May 26, 2010
A graffiti artist ditches toxic spray-paint for eco-friendly DIY pigments
"Chickadeeday" (2010) by Stefan Thompson. Image courtesy the artist. Click to enlarge. Pablo Picasso had his so-called blue period. Ottawa artist Stefan Thompson is exploring a green period. Thompson first made a name for himself on the streets of the capital as a graffiti artist. Working under the pseudonym Maki, Thompson populated nooks and alleys throughout the city’s downtown with a... [More >>]
April 22, 2010
An Alberta sculptor fights oil companies to exhibit art on his own land
Peter von Tiesenhausen with one of his sculptures. Photo courtesy the artist As you walk through Peter von Tiesenhausen’s land, artwork emerges as if summoned from the ground up. Ships and nests made of willow branches appear along well-worn paths. Statues carved from logs stand watch from between the trees. In Tiesenhausen’s studio, small canvases that resemble the cracked earth of recent droughts... [More >>]
April 21, 2010
Postcard from Marfa, Texas: Southern lights
Prada Marfa, one of Marfa, Texas' notable artworks. Marfa became a modern art destination when Donald Judd opened a museum there in the 1970s. When you drive into Marfa, Texas, from El Paso the first thing you come across is a tiny Prada store. No one works there and no one shops there—it’s a sculpture, built in situ by artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset. Marfa, current population 2,121, became... [More >>]
March 12, 2010
Fiction: “What I Would Say” by Jessica Westhead
I haven’t been to a party before where they served pie, have you? But I guess that’s a silly question because of course you’d know the hosts, so you’ve probably— Anyway, it’s very good pie. It takes creative people to come up with a snack idea like that. I said to Appollonia—that’s who I came with—“Would you have thought of giving out pie?” And she said, “Nope.” But of course... [More >>]
February 10, 2010
For artists embedded in Afghanistan, propaganda concerns linger
Sharon McKay in Afghanistan with the Canadian Forces Artist Program. Photo courtesy Sharon McKay. Young-adult novelist Sharon McKay has visited some rough parts of the world in search of material for her stories. When she was writing War Brothers, a book that follows five child soldiers through war-torn Uganda, she travelled to that country to interview kids on the ground. For an upcoming book about... [More >>]
November 17, 2009
Turning the lens on Aboriginal urbanites with “Concrete Indians”
Portrait of Jennifer Podemski, one in a series in Nadya Kwandibens "Concrete Indians" project. Image courtesy the artist. Nadya Kwandibens Nadya Kwandibens stepped off a Greyhound bus from Phoenix, Arizona, in Kenora, Ontario, in November 2006 with only her camera and her computer. During the two-and-a-half-day trip, her suitcase, containing all her belongings, had been misplaced at a transfer... [More >>]
October 15, 2009
Remembering Quebec’s not-so-quiet revolution
Le Refus Global original manifesto (seen here in an auction photo) Sixty years ago, on the occasion of Quebec’s 340th birthday, the painter Paul Émile Borduas gave to his beloved home province an unusual gift: an evisceration in 14 pages, entitled Le Refus Global (Total Refusal). Written by Borduas, and signed by 15 of his students and friends — members of a group of Québécois artists known... [More >>]
September 21, 2009
Terrance Houle reclaims the Hollywood Indian
Terrance Houle. Photo by Jarusha Brown. In a small bright room in downtown Toronto, a young Aboriginal woman is auditioning for a role she never expected to play. “I’d like to read the part of Billy Jack,” she says. With script in hand, the woman narrows her eyes and begins to read: “It’s my medicine bag. Got some owls feathers, sacred corn, snake teeth …”... [More >>]
September 4, 2009
High and low culture collide in a glorious mess on Tumblr.com
Tumblr reflects contemporary pop culture: not so much like blogging, more like collage. Illustration by Dave Donald. [Editor's note: If you're curious, This Magazine has its own Tumblr blog. Visit quote.this.org] I have never left a cinema with as big a grin on my face as when I watched the spectacularly awful Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Every complaint I had heard was spot-on—that the acting... [More >>]
August 27, 2009
“Conceptual comedy” duo turn jokes into art as “Life of a Craphead”
"Sitting Bed" (2006) by Life of a Craphead. Photo courtesy the artists. Amy Lam, left, and Jon McCurley, the "conceptual comedy" duo known as Life of a Craphead. For Toronto’s “Making Room” art show in 2006, Amy Lam and Jon McCurley—the duo who call themselves Life of a Craphead— erected a bed sitting on a couch. The couch was large and blue and the bed sat as a human... [More >>]
