As I mentioned the other day (Pinhead-camera) Catherine and I had a lovely day-trip with her father Neville to see the Hamilton steam museum last week. The museum consists of five structures which went into operation in 1860 – and the exquisite
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Terry Shoffner paints the flyboy – top photo The very best thing about the job of being an art model is that (when you can get a gig) you can expect to find yourself among a group of people who are actively
Every poem needs an idea at its heart – but not all of the ideas need to be serious! Cookie-credit to Catherine (perfected pecan chocolate chip) – inspiration too – naturally.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about one of the more interesting and surprisingly ancient optical technologies – the pin-hole camera, or camera obscura – by which an accurate projection can be made upon a screen, of any scene toward which
I think I’ll put a trigger-warning on this one – if you can’t handle reality, and you’ve actually been in a constant state of ongoing panic for years (quite a common state, and objectively well-founded) – whether or not you acknowledge this
Nathan Phillips square, right in front of Toronto city hall, is beautifully used for practically everyone nowadays – we can hear top quality international jazz acts for free during Jazz-fest (or pay to be inside the tent, on much nicer non-concrete seats),
Carnival at the Rink, Ottawa – 1881 – (Top photo) Born in Paisley, Scotland, Willian Notman moved to Montreal in 1856 when he was thirty, and set up a photography studio. He began with official commissions to document important construction projects, but
Here’s one final piece from the Guillermo Del Toro show (I know, but really, I couldn’t resist) – it’s not the most glamorous or polished instalment, visually – but without doubt, these hand-drawn spreads (and the other notebooks also on display) give
Of course one of the very best things about any museum collection is the display of assembled diversity. Almost every exhibit reminds us that the ancient world was really not the way we see it reflected in movies – that is, centrally
Puffin and prancing (plover?) pals (top photo) One of my favourite things to do at the museum when I was a kid was draw – the animals held a particular fascination – where else are you going to get a lion to
Ancient Roman space-man “proof” (top photo) (Hey cool, that title has nifty meter – up there with “Hemingway hated disco music!” (a favourite, in our house) I’m building up a whole arc of serious history posts – starting from essential considerations of
I really was fascinated by libraries and museums when I was a kid. I even made a tiny museum of my own, complete with an illustrated card catalog for each of the exhibits, including acquisition-date and provenance. Most were of particular interest
Had a truly lovely expedition this weekend to the Royal Ontario Museum – with my adventure buddy Nada, and also three new friends, Evelyn, Keith and their smart and charming daughter Isabel – which made the whole day a great deal more
Ever since I got into Hofstader and Robert Anton Wilson as a teenager, I’ve been pretty much crazy for isomorphisms, both tight (highly conformal) and poetic (suggestive of tone and insight, rather than specifics of relationship). There really doesn’t seem to be
I love my town, and I’m incredibly curious about the world, but I generally avoid super-popular touristy things, because so many feel overcrowded, over-managed and overly dumbed-down. (And yes, I may also be just a teensy bit cantankerous) ;o) HOWEVER – Nada’s
I’ve always been curious about experimenting with form in every way I can – I also like to try to impart some spirit of play, to go with explanations or explorations – heavy ones especially. It’s well known that brains learn better
As I mentioned in my first post about Guillermo’s remarkable show, he doesn’t just adore films, paintings and drawings, sculptures props and toys – like so many of us, he first fell in love with the horror genre (and was inspired to
I don’t this point can be made often enough – tacky, eclectic, oddball, low-rent, artsy and/or just plain freaky storefronts are by-far the best for both musing and photography. Nor is this for such an entirely obvious reason as that old mean-comedy
I was a convert to the idea that popular art, particularly sequential art (comics) was true ‘real’ art (without requiring any qualifying subcategory) from roughly the age of ten. 1975 was a cool year for that. Comics wise, we could still read
Caught a wonderful show on the weekend at the AGO – “Living with monsters” which is a sampling from the private collection of the brilliant filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, who began as an amateur illustrator, then worked in special-effects, before finally getting
When I was a kid, we had a knife-sharpener man who would walk up and down every street in the neighbourhood every couple of weeks, ringing his bell in a very particular way (you never mistook the sound for anything else). He
Politics did not just become stressful, or a matter of life and death recently – my title comes from “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you” a famous and still chillingly relevant observation from Plato. Like
Back in the mid-eighties, when I was still a bit of a waif, I had a weekly improvised-music session in my little basement flat, with the much older, brilliant, and incomparably determined free-improvising saxophonist, Maury Coles. We were often joined by one
I have yet to encounter any tradition with deep mysticism and insight at it’s core, which does not recommend a variation of the meditation of infinite-regression – that is, that (sometimes inspiring, and sometimes irritating) childhood state of asking why, where, how,
I’ve been fond of a great many cats over the years, but I think Moe, who was a really nifty puffball orange kitten who used to wake me up by licking my eyelids, and ran away when I was eight, was probably
Some days you take hundreds of shots to get dozens of useful ones – and some days you shoot a couple dozen – and get a dozen good ones anyhow. Sweet deal. Of course, I’m always especially pleased when really extreme lighting