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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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I am currently on a family-induced mini-road trip in South Western Ontario. These pictures represent the Toronto to Windsor leg of the tour. The bottom right image is of Detroit across the fields. This little corner of the province (very near where I grew up) is verdant and flat and oozes with that bleak sublime that characterizes Canadian dark humour. My next post will represent Windsor and Sarnia and the landscape between the two...tornado country.
There is a lot to say about Scott Carruthers' show (see below). This post is a toss-off, cause I'm on the road. I'm putting up more images to try and give a better sense of the overwhelming scale of the project. The drawings span three and half walls, and each of the images is as interesting as every other. It's a kind of compendium of everything, a history of the world located in the present media moment depicting epic themes of passion and despair combined with abject jokes, and stumbling, crumbling banal humanity. One of my friends referred to the experience as "watching" the show, and it was as immersive as movies, maybe more so. If you go to see it, book a bunch of time, cause there's easily an hour worth of art to see.
Scott Carruthers is a berserker artist. I love his overwhelming work. His next show opens this Friday in Hamilton. Go see it!!
'All at Once'
by Scott Carruthers
Hamilton Artist's Inc.
Oct. 15 - Nov. 20
Opening : Oct. 15, 8 - 11 pm
231 Bay St. North, 2nd floor, Hamilton, Ont.
On Saturday I went to a sound performance, "Music for Incandescent Events," by Sarah Peebles and Rob Cruickshank. A bunch of us stood around on the rooftop pation at DeLeon White gallery at pre-dusk. As the light in the sky dimmed, a sensor in a little yellow, waterproof box picked up the change and triggered mp3s of Peebles playing a Japanese mouth organ called a sho. Not being trained at the subleties of sound, I found the tones quite simple and near-ambient. The piece progressed for about 20 minutes as the sun set, stopping when the sky became dark and the first couple of stars started to twinkle. It was a very pretty sky and an unusual experience to just stand quietly with a bunch of people and watch light change colour ... reminiscent of James Turell. Red clouds eased into blue and black. Buildings became silhouettes. The earth spun to the east and it all got colder and darker. Happens every day.
I used to have a matching pair of old lady sibling cats, but one of them recently died. The other is padding around disoriented, trying to adjust to the role of sole cat. I keep being reminded of this phrase: We Want To Be Your Only Bird, which is from an excellent, bittersweet and understated apocalpytic essay from the year 2000 (pre-west nile) by Ian Frazier, titled "Tomorrow's Bird."
"Crows: We Want To Be Your Only Bird™." I think this slogan is worth repeating, because there's a lot behind it. Of course, the crows don't literally want (or expect) to be the only species of bird left on the planet. They admire and enjoy other kinds of birds and even hope that there will still be some remaining in limited numbers out of doors as well as in zoos and museums. But in terms of daily usage, the crows hope that you will think of them first when you're looking for those quality-of-life intangibles usually associated with birds. Singing, for example: crows actually can sing, and beautifully, too; however, so far they have not been given any chance. In the future, with fewer other birds around, they feel that they will be.You can read the whole thing here at DoubleTake Magazine.
UPDATE: they took down that link so I posted the piece in the comments section. I'll cease and desist if anyone whines.