage with a feature film based on this warped (in the best sense of the word) collection that manages to be both unsettling and endearing.

In the first picture, raw milk is having a conversation with boiled milk, and raw milk boasts all the products that it can turn into, like yogurt and sour cream (personal side note: A disgusting list of rotting milk products). Then boiled milk responds with something like ‘hey, I’m no sissy! I have foam!’ So boiled milk is like Ralphie from the Simpsons, maybe. [...]
In the third illustration, Mr. Iron explains that laundry is his favorite activity, and he just loves to (I’m not kidding, these are the real words) glide and slide and rub all up and down on white shirts. His unfortunate dilemma, he admits, is that we could never imagine how much it pains him to be heated up — it really hurts. T.M.I., Mr. Iron.

More videos from Animals Australia

About this video:
Meet ‘Lucy’, an Australian sow. She is as intelligent as a three year old child, yet she spends days on end trapped in a tiny metal cage so small that she can not even turn around. Her piglets are subjected to painful surgical mutilations – without anaesthetic. These sensitive animals need your help.

AnimalsAustralia.com has an impressive team of not only  highly skilled, creative artists working for them, and it goes to show how easy it can be for us to ignore the day to day mind numbingly barbaric factory farm practices that hopefully one day will be looked upon with shame and disgust by future generations.

It’s so easy to ignore issues surrounding where our food comes from.

That’s why it must be such an enormous challenge to reach the public and educate people on the reality that really is so hideous I find myself just wanting to avoid thinking about it altogether. Because it forces one to really take a hard look at not only our individual choices, but to look at our society and what’s deemed acceptable.

The EU wants to ban the importation of seal hides from Canada because of the cruelty, and this is a commendable step, but how can this be applied to only certain animals. Is it because seal hides are not food, or because they’re more photogenic and appealing to the heart strings?

What about pigs, and cows?

We cannot plead ignorance about whether or not animals have feelings, intelligence, and the characteristics we apply to determine whether a creature other than ourselves is deemed sentient enough to warrant us refraining from treating them as objects.

Gone are the days when people could justify their actions by claiming than animals like pigs and cows have no feelings, and no thought processes worth acknowledging. Science has proven otherwise, and I think even without science, our hearts tell us otherwise.

I suppose that’s why organizations such as these try to appeal to the heart and conscience of people who know with their hearts and minds that animals should not suffer like this. Sometimes it takes some imaginative media campaigns to get the point across.

I’m still taken aback daily by the art being produced in our delightful little seaside metropolis.

On a search for teachers of stone sculpture in the area, I landed on the Studiostone website.

The display of impressive sculpture, by artists Oliver Harwood and Marie Bortolotto opened my eyes to more world class artists practicing their craft in Vancouver. In addition to this, they’re sharing their expertise with the community by offering workshops in stone sculpture, and providing studio space for students to drop in and work on their own projects.

For the city of plentiful cramped condos, this is an enormous gift for aspiring carvers without the needed space and tools to be entirely self-sufficient.

And I imagine the camaraderie is a welcome benefit for everyone.

I contacted Oliver Harwood back in April because he’d just begun a beginner’s workshop and I’d missed the start date. He reassured me there would be more workshops in the fall.

So I’ve been biding my time with clay sculpture, while holding out for the medium which excites me the most – stone!

A few days ago an email from Oliver, announcing summer stone carving workshops

June 20 & 21  is a plaster mold making workshop with a guest instructor Reto Marti.  This is a great opportunity to learn how to make molds and about casting. We will start with a clay sculpture, make piece molds, remove the clay, and cast.  The purpose of learning these techniques is to be able to make molds and casts of a variety of things including your stone sculptures.  A more advance mold making workshop will do silicone rubber molds, and wax positives – ready for bronze casting.  This introductory mold making is the first step and a lot of fun.  Very affordable at $180 (includes materials) for the weekend.

June 27 & 28 Weekend Stone carving!  2 full days of carving 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.  If you haven’t taken a class yet – this is a great way to start.  If you have done a class – then this is a wonderful opportunity to complete a stone sculpture in 2 days!  A block of Alabaster or Soapstone included.  $205

August 22 & 23  Weekend Stone Carving.  Same as above. 2 days – a good experience.  $205

I’m looking forward to experiencing Studiostone for myself in the coming weeks, so until I can describe my experiences, I thought I’d share Oliver’s description of Studiostone:

 

Studiostone is a stone sculpting facility in Urban Vancouver centered on the private studio of artist Oliver Harwood, expanded to facilitate 10 other sculptors working in stone, as well as numerous classes and workshops open to the community throughout the year. 

Inspired by the collective stone carving studios in Italy where Oliver worked during and after his Art College days, Studiostone is a place to learn and develop stone sculpture skills with the support of more experienced sculptors. 

It is a place to introduce people with no experience to stone carving, it is an incubator to support those wishing to develop their sculpture skills and it is a facility for professional artists.

Studiostone is located at 1760 Vernon Dr. in Vancouver.

 photo by: xabifesta – flickr

1.

“The 10 Most Disturbing Smurfs”  by Zack Oat at his site Topless Robot

He has shattered my illusions about Smurfs. It hurts to see them in this new light, but I realize I was naive to think there really could be a peaceful, agrarian community of goodness, as exemplified by the Smurfs.

They were, after all, created by a Frenchman, and French art always has that air of tragedy.

I wasn’t the only one disturbed by this new perspective on smurfs, and many readers had their own theories and suspicions about what these smurfs are really all about.

Highlight of Comments on Zack’s article:

Mr. Smiley said:

Smurfette has got to be the worst smurf though. If you’ve ever watched Donny Darko, they theorize that all the younger smurfs gangbang smurfette while papa smurf jerks off in the corner. I think that’s probably what happened with the smurfs off camera.

Posted 01/25/2008 at 12:43:18 PM

Donnie Darko said:

First of all: Papa Smurf didn’t create Smurfette – Gargamel did! She was sent in as Gargamel’s evil spy with the intention of destroying the Smurf village. But the overwhelming goodness of the Smurf way of life transformed her. And as for the whole gangbang scenario – Huh! I – it just couldn’t happen. Smurfs are asexual, th-they don’t even have…reproductive organs under those little…white…pants. That’s what’s so illogical, y’know, about being a Smurf. Y’know what’s the point of living… if you don’t have a dick?

Posted 01/25/2008 at 08:03:00 PM

Question:

How do you know you’ve overdosed on Smurf-dom?

Photo by: teaeff – flickr

Answer:

When you start measuring everything by how many apples high it is.

For smurfloads of information on everything Smurfy check out Bluebuddies.

  Photo by: Dnnya17 – flickr             My smurf alter-ego

2.

Playmobil Security Checkpoint 

What a wonderfully demented site this. Excellent satire. Check out the comments, and the other products. This is the best parody site I’ve visited in a long time.

Excerpt:

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2,910 of 2,957 people found the following review helpful:

Great lesson for the kids!, September 9, 2005

By 
loosenut (Seattle, WA) – See all my reviews

I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that’s the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.
The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I’ve heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I’ll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush).

Comments (27) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this) (Report this)

3. 

Pet Plus is a project aiming to explore how people treat their pets as human surrogates.

It took me a while to catch on that Alice Wang, the creator of this website, is just incredibly droll, and this isn’t a serious business. At least I don’t think so. I’m not entirely sure. It’s funny, though.

She sells a “package” that acts as a social supplement for those who wish to avoid human-to-human relationships but still have the need for love.

Photo of Saint Sebastian by: Sebastian Bergmann @flickr

One of the frustrations of discovering a new passion, a new possibility for creative expression, is bridging the divide between the urge to create, and translating the will into constructive action, and following through with the will into correct action.

I’ve always been an impulsive person, and that has had both its benefits and its drawbacks. I’ll get excited about a new project or direction in life and jump into the water, without any prerequisite toe-dipping. The results have been mixed, and although this is a source of energy and creativity and motivation, the challenge lies in harnessing the energy that’s behind the impulsivity so that action can unfold in a way that is constructive, productive, and not haphazard and hit-or-miss.

I realize that patience is a key component, and learning ways to develop it. For example, the sculpture course I recently took has me so excited and keen to learn and delve into the medium more, but true to form, as an all or nothing person, I want to immerse myself completely. Now with sculpture, I’m having to accept that things are not going to go according to my schedule, or succumb to my whims, however well intentioned.

First off, the studio where I took my clay sculpture class at Shadbolt has open workshop hours three times a week. I missed the workshop today due to my own time mismanagement and erratic hours due to insomnia, so when I was ready and eager to hit the centre and work on that big slab of clay lying in wait for me, the studio times were coming to a close.

So there’s this energy still to dig in and explore and create frustrated by something beyond my control, complicated by my own defects of character and behaviour that had me miss the perfectly reasonable hours available to me. So I feel frustrated and guilty, but still psyched about sculpture and so what to do with this energy?

I have to learn patience, and realize that even though I have to wait two more days for the next opportunity to go work with the clay, it is not a catastrophe, and learn to deal with it. And don’t beat yourself up about missing it. There are still worthwhile things to do .

Which brings me back to writing, an outlet I take for granted so much that I just don’t both with it at all, even though there is so much creative potential in writing. But it demands patience and self-discipline, two characteristics I lack to a head shaking degree, but am determined to change.

So if I can’t actually get my hands literally dirty with clay, I can at least get my mind immersed in it, and write about it. And writing cries out for research, which leads me online, and opens up a whole frontier of potential for inspiration and education.

There is such an abundance of resources available to emerging artists, and the amount of self-education that can take place is really unprecedented, particularly for old farts like me who still remember what it was like without the internet and valuable information had to be hunted down for in libraries or more likely wasn’t available at all.

Now there is so much out there, and the difficulty lies more in how to focus on what’s important, separating the wheat from the chaff, and having enough time to sift through, process and absorb a small fraction of what’s available and useful.

So the restless energy, the impulsivity, and the “all or nothing” desire is tempered somewhat, and as a result I’ve been led in new directions which have turned up valuable sources of information and inspiration.

Both of these I discovered on a forum called WetCanvas. I’ve never been onto an artist’s forum before, so this is a revelation for me. I can actually find so many answers to questions I have about art in general and sculpture in particular, and learn tips and lessons that will will save me a great deal of time and grief in the long term.

People are so generous to share what they’ve learned form their experiences so that others can benefit and grow and in turn share what they’ve learning, and to be able to tap into that after it’s been going on for a period of time, is like coming across an oasis in a desert.

It also leads me, in the typical six degree of separation internet fashion, to loads of other helpful forums, artist sites, and products that I never would have discovered on my own.

After  reading posts on WetCanvas about sculpting, I found a thread on self-drying clay, which appeals to me, as the frustrated and impatient learner who cannot make a studio’s hours conform to my every whim, perhaps I can still practice at home.

There are plenty of mixed reviews on the self-drying materials available. Lots of experiences with excessive clay cracking, and lack of durability, along with suggestions and alternatives.

One such being Winterstone, a sculpting material particularly popular with sculptors of outdoor installations. Being such a newb, I’d never heard of it, but the forum led me to check out the Winterstone homepage, and photos of artwork being produced with this material.

Which in turn leads me to the home pages of the artists featured there, and I’m lead in all kinds of directions that expose me to a wealth of information and inspiration, and I’m once again amazed by the range of gifted artists, and the stunning work being produced.

Lorne P. Winters is an artist showcased by Winterstone on their website. (I was most impressed by “Contemplation”) and being introduced to many other artists like that of of Miguel Joyal (scroll down to find pic), in a photo of him working on the 16-foot tall sculpture of Louis Riel which stands at the Manitoba Legislative building.