Blog #139…March, 2023
To continue the theme of remarkable women that I began a couple of blogs ago – I just finished Linda Schuyler’s memoir. She’s a teacher and the creator of the Degrassi TV shows that provided 35 years of education for kids in important, sometimes overlooked areas. Linda involved, respected and supported kids in the cast as scripts dealt with teen pregnancy, alcoholism, drug use, sexual abuse and bullying...an innovative way to educate both audience and performers.
The Oscars
are in a few days, I think it’s weird and oddly unfair to put Women Talking against
Top Gun Maverick, Avatar and a raft of
vastly dissimilar films…a bit like racing a hummingbird against a giraffe. But Women Talking is thought
provoking and valuable no matter what happens on March 12.
We live in a
multi dimensional world and three-dimensional forms have caught my attention
recently. In Housewarming at the Gardiner Museum, Quebec artist Karine Giboulo uses
ceramics to comment on features of life during the pandemic. Tiny figures are set
in a world at once familiar and unsettling, charming and disarming: a long line
of miniature figures with shopping carts lead to a food bank opening out of a super market bag; a large packing box with a
window shows hundreds of figures assembling consumer goods - a mirror stretching
them out to infinity and a shelf of glass canning jars contains little wee elders using walkers
and wheelchairs. The show is a great way to introduce children to art, they may
not get the message we do, but they’ll love the teeny weenies.
The Art Gallery of Ontario is currently showing Radical Remembrance, by David Ruben Piktoukun who works in 3D too. A native of Paulatuk in what's now Inuvialiut in the NorthWest Territories, David’s time in a residential school attempted unsuccessfully to extinguish his language and culture, it also failed to take his spirit and creativity. As well as using traditional soapstone and portraying scenes from Arctic life in his work, he incorporates wood, glass and metal and sometimes brings in contemporary themes with airplanes and computers. His images tell stories of growing up in a hunting and fishing community...and he was briefly married to my late friend Esther Atkin.
