Veggiechrist

ONE MUST TRY TO REMAIN POSITIVE as much as one can in these complicated times. In this blog it's been a goal of mine to focus on the positive but in this instance I have to shake my head and say, "come on . . . you've got to be kidding me."

How is there any will to accept this impression of humanity. We as bobbing anthropomorphic (?) smiling food objects running through human situations in a retelling of the bible.





The industry built around this concept is a bit mind blowing. When you go to the site for the production company that creates this content (Big Idea Inc.) there's a 'Do They Know It's Christmas Time' video single from the latest computer animated Veggietales effort which features money shots of the poor -- they're more like landscape paintings of African heads hunched over Christmas gifts cross cut with singing shots of Matthew (I'm-gonna-steal-your-girlfriend) West in a duet with Amy Grant. I see this and I wonder why we have not yet evolved past this sort of exploitation. We are constantly appropriating the poor to advance something else in the narrative and it's usually cash. Isn't there some sort of moral bylaw in the world to protect the young from this propaganda? I think I know what Big Idea Inc's big idea was.

I was reading my son a Franklin book at bedtime. Franklin is the young middle class turtle who has questionable self esteem issues. He and his school mates are collecting gifts for "The Poor" as part of a Christmas drive. In the narrative it's clear that the poor are no where near the centre of the story but merely the device used to instigate Franklins own examination of conscience and meaning. The poor somehow don't even go to the same school as Franklin. Just another instance of White-man-as-the-protagonist-of-human-history.

If you'd like to see Saturday Night Live's parody of the Veggetales click HERE.

Schedule

So from here on in I'm going to post from Monday to Friday only.

Talk in 2 days.

Best, Nick

The Crunchy with the Smooth

WHEN I WAS A KID my mother would play these Joni Mitchell records over and over. She would dance around in her mo mo and get super sentimental and it would drive me insane to hear, Blue over and over again. Fast forward 30 years and here I am wearing out, Hymns Of The 49th Parallel by KD Lang. It's probably old news to everyone else in the world but I've only just discovered this fantastic recording. I love KD Lang and I'm pretty sure I'll drive my son up the same wall with it.

See her perform Leonard Coen's, Hallelujah by clicking HERE.

On a more strained note we have Larry Gowan performing with the STYX reunion. Have a look at the photo below. This image describes the opposite of KD Lang.

Slutty Rooster

DON'T ASK ME.

. . . ?

Harry Dean

SPEAKING OF ECONOMY OF LINE, HOW ABOUT Harry Dean Stanton? Him and Anthony Hopkins are two artists that understand the power of stillness.

ON HIS ROLE IN, PARIS, TEXAS

"The whole film evolved on a very organic level. It almost had a documentary feel to it. It wasn't odd to be in the lead, I took the same approach as I would to any other part. I play myself as totally as I possibly can. My own Harry Dean Stanton act . . . I don't know whatever happened to Travis. I'd say . . . it's me. Still searching for liberation, or enlightenment, for lack of a better way to put it, and realizing that it might happen, it might not."

First Response

RESPOND TO THE MATERIALS at hand. What do the materials suggest? More often than not our brains get in the way and try and retool our natural response into the illusion of "style". Follow that response uninhibited by the thinking mind and see what you get.

Economy

LUCKY LUCKY, KITTY KITTY. (As named by my kid).

A group of us get together once a month to drink beers in a pub downtown and sketch. It's all about being quick and not letting your head get in the way of your intuition. I find that often the 1st thing that comes out of the pen is the best. It's our hang-ups that come in after conception and start to fiddle -- trying to bring 'intelligence' into the picture (or some other form of artistic capital).

FOR THE GROUPS BLOG GO TO:

GUELPH PEN CLUB

PORTFOLIO DAY #2

{ EVERY SUNDAY FEATURES A RECENT COMMISSION }

ART DIRECTOR, KATIE MATHEY FROM The Atlantic commissioned an illo for the 2009 Fiction issue. The piece accompanies an essay by Tom O'Brien about the importance of the imagination in fiction writing. O'Brien sites a short story by Luis Borges entitled, The Aleph, a fictional point in space that contains all other points.

". . . and if you position yourself on the cellar floor, you will see a tiny sliver of light that contains everything -- everything that ever was, everything that will be".

FOR A FULL TEXT GO TO:

http://theatlantic.com/doc/200908/tim-obrien-essay

Here are the various stages of the piece from rough to final. A very reference heavy piece. Because of the subject matter I built the whole substructure on The Golden Mean. (SEE BELOW). The red circles represent specific objects that needed referencing. Workin' hard for the money.

Dog and Drapery

SLEEPING WITH THE DOG or -- the illustrators ongoing struggle with drapery.

Dylan Horrocks from New Zealand is a drapery king.

See:

http://www.hicksville.co.nz/

Nice Package

THERE ARE CANVAS' ALL AROUND US. I've been studying the patterns of nature and it never ceases to amaze. Although I have to say I'm taken aback by the imagery portrayed on my box of Soy milk. Don't get me wrong -- I understand that there is a tradition of hiding naughty imagery inside the sweaty ice cubes of a glass of Brandy but this is what I'm seeing when I eat my Shreddies with my kid at 8:30 in the morning.

Georgia O'Keeffe eat your heart out.

Hands Heart

I HAVE A REAL PROBLEM WITH DISNEY in that all of their content distorts human experience at the expense of those who are not equipped to defend themselves against it. Worse yet, the problem has spanned 3 generations of viewers, all glued to the developing plot and desperate to find the resolution of the ever-present abandonment narrative.

That said let's look at Amy Adams' hands. I've never seen such energy diverted to someone's hands before. Adam's impersonation of an animated Disney figure is Herculean and deserving of an academy award for hand acting. As an illustrator I've always found hands to be the most useful prop (outside of the facial features themselves) to provide a window to the heart.

Time Traveller

GUITAR VIRTUOSO, KEVIN BREIT CAN travel through time. Sounds flaky I know but if you've ever seen him play you'll find it hard to keep up. His musicianship is more intense than any musician I've ever encountered. It's as though there is no physical interruption between his thought process and the sound that comes out of him. He's better known as the guitarist who played on Norah Jones' smash hit records and his smooth soulful playing is equally intense as his 'Folk Alarm' playing. His own song, Humble Me on Jones', 2nd studio album, Feels Like Home demonstrates his incredible use of white space.

SEE NEIL YOUNG'S SOUTHERN MAN AT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAXK_rZdJu4

Somewhere around the 3 minute mark he goes off into the light. Apparently the human eye, in concert with the brain, can absorb and process the equivalent of 16 frames of information (per second). Motion pictures are shot at a frame rate of 24 frames a second hence the miracle of movement as our minds are slower than the flicker of the projection. The ear can carry on listening to several conversations at once and is able to sort the various meanings into place. Kevin's playing is such that you can't process the content as quickly as it arises. It's like looking at a fire when you see him play, 'a force of nature' as my friend Jeff would say.

Sexy Jesus

I OFTEN WONDER IF, AS I COME NEARER TO DEATH, 'Will I embrace religion?' (will religion embrace me?). As a child I used to get dragged around to all these prayer meetings/events/trade shows. I have a very sketchy memory of a biker getting up and telling his story of redemption. It all began at the pit of his lowest point of his own moral pendulum swing. Addicted to drugs and women, he closed his eyes while sitting on his parked Harley Davidson and just as he was about to be killed by oncoming traffic, Jesus (or a force) lifted both him and the bike to safety and he found himself now on the sidewalk beside the road. These stories repeat themselves over and over as disfranchised people look for forgiveness or a sign or perhaps a devil to blame.

I also remember 'Jesus 76'. It was like an outdoor music festival all about Christ. I remember seeing people get baptized and speak in tongues and I myself faked speaking in tongues to see what might happen. I was scooped up in a cruller of Christians and lifted, blessed and given mass approval. (Years later my sister confessed to have instigated the same experience that weekend).

Religion seems to give structure and adds comfort where it's needed. I'm no Christian. Was an alter boy as a 11 year old much to the pride of my mother and grandmother who tried to foster my christian roots with comics about Pope John Paul II (SEE BELOW).



. . . And another piece my mother found at a Saint Vincent de Paul shop.



That said, I'm always very curious about Christ depictions. They say so much about the world.

Curious Pajamas

LAST CHRISTMAS MY FATHER-IN-LAW GAVE MY son a pair of Curious George pajamas. It wasn't until February or March that I actually realized what was printed across the front. (SEE ABOVE) The articles of clothing came from Walmart and no doubt had their beginnings in Haiti, Bangladesh or Nepal at the hands of some young sweatshop worker. I'm not certain if this is a genuine typo or if there's some kind cultural inside joke going on here. I've googled Goorge and I get a smattering of Facebook listings. Perhaps the misspelling was intentional due to unauthorized copyright use? H. A. Rey would be none too pleased.


One step further in this cultural disconnect is my CANADA shirt, (SEE ABOVE) knit in U.S.A. and assembled in El Salvador. I may be naive in this age of globalized labor driven manufacturing but the irony of my 'CANADA' shirt is too much.


. . . George could load the spool very well. The man in the Yellow Hat will be proud.

PORTFOLIO DAY

{EVERY SUNDAY FEATURES A RECENT COMMISSION}

EDITOR DAVE MITCHELL FROM, THE BRIARPATCH, commissioned a cover for their special Education Issue. The piece is all about how Canada's Education system is stiffing the student population with standardized testing. The 'EQO's' are designed to produce statistical data that can be used to justify any action on the part of the Ministry of Education. God help the kids when they arrive on the worn out doormat of the 'real world' and they haven't any critical thinking skills. My goal in the illo was to portray a young person Who's on the cusp of realizing there's no invisible hand guiding the things.

Since 1973 The Briarpatch has been one of Canada's most important socio-political voices. The sub-heading reads, 'Fighting The War on Error'.

". . . fresh, imaginative and tough. This is writing by free thinkers for free thinkers. Canadians are lucky to have a magazine so committed to truth, justice and inspiration.”
- NAOMI KLEIN, author of The Shock Doctrine

FOR MORE GO TO:
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/

Location Scouting

MY FAMILY AND I WENT FOR A CANOE paddle out at the Rockwood Conservation Area. As we came down the valley towards to beach we encountered a beehive of construction activity. There was an entirely new kids camp, complete with 5 fully functioning cabins that weren't there a week before. I saw an artist hand painting words on the side of each cabin and I realized that this must be a complete break from reality. Turns out they're going to film a daytime feature here come September. The area is a perfect stand-in for Northern Canada with those crazy Group-of-7 pine trees and Precambrian rock. (Apparently A.J. Cassen lived here between ages 9 - 14).

Afterwords we went into town for sandwiches and the woman there let us in on the rumor that this was to be a film staring The Jonas Brothers. I immediately scrolled through the list of tweens in my community that I could share this with. The sandwich woman's 13 year old daughter is not at all impressed. According to mom she is more interested in Neil Young.


VIEW FROM THE BEACH

Unrequited Geek Love

WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL ALL THE pretty girls would get me to draw their title pages. All the jocks would get me to draw pictures of naked girls. I was (am) the nerd who could draw. That was my capital. Many people have this notion of the creative person as this inspired lofty human who has 'special' qualities but the reality is most of us are the socially stunted, alienated, friendless quiet ones at the back of the class drawing in the margins of our math duo-tangs.

You may have seen the Zwigoff documentary about Robert Crumb. I recently found a beautiful Crumb still-life that blows me away: The drawing below of a simple French doorway. The cement is crumbling, the paint peeling. It strikes me in the way that Crumb took an empty frame of a man and sublimated him with his artwork. If you see the documentary you'll note that Crumb comes from such an unlikely beginning and just as easily could have ended up on the street instead of becoming the voice of 1960's counterculture. Like the French drawing, he takes this empty space (a doorway no less) and creates beauty in the decay with his rich wobbly-old-peanut-butter-sandwich line work.

My wife and I have recently purchased a Crumb Serigraph of the 1971 cover to, San Fransisco Comic Book. (SEE BELOW). Excited for it's arrival in the post. Also excited to read his new work -- an adaptation of, The Book of Genesis.

American Sex & Poetry

MY WIFE AND I HAVE BEEN BITTEN BY the HBO True Blood series. The Allegorical possibilities are endless. Vampires can be substituted for homosexuals, African Americans. The work is a wonderful critique of white America. The mix of sex and violence is shocking but I can't look away. Director, Alan Ball is some kind of artist. I'm not much into vampires or gothic this-that-or-the-other but the narrative textures in this program are very rich.

HE WRITES:

"When I was 13 years old, I was in a car accident with my sister, who was driving the car. It was her 22nd birthday, and she died. She died in front of me. She died all over me. Death stuck its big old ugly face in my face and my life changed. That's why death seems to be a theme that appears in all my stuff".

AND

"Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to see it".

The title sequence is an Incredible Haiku that sums it up beautifully.

ANNA PAQUIN AS SOOKIE STACKHOUSE.

First Light

MY OLD COLLABORATOR, BRUCE MCDONALD HAS A repeating motif in his work of the sleeping female being observed. SEE: Roadkill (1989) as the director, "As Himself" pans the 16mm camera from a mirror onto the sleeping figure of "Ramona" played by Valerie Buhagiar -- SEE: Picture Claire (2001) as Juliette Lewis' character, Claire, is the subject of a photo exhibition that consists of mural sized images of her face as she sleeps. SEE: Highway 61 (1991) as Don McKellar's, Pokey Jones watches Valerie Buhagiar's, Jackie Bangs character asleep in the car after an all night drive on their way to the birthplace of Bob Dylan in Duluth, Minnesota. Subsequently one of Bruce's earliest shorts, I believe it was, Knock! Knock! (1985) began as a quasi documentary where he filmed the inside of people's bedrooms. He got as far as his parents' and then the narrative devolves from there. Bruce was in town a few weeks back to promote his latest film, Pontypool. We caught up for drinks and I asked him about this repeating image in his work. He hadn't noticed the pattern but I take Bruce for a far more complicated fellow than he would have us believe. I suspect there's a much larger narrative purpose at work here.

WAITING FOR MY SON TO RISE.

The Hirshfeld

LAST SUMMER MY WIFE SON AND I SPENT the most lovely day in Niagara On The Lake where the Shaw Festival was holding an exhibit of some of Al Hirshfeld's theatrical caricatures. We ate chocolate bread and checked out the 'Line King'.

My good friend and animation powerhouse Sean LeBlanc turned me onto this clip of Hirshfeld drawing. I particularly love the moment when he follows the imagined line of drapery behind Paul Newman's pointed finger.

99 years old. I have so much to learn . . .

Go to this address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC1t2DmCeAU