a lazy girls guide to success

More about Sam3/2010 here

Al Lukas is a blues musician traveling across Canada on a Good Faith Tour. He has worked his way from Toronto to Vancouver (final destination in Victoria) on the barter system. He is also filming the tour to compile a documentary of his experience of bartering and making music. Jackie Treehorn hooked him up with a few gigs here in Vancity  and for the past week I have had the honour of having him in my home and introducing him to our Vancouver music scene. It was love at first sight for Carson and I. He’s a talented, soulful, professional artist who has inspired both of us and we are so proud to have had this opportunity of getting to know him. And Ladies, what out. Al has one of the sexiest voices, its deadly. Check this guy out, he’s down.

here’s his site;

www.lukasproductions.com

www.myspace.com/theallukasband

Al preforms “She’s My Cadillac” live

seriously check him out.

Please check out my bands new official website at www.jackietreehorn.ca

samples of our music, photos, and a blog all for your viewing pleasure!

photo by EVILPatrick

So if you hadn’t heard; THE OLYMPICS ARE COMING! and here is how some Vancourites feel;

I hate vancouver…here’s why

oh and whistler’s bankrupt.
here’s a local opinion

My very smart brother, Scott Hamilton of Jackfish Hammy’s guide service, posted this comment on my last blog;

Lindsay, I’m no artist or do I profess to know much about anything but I often think, (my own humble opinion here), that Picasso was a abject artist when he painted people. The paintings where beautiful but the more you look at them they are grotesque. See his acrobat paintings. They are pictures of supposed atheletes that do amazing things yet the more you look at them the subjects are thin, pale, under nurished, almost corps like. Their arms and leg are in unnatural positions and are out of proportion like the prisoners in a concentration camp. The colors he uses are bright and unnatural, blood reds and bile greens, veiny purples. (I guess those are natural colors but there is so much of it, like murder). Just a thought. Period blood is groady like ball sweat.

I though it would make for an interesting exploration into the infamous Picasso’s work.

Early Work;

Vida 1903

Vida (The Life) is a painting from Picasso’s “blue period”. He has created a melancholy tone through his work with a cool blue palette. A naked couple looks upon a dressed mother holding her baby, while in the vague background. Picasso has placed simplified figures of a couple and a lonely being in the mid ground mimicking the three in the foreground. He captures a certain loneliness and isolation, congruent to most of the paintings of his “blue period” which last from 1901-1904)

Being no stranger to death, Picasso began this period after a suicide of a dear friend. I argue that it is abject response to his loss which spurned the “blue period”. Also the use of a cool palette embodies the appearance of corpse like representation in Vida. Are these people close to death or are they the walking dead?

Family of Acrobats 1905

Family of Acrobats was a departure from the “blue period” adding warmer colours to the representation. Picasso suggests a landscape behind the subjects with blue skies and “happy little” clouds. Yet, the subjects are still somber and a bit unhealthy looking. (the bile greens and yellow jaundice flesh tones)  My brother suggested to look at Picasso’s paintings of acrobats to see an example of “abject”.  I argue that Picasso used the abject throughout all his work.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907

These lovely ladies are a great example of Picasso’s understanding of the abject. He took a few steps away from his “realistic” portrayal of his subjects into his cubist era. Here we also see his affinity for African Art (or “Primitive Art”) represented in the African style mask worn by the 2 ladies on the right. A mask is a form of abject art because it can be worn to create a character or subject and when off it is an object. A mask is an objectified face (like a prosthetic limb) which can be bought, own and sold. It reminds me of celebrities who become pop icons. His or her face is no longer their own,  but is owned by the public’s to deface, slander, appropriate and do what it will. His or her persona becomes commodified and objectified.

Often are the marginalized found in the abject space. Historically women, ‘othered’ peoples, children, animals  and the gay and lesbian community has been legally designated as property, objects of the powers that be, not subjects of a civilized society. Speculation of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon has lead some Art Historians to believe these ladies are prostitutes, which is suggested with the yellow flesh tones symptomatic of the epidemic syphilis which ailed the sex industry of Picasso’s time. Prostitutes are abject, they are concealed as a dirty little secret, violently removed from proper society, yet the oldest business in the world. They sell their bodies as if they were merchandise, objectifying sex. Many prostitutes, when asked how they can fuck strangers, say they think about something else and have out of body experiences, metaphorically leaving their bodies behind to let their client do their will. Poetically fucking a lifeless body? Detaching their spirits from their bodies? Sounds damn abject to me.

Three Musicians 1921

Instead of rendering his subjects realistically, Picasso embraced cubism, abstracting the forms of the body into shapes. This is a form of abject simultaneously exploring different forms of representation of the subject while objectifying  body parts into mere shapes and basic colours. For example, we see legs the white “legs” of the oboe/clarinet (?) player on the left, but those “legs” are also an upside down U shape. When cubism is used to represent people, it creates a space of abject.

Here is another example from Picasso’s master class in Abstraction. It transforms the realistic form of a bull into an abstracted shape of a bull.I love these images because we can see the transformation from realism to abstraction. It gives a glimpse into Picasso’s artistic process and how he broke down form.

Bull 1945

Guernica 1937

The most famous of Picasso’s paintings is Guernica. The piece commemorates the German bombing of Guerinca during the Spanish Civil War. In the picture we find a mother holding a dead infant in her arms (left) dead soldiers upon the ground, people fleeing, limbs and heads in the air, which is abject. Corpses, amputated limbs, and beheading transform living things into dead objects.  The natural reactions to dead things are repulsions, shock and horror. I think Picasso uses this to the effect of the viewer in expressing the devastation of war.

Thanks Scott for your comment! Look at all the thinkin’ it inspired!

Are you interested in making your own Picasso? Try this neat site at mrpicassohead.com

AND as I seem to always add funny videos at the end of these long winded blog postings, here is artist Pricasso, as you may guess, paints with his prick. ENJOY!

After some recent discussions with painter Justin Ogilvie about ‘the Abject’ I thought I would make a post about the idea.

Justin asked if I could described the abject in a few words, so I said “Imagine a beautiful woman, and then imagine a beautiful woman with shit, piss and period blood. After thinking about my description, it doesn’t quite explain it.

I learned about ‘the abject’ in my Gender studies class after reading Julie Kristeva’s Powers of Horror.

Somewhere between object and subject lies the abject. A corpse is a good example of abject; it is the materiality of living and subject turned inanimate object. It is experience at seeing death, and upon realizing the material of life, react in shock and horror. We realize we are really animated objects. This also describes the stuff people leave from their bodies like hair, toe nail clippings, blood, piss and shit, skin cells, and limbs. When attached to the body it is alive a part of a human, once detached it is an object (and often received with disgust or horror.)

Here’s an amazing website called onmyperiod.com which has period photographs and menstrual art, which is an example of how blood can be abject. It is a great site by May Ling Su…not for the fearful of period blood.

This actually exists? This is a REAL product?

Somehow this corporation has managed to create a product which makes a woman’s smell consumable. I cannot really say why I have such an violent and sad reaction to this product. Could it be that it is an organic, natural,  bodily fluid only present and accessible in intimate moments?

I can guarantee there is no product equivalent to Vulva marketed to women. (Eau de Teste???) I hypothesize why; it’s twisted and creepy for numerous reasons. Most women would like to know the person they smell. By nature, scent is intimate and personal. A bottled bodily fluid from some company is artificial intimacy and suggests some sort of power struggle. The company is capitalizing on the alienation between the sexes and has created a product which is based on the most personal of scents without actual intimate interaction.  It allows access to such personal fluids without the having to communicate with a person, removing the woman completely from the equation. I think my biggest problem with this is that it gives the illusion of intimacy but further alienates men and women from each other. Something as private and personal as a woman’s vaginal smell becomes available on the market lends to the notion that a woman can be bought.

A human’s smell cannot be commodified.   This company is attempting to commodify something which cannot be commodified; the intimate, personal and uniquely female experience.

I don’t want to appear prudish. I do not think the smell of a woman is dirty nor the appreciation of the scent. It can be very enjoyable thing to share between lovers. I do think the company is exploiting the sexually marginalized and that is where the shame should lie.

On a humorous note, I wonder how they bottle Vulva? I was immediately reminded to this Kids in the Hall skit “Husk Musk”

Androgyny by Norval Morriseau

Wild Rice (Anishinaabeg; Manoomin) grows naturally in North Western Ontario and Minnesota (Sunset Country), which made for an upbringing on this delicious grain. Here’s a favourite regional recipe from my hometown, Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada. It is a creamy elegant soup that is hearty and rich. Substitute the bacon for sausage or ham, but also if you are lucky enough to get your hands on moose sausage, it would compliment the wild rice very well. Serve with a fresh sour dough or rye bread. Enjoy!

3 tbsp of butter

1 cup diced white onion (I use red onion sometimes because I like it more)

1/2 cup shredded carrots

1/2 cup diced celery

1 cup of cooked bacon or breakfast sausage (ham would be great too)

1/2 cup flour

2 quarts of chicken stock (homemade preferably)

3/4 sliced mushrooms

3 cups of cooked wild rice

1 cup whipping cream or sour creme

garnish with chopped dill and green onion

Melt butter into a large soup pot at a low temperature. Add onions, carrots and celery (mirepoix) and cover with a lid. You want to “sweat” the onions mix. If the onions are turning brown, your temperature is too hot. When the onions and celery become translucent add sliced bacon or sausage.  Once the meat is cooked through add the flour (this makes a roux) stir until all the sausage, onion, carrots and celery is covered with the flour.

Turn the heat up to medium and add 2 quarts of chicken stock and stir well. You will notice the stock begin to thicken because of the flour. Bring to boil and stir constantly. Add the sliced mushrooms and wild rice and return boil. Let simmer for 5-6 minutes and remove from the heat. Let cool for 2-3 minutes and add whip cream. Cooling the soup before adding the whip cream ensures the heat won’t curdle the whip cream.  Return the temperature to low and bring soup back to a simmer. Once at a boil garnish with chopped dill and fresh green onion.

HINT: I presoaked the wild rice for 24 hours before cooking it. The longer it is soaked, the less time it takes to cook it. Usually wild rice takes 50-60 minutes, when soaked, it took 15-20 minutes.

Zizania aquatica- Wild rice

fumbling and stumbling
stashing trophies from the “other world”
into her pockets
into her socks,
into her knapsack
into all her crevices
so she can remember
she can take this experience back

but she is working only for the Future
she is missing all the information
being given
to her
knowledge that could never fit in her knapsack
or be captured with flash photography

can’t even write it down

for it moves faster then reiteration

this moment cannot be salvaged
stop trying

breathe in breathe out
experience now

An excerpt from Virginia Woolf To The Lighthouse.

Lily stepped back to get her canvas – so – into perspective. It was an odd road to be walking, this of painting. Out and out one went, further and further, until at last one seemed to be on a narrow plank, perfectly alone, over the sea.

Why then did she do it? She looked at the canvas, lightly scored with running lines. It would be hung in the servants’ bedrooms. It would be rolled up and stuffed under a sofa. What was the good of doing it then, and she heard some voice saying she couldn’t paint, saying she couldn’t create, as if she were caught up in one of those habitual currents in which after a certain time experience forms in the mind, so that one repeats words without being aware any longer of who originally spoke them.

Can’t paint, can’t write, she murmured monotonously, anxiously considering what her plan of attack should be. For the mass loomed before her; it protruded; she felt it pressing on her eyeballs. Then, as if some juice necessary for the lubrication of her faculties were spontaneously squirted, she began precariously dipping among the blues and umbers, moving her brush hither and thither, but it was now heavier and went slow, as if it had fallen in with some rhythm which was dictated to her (she kept looking at the hedge, at the canvas) by what she saw, so that while her hand quivered with life, this rhythm was strong enough to bear her along with it on its current. Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she lost consciousness of outer things, and her name and her personality and her appearance, and whether Mr. Carmichael was there or not, her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names and sayings, and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting over that glaring, hideously difficult white space, while she modeled it with greens and blues.

Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to her canvas. There it was – her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.