It’s been around since last October and I’m sure you’ve seen some of the works if you’ve been downtown during this time.
The Vancouver Sculpture Biennale is an international art show that takes place once every two years. It is unique in the world of Biennale’s, focusing on both sculpture and the urban landscape. This eighteen-month festival of events celebrates the cultures of the world, the diversity of the city [vancouverbiennale]
Do you have any pictures of Innuksuks? You can find them everywhere – off the seawall near second beach in Stanley park, in Jerico Beach, UBC, SFU…. They’re everywhere. This particular one can be found at the Falls near the Chief on the way to Whistler.
Where do Innuksukscome from anyway? What do they symbolize?
Edit: Due to protests from a fellow Vancouver metroblogger, I have corrected the spelling of “Innuksuks” on this post. I hope this has met with your approval. No insult to any ethnic group was intended.
A bit of an update from last month about the long, drawn-out death of Storyeum: it might not be so drawn-out after all.
I wasn’t aware that the Gastown live show/museum attraction already owed the city $5 million in back taxes and other costs when it filed for bankruptcy protection (the thing cost $22 million just to build).
It looks like City Hall is ready to pull the plug and cut their losses (according to one CBC.ca article) It really is too bad. Still, as several commenters pointed out last time, $27.95 is a steep adult admission price for a local museum. It may be an unfair comparison (particularly when I haven’t bothered to check the exchange rate) but the Louvre museum in Paris is charging 13 Euros to get into the permanent and temporary exhibits.
Photo courtesy: Matt Musselman
Today’s Word on the Street featured comic book journalist Joe Sacco speaking not once but twice. Starting in the morning on CBC Radio’s Studio One Book Club, 130 lucky contest winners got to hear Sacco talk. In the afternoon, the floodgates opened and the rest of his fans crowded into the limited seating in the Word Under the Street room for a “Chat and Signing.”
As a fan of Sacco’s, among other longtime fans, I wasn’t quite ready for the fifteen minutes the moderator allotted to the “chat” part. It wasn’t only me who went, “Huh? It’s over already?” after Sacco concluded his chat. Heck, it wasn’t even much of a chat, it was more of us asking Sacco questions. We missed out on Sacco’s description of his new book.
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Among the many interesting things at the VAG right now is a retrospective on Arthur Erickson’s career. Wow. Did he ever design a lot of unpleasant buildings.
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Cloverdale, that oasis of small town urbanity in Surrey’s farming community middle, is full of murals.
The Book Barn technically has paintings on glass, not murals; still they are a hoot in the canon of outsider art. Yet the artists who created them, in this case, a group of high school students, aspire to join the ranks of the mainstream art world.
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There’s quite a few events happening this evening (Friday 18 August 2006), but with a little planning and a lot of rushing around, you could attend part of many of them. Below are just the ones I know of that are nominally free–but play nice and buy food if you’re at a restaurant, drinks if you go to a bar, pay transit fare if you’re riding, or make a donation to the organizers if such is requested.
Begin. 6:30 pm–BIFF is having a fannish show and tell night (or, if you prefer, the frog for rent
creativity challenge). Skip out early; 8:00 pm–Robson Square Summertime Dance, put on by DanceSport BC. The first half hour is a professional dance lesson. Tonight’s class: the Social Foxtrot. General dancing and dance performances alternate throughout the rest of the night, with contests and giveaways near the end. Admission by donation and/or a non-perishable food item for the Food Bank. Rush off after the lesson, though, and you could make 9:09 pm, VCC-Clark Skytrain Station–Rise of the Robots! Skytrain Party, interactive public art
put on by Newmindspace. It’s Robots on a Train! End the day with drop-ins to either (or both) of the Snakes on a MotherFarkin’ Fark Party (following the end of 10:20 pm SoaP show) or the unveiling of WorkSpace (21 Water Street, 8 till late
; presumably it’s ok to be fashionably late). End. Or keep going. Up to you.
Happy Friday, everyone.
Walking on the seawall by English Bay, I once again got to admire the balanced rocks that many Vancouverites love to look at. The difference was, this time I thought to bring a camera.
The rocks are beautiful, inspiring and creepy all at once. Like most who see the rocks for the first time, I assumed they were balanced with superglue or mortar or something. Nope. These free-standing creations are a wonder to behold.
I took a bunch of pictures of them that you can check out on my Flickr site here.
I also finally got around to actually checking out the website of the artist that does this, Jozsef Toth. Check him out here.
Enjoy.
The sand sculptures in the Grand Court at Metrotown (earlier entries: 1, 2) have been complete for some days now, but the display is coming to an end. The last day is this Sunday, 13 August.
The detail is amazing. Lean in close and you marvel at the varied textures in the surface, representing leaves or ocean waves, the fine lines that make up an iPod display or a picture of the fireworks of the Celebration of Light, the realism of the human faces and figures.
And all in sand, ephemeral sand. Admiring this art leads the mind to ponder on its temporaryness, and the artists (David Billings, Peter Vogelaar, and Craig Mutch) who are willing to make short-lived artworks, knowing full well the mortality of their creations.
The Vancouver animation house Studio B has been nominated for 18 Elan awards, the Canadian video game and animation equivalent of the Oscars. Which is a silly way of describing the awards but I stole it from the CBC [cbc].
Studio B was nominated for their work on UbiSoft’s video game adaptation of Peter Jackson’s King Kong movie and the game Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. They’re also nominated for a load of kids television shows.
Okay, so maybe describing them as the Canadian animation Oscars wasn’t the CBC’s brilliant idea but the awards themselves. Quoted in the CBC’s article the awards’ publicist Holly Carinci said, “We want the show to be spectacular. I am very serious about Oscar dress and black tie.”
Because people in animation are as just like movie stars.
The awards will be presented in Richmond’s River Rock Show Theatre on September 14th, because Richmond is the new Hollywood North.
