i saw art today. and i have some other things to talk about.

paul freeman at the fab gallery
well crafted, with extrodianry material control, but filthy and degenerate--where to start. the large, exquiste pastelsof rotting corpses, looking at them closer you see fetuses, dinasour skeltons, human faces, and rats--or the recreated sculptures, the little red riding hood, her basket filled with the severed heads of the holy family, or the pretty boys and girls topped by plaster casts of breasts, testicles, and the like (chapman, koons and preacher) or the animals with human parts, including with a swan faced by a v, v, v, realistic cunt, (interperesed with fruit--the cunt had a strawberry clitoris, for example) my favourite were a seires of 3 sculptuers, of two porpises, two squirells and two of small children--each with long, pink flesh tubes, twisting and arching, finally fused, like lampreys...worth seeing.

graham peacock
two things i wanted to note about graham--
he has a series of paintings from the mid 90s called the glitter paintings, made from the same shit you use in kindercrafts--these 8 foot amorhpus blobs, with pools of gold, silver, blue or red...how the fuck does he do this w/o being camp. he also had about 70 images, only 2 of them in private collections, none in public.

also at the eag, a pretty useless french drawing show (i cannot actually talk, i have no critical vocab for french drawing for about 200 years (1680-1780 or so) --its the only one i hate w. v. few exceptions (early david&ingres), i thot the drawings would be better, i tend to like works on paper when i dont like sculpture or paintings)...mostly it was that seafoam and cream overly populated, slightly naughty, tits and ass fake mythology that we have come to expect...but there was a small, strange, dark crucifixion by delacroix--it was spare, just jesus in a black landscape, his cross conflated with his temptation in the desert, one of the lonliest things ive seen--and at his feet, a serpent, not actually that unusual but the serpent is not crushed under the heel of the divine...the wall plaque talks about how when a serpernt is in crucifxion scenes, it means christ triumphing over evil...but in this one, the snake is risen up, and looks ready to strike on the heel--the implication being that christs attempt at vanquishing evil is ineffective--but it isnt anti clerical either, its the mark of a humanist who doesnt know how to love god.

alex janviers new work (at 70!) is of patterns of the boreal forrest, either in the sky or in lichen encrusted rocks--circular, and lightly patterned, with ink and water colour is a depature from his ubquitous style---and the forrest he did the paintings in have been unpopulated for 40 yrs, b/c of cold lake military installation (or as the gallerist says"they were pure except for the bombing ranges")

slyvie vanier does the same paintings of aspens and canola which bore to tears, and are dishonest (IF YOU ARE DOING SEMI ABTRACTIONS OF NATURE, MOSTLY ABOUT COLOUR REALIZE THAT ASPENS AND CANOLA ARENT THE SAME FUCKING COLOUR) but she has one called rosa matta, which i think is a cherry blossom, superforshoretend, with cerulan and bubble gum tones, that is pure candy.

donated two of my photographs (short bookshelf 1, my room ft sask) and (your flowers 123rd st Edmonton) to the Visual ARts Alberta event and have two free tickets--numbered one and two--so the first two tickets for a gala in two weeks, doesnt sound like good news--the gala has the cbc, psudeo famous people decorating plates, and silly things that arent worth picking up, and the woman who was there didnt seem fond to see my work, but shrug...

reading butler, undoing gender, which is really good--long book report to come, but really appreciated the practical core of advice in dealing with the everyday negotaions that she once only considered theortical, she doesnt provide answers, but do you really expect her too? (and lisa, i am reading raymond chandler as well, so i do have fiction going)

say ashley, got a big hug, kibbitzed a bit, gave him his work back, getting slides from a series he is doing of non leather guns...and blair is putting shit in too, but they are booking shows (TWO) years ahead...

dad drama again, huge dad drama, same shit, same refusing to take responsibilty, same blaming me, same super high expectations, same shit over and over again, and i cant do it any more.