by Marja-Leena

artists & the internet

“Artists, Musicians and the Internet: They have embraced the internet as a tool that helps them create, promote, and sell their work. However, they are divided about the impact and importance of free file-sharing and other copyright issues.” This is from the first large-scale surveys done by PEW Internet and American Life Project. It is interesting evidence of the importance of the internet, though it mostly focuses on musicians.
Thanks to Lenny at DC Art News and today’s Arts Journal.
UPDATE: PEW surveys on blogging made the news today at SocalTECH, CoolTechZone and Mediapost.(via GoogleNews)

January 4, 2005 in Being an Artist, Blogging Comments Off on artists & the internet

by Marja-Leena

White Lace, Red Threads

whitelace_redthreads.jpg
Veils Suite: White Lace, Red Threads
etching & collagraph 76 x 56.5 cm.

January 3, 2005 in Printworks, Veils Suite 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Sunday at Deer Lake

What a beautiful crisp, clear sunny day out here on the Westcoast, a rare treat in this rainforest. With no cloud cover the temperature is at or below the freezing point at night, and shady spots are frosty even during the day. We can’t complain about a little frost when the prairies have been having sub-zero blizzards. That elusive winter sun told us it was a good afternoon for a little outing to finish the holiday season and we chose to go to Burnaby’s Deer Lake Park.

First, we just squeaked in on its last day to see the two exhibitions I’d written about earlier at the Burnaby Art Gallery overlooking Deer Lake. A Survey of BC Printmaking and The BC Landscape by Toni Onley are both very interesting visual records of British Columbia’s art history. Of course I’m biased in loving prints, so I was pleased to see some of Onley’s silkscreens amidst his watercolours, and the many familiar works by several of BC’s best printmakers in the print survey exhibition.

We unexpectedly met another Finnish-Canadian artist, Irene McCutcheon, there and had a lively catch-up chat, then ran into Wayne Eastcott coming in as we left. Wayne has a print in the show that is also featured on the invitation and posters (and on my earlier entry).

Then, a walk around the gardens of historic Ceperley House, now the home of the Burnaby Art Gallery, past the lovely Jack Shadbolt Centre for the Arts and down to Deer Lake to see the ducks on the shimmering water, and then back home for some hearty home-made ham and pea soup! I think I’m ready to get back to work now.

January 2, 2005 in Art Exhibitions, Being an Artist 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

“Massive Change” exhibition

Massive_Change3S.jpg
Image Gallery – Actual photograph of installation in the Vancouver Art Gallery
Photo: Robert Keziere/Vancouver Art Gallery

I finally made it last week to the Vancouver Art Gallery’s blockbuster exhibition Massive Change. (I’m embarrassed to admit that I left it this late – it ends on January 3rd.)

Massive Change: The Future of Global Design is an exhibition by Bruce Mau Design and the The Institute without Boundaries. It was commissioned and organized by, and premiered at, the VAG. Accompanying this traveling exhibition is an extensive website and a monograph.

This is a huge and impressive exhibition. It is not an art show, and not strictly a design show, yet it is about design. Mau states,”We are not interested in the visual. We are focused on design capacity – what design makes possible.”

“The exhibition unfolds in a series of eleven general themes that address the fundamental role of design in all aspects of human life, from manufacturing and transportation to health and the military. In each area, visitors will encounter the objects, images, ideas and people that are reshaping the role of the world of design.”

The installations reveal a tremendous amount of work, and much of it looks like it may not be moveable to the next exhibition site. One room, on the theme of Image Economies, has the walls, floor, and box seats, covered in photographic images that are sealed to their surfaces (see the above photo).

The statement here: “The human nervous system evolved in an environment where seeing change – the slightest difference in the surrounding environment – could mean the difference between life and death, so it is not surprising that our most developed cultural forms are practices of the visual… Now we can see beyond with radio waves, infrared, x-rays, gamma radiation and cosmic rays.”

There is an immense amount of reading with large walls of text (and I’d read a lot beforehand) so that at times it felt too overwhelming, even if very fascinating – information overload, if you will, like in a science and technology museum. One elderly lady near me expressed the same overwhelming feeling and said “It seems like the wheel was just invented yesterday.” It seemed also that the younger visitors were less impressed because they grew up in this era of “massive change” and do not know how different the world was just a few short decades ago! It was very noteworthy and gratifying to see the crowds here, people of all ages. We came early and when we left after three hours, the lineup was out the door!

My main criticism of the whole concept is of the little recognition given to a basic human need to feel some connnection to the earth, to the natural world. I wrote many pages of notes as I viewed everything, but I believe the website for Massive Change, and some of the related links below, will do a better job of information sharing than I can. It’s a very thought-provoking topic and well worth the time!

Reviews and announcements:
the Straight
CBC Arts
things
Art Daily

Massive Change will be showing next at the Art Gallery of Ontario March 11 – May 29, 2005.
Massive Change, the book, is available at Abe Books

January 1, 2005 in Art Exhibitions, Concepts, Tools and technology Comments Off on “Massive Change” exhibition

by Marja-Leena

the sixth day

sixgeese.jpg
Six Geese A-Laying, Illustration by Jan Brett on a Christmas card, from the book The Twelve Days of Christmas, published by Dodd, Mead & Co., NY

A little bit of whimsy, forgive me, as some ever so slight relief from the heavy hearts we feel over this week’s immense tragedies….

A faint memory from childhood has been teasing me, an image of my mother saying that the Christmas tree should stay up until the twelfth day of Christmas. A search led to Wikipedia: The Twelve Days of Christmas are the days from December 26 to January 6, or the Epiphany, also called ‘Twelfth Day’, culminating that night in ‘Twelfth Night’.**

But, back then the tree was not put up until Christmas Eve. As adults now we usually put up ours about a week before Christmas, and many others put theirs up in the beginning of December. How traditions change!

So, according to the carol The Twelve Days of Christmas**, my true love shall be bringing me ‘Six geese a-laying’! An interesting fact about this song is that the total number of presents given (counting 12 partridges, 11 turtle doves…) is 364 which is 1 less than the number of days in a year.

Then this item jogged another memory from childhood of New Year’s eves, though Finnish not German:

In Germany people would drop molten lead into cold water and try to tell the future from the shape it made. A heart or ring shape meant a wedding, a ship a journey, and a pig plenty of food in the year ahead. I wonder if any Finns or Germans do this anymore today.

And so, friends, it is New Year’s Eve on this sixth day of Christmas. Have a healthy and peaceful, creative and giving NEW YEAR 2005! Let us hope for relief, restoration of life’s necessities and peace for all the needy in this world. (Ooh, my, I just realized that it is also six days since the earthquake and tsunami in Asia!)

UPDATED Jan.05.05 Just found out that Epiphany (Twelfth Day) is a national holiday in Finland. Now I understand why it was such a significant date for my mother!

December 31, 2004 in Culture, Folk Legends & Myths Comments Off on the sixth day

by Marja-Leena

Albumblatt II

VS-Albumblatt.jpg
Veils Suite: Albumblatt II
etching 76 x 56 cm.

December 29, 2004 in Printworks, Veils Suite 3 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Indian Ocean Tsunami Disaster

I don’t usually touch on political and world events here, but the magnitude of the human and economic disaster in the countries around the Indian Ocean compels me to join many others in expressing early disbelief, horrified awe and shock at the power of nature’s destruction and a great sadness for the staggering numbers of lives lost, over 68,000 dead in 11 countries at last count. The most tragic is that UNICEF estimates at least one-third, possibly up to a half of the lives lost were children (from today’s Vancouver Sun headline article “A Generation Swept Away”). The coming days and weeks and months will be extremely challenging and the young are the most vulnerable to any lack of clean water, food and medical care.

For those of us living on the west coat of North America, this is another reminder of the huge possibility of an earthquake here. We do have the West Coast /Alaska Tsunami Warning Center here, and there are calls to have such a warning system set up in the Indian Ocean region, led by Australia. Such warnings might have saved many many lives in areas furthest from the quake epicenter, where the tsunamis hit up to 2 1/2 hours later.

Yesterday, two of my favourite bloggers wrote very compelling articles related to this disaster. Beth at Cassandra Pages talked about her fear of oceans and features the very meaningful Hokusai print The Great Wave. Ronni of Time Goes By reported on the safety of another blogger Thomas Brinson who has been stationed in Sri Lanka the past few months.

Some good useful links from the great number out there:
BBC and CBC
Wikipedia
SEA-EAT aid resources
Doctors Without Borders
tsunami possible on Pacific Northwest coast

UPDATE Dec.29.04. The terrible toll keeps rising, now at 80,000 lives! On a personal note, I have just had a reply from Finland that a cousin and her husband, who went to Thailand on Christmas Day, are fine – they are holidaying in an area unaffected by the tsunami. We are all relieved and grateful, considering how many hundreds from Finland, Canada and numerous other countries are unaccounted for. My heart is sore for all this tragedy.

UPDATE Dec.30.04. 120,000 lost souls! Finland has many of its citizens visit Thailand and 260 are still unaccounted for. On New Year’s Day flags will fly at half-mast and the government’s traditional New Year reception is cancelled. It is Finland’s largest loss of lives in peacetime. ( from Helsingin Sanomat, Finnish edition). Canada’s missing are thankfully a smaller number, yet all heart-rending stories.

December 28, 2004 in Current Events Comments Off on Indian Ocean Tsunami Disaster

by Marja-Leena

Portraits II

portraits2.jpg
Veils Suite: Portraits II
etching 58 x 45 cm.

December 26, 2004 in Printworks, Veils Suite 1 Comment »

by Marja-Leena

a winter story

I am so thrilled and proud that I must share this! My four-year old grandaughter sent this lovely story she created (with a little help from her mommy and daddy): Lael’s Winter Story*
Don’t miss clicking on the circles to repeat or continue to the end, I did the first time. At the end you will find last year’s great story.
Enjoy your Christmas Eve!
(*Macromedia Flash Player required.)

December 24, 2004 in Being an Artist, Other artists 1 Comment »

by Marja-Leena

Christmas Eve

gingerbreadhouse.jpg
(My 2003 Christmas card of a gingerbread house made by daughter Erika)

It’s been sunny and cool here and we enjoyed a morning walk around our neighbourhood. I finished the last of the baking this afternoon, so this evening we decided to go for a stroll in Park & Tilford Gardens to see the annual Christmas light display – enchanting! The moon was visible in the clear sky, and it is getting frosty. As we were driving home, wisps of fog were moving in from the sea, giving the street lights a glowing halo. It may be a green and sunny Christmas. It’s almost Christmas Eve and some of our family will be here for dinner, singing and Santa’s gifts.

Again, warmest wishes to all for a Happy Christmas, Hauskaa Joulua, Frohe Weihnachten, Joyeux No&#235l and Happy Holidays ( or Bah, Humbug, as a few of you prefer 🙂 )…. and Peace on Earth!

December 23, 2004 in Being an Artist, Culture 2 Comments »