Our Renaissance Revival poetry workshop was lovely last night! My apartment just fit 10 people, in a circle, it was cosy but nice. The set up looked like a Poets Anonymous meeting! Everyone brought food, simple nibbleys to a fantastic spinach and feta cheese phyllo pastry roll (thanks Margaret!) and wine. Some people just read (incl me - rough notes from my poetry journal) and others brought a poem to workshop (with 10 copies). With Allan Briesmaster, Luciano Iacobelli and Norman Cristofoli there, all publishers and fantastic editors, those who workshopped received excellent feedback. I had intended to take some photos, but 2 hours before the workshop all the power in the bedrooms in the back of my apartment went out, and the Super came and then a man from Maintenance and apparently an electrician has to come today to replace the circuit breaker itself. It all kind of threw me and hunting for camera and tripod in the dark didn't happen. The room where we put the coats was candle-lit. Somehow the apartment itself, half lit and half-unlit, became a poem for what was a very fine evening indeed. Many thanks to those who came and shared their writing!

The Renaissance Revival poetry workshop is Norman Bethune Allan's poetry event - held on the 3rd Monday of every month at CSI , 720 Bathurst St (a block south of Bathurst Subway) in Toronto in the cafe - at 7pm - you have to knock on the window to get someone to let you in if you arrive past 7pm. If you're interested in joining this on-going poetry workshop, send him an email via his website and he'll put you on the email list.


The rest of this blog post is going to be about one of my current projects, which I shared with the group last night, and received some good feedback from on suggestions for the writing itself.

Busy cleaning, arranging furniture to try to increase the amount of space for the group, preparing some cheese and crackers and my emergency partial power failure took up all of the day, and I sort of panicked at what to workshop or read. I printed out a few things. Then decided to be brave and read something truly in-process.

From my poetry journal, where all rough drafts are first written in pencil, I read some rough notes towards a soundtrack for clips of my recent figure sculpture (which was always intended for video treatment, right from the start). A few nights ago, when the blizzard in Toronto subsided a little, I got out my video camera to take a clip, but the battery was dead. So I used my Canon camera - fine, except the video function needs manual focus and that's an eyesight problem since I need different prescriptions for different distances. Anyway, taking everything outside, using a lazy susan (that I had hunted through Chinatown to find for this very purpose), I took a few clips and then composed a tiny test run just to see. Later I searched through my GarageBand files to find a snippet of poetry to use - this little fragment from practice sessions of poems I read at the launch of my poetry chapbook in June, the luminist poems - and not what I am currently working on for this figure sculpture.

The actual poem has more to do with clay and art than the poem fragment in the voiceover here... but what I used as a test kind of works, doesn't it. The accompaniment is the sound of the lazy susan turning slowed down to maybe 83%. Spooky huh! I did 'freeze frame' the last frame but then cut it way back & wish I hadn't and wish I also had zoomed in on the face at the end of this clip. Hindsight is always good sight, huh.

Watching the clips, I also realized that the base needs to be black. So I have put black cloth over it for the video clips that will hopefully make their way into the finished videopoem. Also, I have many photos of the sculpture in process, and they may find their way into the piece too.



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Three featured poets at The Art Bar last night... Jan Conn, Sue Reynolds and Allan Briesmaster. Don't laugh. It's dark, and you have to work fast. If you get a likeness, it's lucky. Norman Allen (who is a friend and whose work I like) draws, and so do I. He posts on their Facebook as often as he likes, but I've declined due to... well, someone on the committee said they were trying to 'declutter' the Art Bar wall and could I post no more than maybe one drawing a month. Since they are all drawings of poets done while they are reading at the Art Bar of course I was offended and deleted my drawings from their page el pronto. My analyst wants me to go to the whole committee about the situation but so far I haven't cared enough. Most of them know nothing about how my work was banished by a rogue committee member and would likely be surprised since when they've hosted and seen my drawings they say they like them. I'm also wondering if the fact that another artist is allowed to post as often as he likes is a form of favouritism or horrors, sexism. When I go to the Art Bar event, which is far less often than before (when I felt welcome), I draw anyway and post on my own Facebook page and here in my blog. 'Draw, draw, draw...' is an artist's motto. :~)


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Sketching at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) on Nov 24th with the group, Sketching Around the City. Was an interesting sketching trip. Thanks Valerie Animus Léo for organizing it! This is a Toxodon platensis, from Argentina, 1.5 million years old, actually a hoofed mammal that most resembles a rhinoceros.





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My little figure sculpture has hit a landmine. Not too happy at this point - arms and legs cut due to difficulties with the original armature that wasn't twisted right and which I couldn't seem to fix. Next week is the final week, so... I'll have to see how it goes.

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The first four photos are taken with a Canon 60D, 50mm lens, and no idea why I then started snapping with my iPhone5S. Promise not to in the next two, and, gasp, final weeks. Nowhere near done!

Also, I asked the instructor to cut the arms on my figure without offering any direction as to where. This is big on the agenda for next week's session - fixing those stubbs, either to look better at the length they are, or to elongate somehow. Photographing the figure with the arm stubbs is when I switched to the iPhone's camera.









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Week 8, and I took in a Canon 60D with a 50mm lens (which made it easy to carry) to photograph the strangeness better. The images are sharper, and there is more bokeh going on in some of them.


The instructor enlarged and adjusted the head on my sculpture, which it needed, but in the process wiped out the face for the second time, making this is the third go at the face. It doesn't quite work, maybe next week will be a better session. Only 3 sessions to go - I'm sure I could work on it a year and still not be finished.











Snapped in storage. Quite beautiful, huh. I will reveal all details on where, what and who when the session is over.

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... was messing around with some brush pens that I filled with different coloured inks... the sketch I did of La Vie de Jolie Jade on Aug 11th at Lizzie Violet's Cabaret Noir was what I found when searching for something to apply a new technique to.

(8.5"x11", 130lb art paper, mixed media.)

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Perhaps you're getting bored, but I continue with posting, now into week 7. Only 4 more weeks to go! I worked on the face (re-done twice, so roughed in) and the hair (roughed in). I also took some video but think I will wait to see how the sculpture goes over the next month before posting anything along that line. Even though I am very new to sculpting -this is my first time ever working on a figure- in the 2nd photo surprisingly there is strange resemblance to the model's personality, something in the face.











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It's official. I signed the contract today. I'm having a solo show at Urban Gallery in Toronto in January, and maybe February. The Opening party is slated for Thurs January 9th 2014 from 5-8pm. During the time my paintings are up, Luciano Iacobelli will host a performance poetry event; Nik Beat, a poetry and music night; and Banoo Zan will host a poetry event. I am thrilled. The winter just got a whole more fun!

http://www.urbangallery.ca/

And the lady who is responsible for this turn of events is Mary Lou Patchell, who owns He and She Clothing. She told Calvin about a lady who danced poetry in masks that came out of paintings and he told her to tell me to get in touch with him. We (Calvin & I) met in September, and I thought, that was nice, what a lovely man, and nothing of it, and then got an email a week or two back and am finally able to burst with the news.

Today I was in Lou Lou's store, and she dressed me up a little bit. I did buy the top, and maybe will the shaped leather mask (which fit perfectly) later on if I can figure out a poem for it and how to use it in a poetry performance... (She also laced me into a corset, a purple and black one (that is definitely for performances), and it is now tucked away in my drawer.) She took this photo and I really love it even if I think I look too thin, but then again, I didn't in the others she took, so it's just the angle. She kept saying, 'You look so different in that mask... another side of you.' Something to ponder... what is a normal self? And why should a simple eye mask change the perception of this elusive concept?



After my last meeting with Calvin Hambrook, one of the owners of Urban Gallery and Urban Catering, I took some iPhone pics and videos of Lou Lou's store. Plan to go back sometime to draw those mannequins!

direct link: He and She Clothing Store

The video was a quick patched job of iPhone video and photos, but today am considering making it a videopoem with a voiceover, so that might happen, who knows. It's been awhile since I made a videopoem- it might be fun.

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