We've got it all right here, folks! Everything that's ever been written up, photographed, and discussed on the Sad Mag website. Enjoy browsing our archives!
Sitting down with Alex Waber and Lynol Lui, friends of Sad Mag and skilled photographers, was quite an adventure. Discussing everything from selfies to country music, this unstoppable duo is on their way to success in the photography world. With various similarities and an abundance of differences in their art, they’re definitely going to make their Fashion No.1 Photography Show diverse and unforgettable.
Sad Mag: Tell us about yourselves.
Alex Waber: My dad was a photographer, so when I was really young, he gave me cameras to play with. I learned on film, which was good because I learned to focus on something; granted at the time there were lots of photos of my dog and toys. My fascination with photography turned into a fascination with video in high school. I went to Capilano College for cinematography and worked in the cinematography industry doing safety videos, like “why you don’t wear ear buds when you’re working.” Ultimately I learned I didn’t like film because there are too many people and egos involved, and the hours were crazy. I ended up taking a step back into photography since there is so much more freedom in photography.
Lynol Lui: I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Lethbridge, where I came from. I started out doing fine arts, mainly drawing, then I got into photography through my sister and her partner at the time. They were based in Hong Kong, so I was fortunate enough to take a trip out there during my second year of university. They got me my first professional camera and her partner let me do my first shoot. All he said was “have fun,” and I just started firing away. I was so nervous, but that was my very first publication. That’s when I fell in love with photography and started to mend it with my drawings.
SM: What kind of set up do you prefer (music, tea etc.) when you’re photographing or editing?
AW: Music is crucial. Aside from country and hip-hop, I listen to everything else. I’m really into ambient noise right now. Through the editorial shoot I did for Sad Mag, I got wrapped up in the scene of experimental noises. It’s probably made a shift in my fashion photography. Before, I was inclined towards certain shapes, now I’m becoming more abstract. I can do my work on the bus, at a café, or at home, as long as I have my music to keep me in the zone.
LL: It’s interesting how influential music is. I always put hip-hop on, grab a coffee, sit in my office and I’ll literally be working for eight hours straight. When I’m doing a shoot, I like more of an intimacy of just the model and me. If someone else is there, she might feel uncomfortable.
SM: Do you prefer film or digital photography?
LL: Mostly digital. This technology is here right now so I might as well use it.
AW: Digital for clients, and film for my own personal stuff.
SM: How do you feel about Instagram?
LL: It’s a new way of marketing. It’s been an amazing platform for me; it’s opened so many doors. I’m taking advantage of it as much as I can. I know a lot of photographers that use it as a platform to showcase their art. They have two accounts, daily life and work life. I actually did a shoot once, Instagram specific. It was just to see if we get recognition from the brands we were photographing and we did get recognition. Just recently, I was reading about NY
Fashion Week and how some designers take advantage of Instagram. Some don’t allow pictures, while others like Tommy Hilfiger were inspired by Instagram, and had hashtags everywhere.
AW: I have a mixed relation
ship with Instagram. I’ve argued this with a lot of artists about this. It disguises mediocrity (iPhone camera photos) with a trendy filter, but then a lot of the filters are based off of the deterioration of photos. So it makes it look like the photos were taken ages ago. It kind of plays with a sense of time, this photo taken now, happened in the past. I like the way it dabbles with the sense of time in that way. Seflies are another trend I find fascinating.
SM: What should we expect at your upcoming art showing on Friday, February 28th?
AW: We got a DJ, a bar, a wicked bartender that makes wicked cocktails, and wicked beer. Tons of people are coming like friends, family, and people we’ve never met that have become attached to our work.
LL: People that I’ve worked with, people in the industry. The public. It’s a good night to come out, listen to some music look at some beautiful pictures.
SM: What does the future look like for you?
LL: I told myself I would start printing more this year. I’m also going to keep submitting to editorials. I’d like to do more shows since this is my actually my first show in Vancouver. Last year, I was in local editorials and a few magazines in the US, so this year I hope to expand to bigger US magazines, and maybe even European editorials.
AW: Pretty much the same for me. I think Warhol said, “Make something, and while everyone is busy criticizing that, make something else.”
Make sure to stop by Remington Gallery and Studio at 108 East Hastings on February 28th from 7pm to 1am to see the fabulous photos by Alex Waber and Lynol Lui. Follow Alex Waber on Facebook and follow Lynol Lui on Facebook to keep up to date on their art, lives, and future shows!
It’s difficult to find a pair of jeans that work for all your wobbly bits without giving you saggy bum, mom waist or love handles. Dutil denim helps you avoid asking your partner with the struggle by finding the perfect pair for your body type. Specializing in both women and men’s jeans, they have become a leading supplier of quality denim in Canada with a Vancouver store that opened in 2006, and a Toronto store that opened in 2011. They carry various types of cuts such as skinny, straight and boyfriend, in addition to different types of styles like low-rise and high-rise. The best part is that they come in different raw and washed denim colours, so the options are legitimately endless! You can see over 25 brands such as Levis, Cheap Monday, Naked and Famous, Baldwin, and more at the Gastown location on West Cordova and Cambie.
I got to chat with Thalia Stopa from dutil denim to discuss everything behind everyone’s favourite material. (Make sure to read til the end—there’s a contest down there!)
All dat denim. Come get some.
Sad Mag: Why did you decide to focus solely on denim?
Thalia Stopa: To focus on one thing gives us the ability to know so much about it. When people shop here, it’s almost like a personal shopping experience. We know so much about denim and how everything fits, so we can easily steer people in the right direction.
SM: Tell me about the shopping experience at dutil.
TS: Everyone comes in for something different so we try to have something for everyone. Someone will come in, they’ll have an idea of what they like. We’ll grab a bunch of brands for them to try. They come out, and we give them our honest feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Everyone’s has his or her body issues, so we’re really good at trying everything on beforehand. The only way to know if something really fits is to have it on your body. We have all that knowledge, and we use it to help people.
SM: What are some of the more unique brands that you carry?
TS: We tend to give start up brands a chance. Like Wood and Iron, it’s a brand new brand from a little mining town out of Quebec. It’s their first production run ever. Same with Tortoise, a brand out of LA that has limited quantities. The jeans are made by hand.
SM: What are the best selling jeans at the moment?
TS: For women’s, it’s boyfriend cut jeans, they’re back with a vengeance. We have a boyfriend/skinny hybrid, which I love! For men, a longer rise and a tapered leg is in but with a lot of room in the thighs.
SM: What is the upcoming trend in men and women’s denim?
TS: I’m definitely seeing a lot more tears, distressed, and repair details. In the past few years, it’s been steered clear from due to liability issues when people are trying on the jeans. For men’s, it’s more washes. Our store used to be mostly raw denim, but now it’s 50/50.
SM: What should we look forward at the Saturday February 22nd event?
TS: There’s still a strong subculture of denimheads that are devoted to buying the smallest size possible, breaking them in and never washing them. The jeans are customized to their body. For example if someone has had a wallet in his or her back pocket for years, you’ll see an imprint of that. Basically we’re gonna see people who are passionate about the whole process, people who are proud of their subculture and what they’ve done. It’s wearable pieces of art.
With hopes of adding tailoring and additional artists on their record label, dutil denim is on the way to becoming a pioneer denim supplier for North America, and maybe even the world. Make sure to follow dutil denim on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more denimhead filled fun! Make sure to stop by their store on Saturday Februrary 22nd to either enter the Fade February contest, or watch our awesome Sadmag judges decide which top three denimheads win a free pair of jeans.
There’s also a contest! Share your favourite style of denim (skinny, highwaisted, bellbottom—the options are endless!) in the comment section on this post (with your email too), and you’ll have a chance to win a $100 gift card from dutil. Winner will be announced on Sunday, February 23.
Christepher Wee, Mr. Gay Canada 2014 is an energetic and amazingly positive guy. He thinks of himself primarily as an educator and uses his success in modeling, acting and pageantry as a vehicle for his activism. Shannon Waters caught up with Christepher to talk about his new title, what he thinks about the Olympics and what he plans on doing next.
We’d be more than happy to high five Christepher for diversity!
Sad Mag: Who are you?
Christepher Wee: I’m just a collective contribution of everything since my childhood—my parents, teachers, education, upbringing, the things I’ve learned. That’s who I am today. And every time I experience something, like this competition and the people I meet — well, you grow a little more every day. I live life just as a normal human being, doing the best I can, being a humanitarian. I’m going through life being the best human I can. Christepher Wee is a collective being of all of the positive things that have gone through my life.
SM: Tell me about the Mr. Gay Canada competition.
CW: I didn’t actually know there was a Mr. Gay Canada. Since I was young, I’ve always loved pageants. I always watched them with my mom—Ms. Universe, Ms. World, and all that. I was watching pageants on YouTube and I’d always known these ladies have a platform for charity and I wondered if I could do something like that. You see, as a teacher, I knew I could influence my students but the range kind of stops outside of your class or your school. I realized as an actor my voice was more powerful and I could influence more through my TV shows or as the spokesperson for a particular cause. I watched Ms. America and the winner, you know, was of East Indian descent and the runner up of Chinese descent, and I thought, wow, what a change! What a celebration of diversity! And then I watched Ms. World and I wondered…so I Googled Mr. World. And I found out they do have one and I was kind of blown away. So I wondered, do they have a Mr. Gay World? And they do. So I applied and the next thing I knew, I was in the Mr. Gay Canada pageant. I didn’t really expect anything of it—I thought I could use it as a platform to do what I wanted to do. I thought it would be a good place because the press would be there and lots of different organizations would be there and I could make connections and network within the community to do what I wanted to do.
SM: And you came out on top!
CW: I came out on top! I’m the first Asian winner of Mr. Gay Canada. I’m also the first competitor to win all of the accolades. I won Best National Costume—the winner wears their costume at the Mr. Gay World competition. I won with a Chief Justice costume (from the Supreme Court of Canada). I thought it would be a good costume because Canada is so progressive in its human rights; we’ve always been a leader in that, that it would be great. You know, instead of the usual, like a Mountie or a hockey player. The Supreme Court Justice costume speaks to a national philosophy, a belief behind what we’re striving for in the world. I didn’t expect to win—there were so many other amazing costumes—but I did.
I also won Mr. Congeniality. All of the guys were so great so the fact that I was voted Mr. Congeniality was really touching.
And then there was People’s Choice award. I was a bit worried about that because, having just come back to Canada, I didn’t think I would have Vancouver or BC voting for me. My group of friends is mainly in Asia so I messaged them to tell them I was a finalist in Mr. Gay Canada and asked them to vote for me and to get the word out and I was overwhelmed. My Facebook account had maybe 800 or 900 people on it and then every day it would increase by 100, 150. And I received messages and messages. I had so many messages from Asia, from strangers, from people I didn’t even know. And then I received messages from people in Saudia Arabia and Venezuela and all over the world—messages of support saying, “You represent us,” “You are our voice,” “You are our hope.”
Like I said before, I try to live my life just as a human being. I’m not doing this because I’m Asian, to benefit the Asian community, or even to benefit the LGBTQ community. I’m doing it because it will benefit all humankind. So it really hit me when I realized that I am a representative for people.
SM: So now that you’ve got the title and the platform, what are you looking to do with it?
CW: My platform has always been with youth because I teach. In Canada, we have the Gay/Straight Alliance and in BC, we have Out in Schools. But I’d like to build on that—I think we need support programs in every school. I bet every school has an annual club and every school has a student council and now, pretty much every school has an anti-bullying campaign with the pink T-shirt day. So why not make a club in every school that celebrates diversity?
I would like to start High Five Diversity. Little kids are taught to high five when they do something good—it has a positive association. The word diversity also has positive associations and lacks the stigma of, say, tolerance or inclusiveness. Instead of saying, ‘Let’s be inclusive,’ let’s celebrate our diversity. Let’s learn from our diversity, let’s educate each other on our differences and let’s celebrate them. Diversity should be a part of everyday life. And I think we’re at the point where we can make that shift and make diversity a part of education and let kids feel safe and secure and be who they are.
I’ve started Hi5Diversity on Twitter—@WeeChristepher and #hi5diversity—but I want to see it in schools. I’d like to create a Facebook page as well, where people, especially kids, can upload artwork or poems or whatever that celebrate diversity.
In the meantime, I’m in touch with GSA and Pride Education and Out in Schools, to see how they can use my sash for their cause. Because this is something that I want to do long term and a year is just going to fly by. After a year, when you’re no longer Mr. Gay Canada, how loud is your voice? I want to spend this year being very active.
Being a role model is top on Christepher’s list.
As soon as I got back from Whistler, I emailed Tim Stevenson (Vancouver City Council member) in Sochi and told him, “I’m the new Mr. Gay Canada, I want to see how I can contribute.” I didn’t think he would respond. But within hours, Maureen Douglas responded and said, “Tim got your email, he’s really busy right now but he’s interested in getting in touch with you when he gets back from Sochi.” So I’m really excited about that!
SM: Let’s talk about the Olympics. Have you been watching them?
CW: I watched a bit of the opening ceremony yesterday with friends. One of my friends asked me a really good question. He asked me if I support the Olympics. I said I do support the Olympics and the athletes, especially the athletes. Because they have worked so hard and this is a time for them to show their excellence, their unity and what they’ve worked so hard for. This is something we need to celebrate. But I don’t support what’s going on in Russia. Those are two different things. I actually think the fact that the Olympics are being held there is fantastic as previously there was talk of a boycott. I don’t think boycotting is the right route, necessarily, especially in this case. Here you have the global media on site at the location of horrible repression. What better way to draw attention, to get it out into the world, than to have the world’s athletes there and the press that goes with that? Maybe the world unified and all of those voices unified can change a few politicians’ minds, can change the country. Maybe. But at least it’s better than having a boycott. I think when we have social issues, they need to be addressed and out there. We need to build awareness for it and build a discourse in every country for it.
Sometimes I think we kind of forget that our pioneers got us where we are today. That’s why I can sit here and have that freedom to say what I want and to wear a sash that says Mr. Gay Canada. We’ve moved a long ways but that doesn’t mean we can take it for granted. Depending on who is in power, things can regress very quickly. I don’t think we can take it for granted at all, that freedom, and I think we need to be very aware of what is happening with our global neighbours because what’s happening to them could come around and affect us. And these days, with social media, we are so interconnected that we can make a difference in each other’s countries.
SM: Have you seen some of the athletes at the Olympics sporting LGBTW supportive gear?
CW: It gives me goosebumps, all the way to my head. It’s exciting. That’s why I said; we need to have presence there. Those rainbows—the world knows what the rainbow means, what it represents. And they know what pink represents and what the red ribbon represents. We all know those symbols and when they see them, people make that connection. That’s why I think it’s great that we’re not boycotting the Olympics. We should celebrate what these athletes are doing. We shouldn’t condone what’s going on in Russia—we need to speak up—but the athletes are there to show their dedication and their excellence. They’re great ambassadors. It just goes to show that we can be united and maybe we can get a few politicians to change their mindsets so that our brothers and sisters in Russia can have the freedom to live. Just the right to live and not be beaten up or spat on. I think it’s about more than just the LGBTQ community. It’s also about bullying. Because if it can happen to the LGBTQ community, it can happen to other communities too. Whoever is living in a country and is identified as not belonging or fitting in. specific criteria.
SM: You’ve moved around a lot—tell me about your travels and your time in Asia.
CW: I traveled a lot as a kid. My parents made a point of taking us on a trip pretty much every summer. It ‘s something I’ve always been interested in: traveling and seeing different cultures. When I left Vancouver and went to Asia, I was teaching International Baccalaureate Art and I wanted to go and study Asian art to be able to incorporate Asian art and art history into my program. So I took a leave of 6 months…that then turned into years. While I was in Asia, I was discovered for modeling. And then the modeling took off and led to TV. TV took off and led to film and I found a whole new existence I’d never thought about it. I found that what I could do with it was amazing. As an educator, you always have that inner drive to influence and have an impact. I know that kind of sounds cliché, like world peace, but I think that’s the way I was brought up. It’s been my mentality since I was young: to make a positive difference and to be a role model. So when I found a bit of fame and found that I could use my voice to impact so many, it drove me to become even more involved.
SM: It sounds a bit as if you saw modeling and acting as a means to an end, so to speak. Was that always how you saw it or did that change over time?
CW: It was that way from the start. At first, I was doing my art research and doing a bit of modeling and it was good, the money was good. But when you’re modeling, people don’t really know your name—they associate you with a brand. I knew people recognized me and there was an element of celebrity there but it wasn’t until film, when my name was out there and people started saying, “That’s Christepher Wee,” that’s when I realized that they really knew me. That’s when I started to do a lot of interviews. I’d done interviews before as a model, but these were much more intimate and I realized that I had a lot of options. Then I started to be approached by local newspapers to write as a guest journalist about social issues. I was approached by Teen Magazine! Charities would ask me to just show up to their events. Some people would get really excited about going to the fancy parties and stuff but to me it’s just a job. I go to the shoot because that’s my job. I’m in a TV show because that’s my job and I want to do the best I can at every job I have. I don’t think, “Oh, I’m famous, I’m better than you,” because I’m still Christepher Wee. Before I started doing any of this and who I am now, it’s still Christepher Wee. Nothing has changed in the core. But now I have the ability to use my name to do something and so I’m going to use it.
We wish Christepher luck in the future! With a smile like that, how could he lose?
SM: Do you have any particular role models for your activism?
CW: So many! So many people have gotten us to where we are today. People in science and arts and languages and technology, humanitarianism and social work—it’s taken people in all of those areas to get us to where we are today.
I love quotes. When I find a quote that really speaks to me, I Google who wrote it or said it to learn about them. I find out about their contributions and so I’m always finding new role models.
Chris Morrissey of the Rainbow Refugee Association, was at the Mr. Gay Canada Competition. She spoke to us about refugee issues and international LGBTQ issues. That’s someone who has done amazing work! And Ellen DeGeneres or even Obama, those are the people that I hope to emulate. They’re my ah-ha! moments. I’m hoping that soon I will be able to be someone’s ah-ha! moment. I think I’m getting there, some of my former students have told me I’ve inspired them. I told my students that I was a finalist in Mr. Gay Canada. At first, I didn’t but eventually it got out – and they all gave me their support!
I think if I can leave some kind of impression on people, they way that all of these other people have left an impression on me, that’s a worthy goal. If everyone can leave ah-ha! moments for others, instead of negative impacts, I think our world would be so different. In terms of what’s going on in Russia right now, people are spreading these videos of violence against LGBTQ people around, trying to raise awareness. But some people who see those videos won’t be educated – they may go the opposite way and think, if others are doing it, why can’t I? I think there are two sides to the activism coin – why not be on the positive side?
SM: So it sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate as Mr. Gay Canada this year. Do you know what comes next?
CW: Well, Mr. Gay World is coming up in August so I have to prepare for that. It’s not just about your good looks or nice body—it’s about what you bring to the organization and what you can do. The past Mr. Gay World’s have been amazing ambassadors for their platforms—they’re inspirations. The winner for this year will have big shoes to fill so I’m working towards that, towards making the judges know that I’m doing this for more than glamour. I’ve done that, I know what it’s like to have celebrity and to be in the papers. It’s irrelevant to me. It’s what you do behind the name and the title that matters. So I want to be really prepared for that and, regardless of the results, I know that, being on the world stage, my voice will be bigger. And if I win? Wow, that’s another sash that will launch me to a different level in terms of what I can do. I’m excited! I’m not getting my hopes up that I can win because, regardless, just making it there to the world stage is a win and it already gives what I want to do a bigger platform.
You can follow Christepher Wee on Twitter (@ChristepherWee) and on Facebook. He also holds the Twitter handle @WeeChristepher as a platform for his hi5Diversity program.
On April 21, Sad Mag writers Jessica Russell and Farah Tozy went on assignment for Vancouver’s Eco-Fashion Week with the intent of discovering how fashion—that most of ephemeral and wasteful of pursuits—justifies its involvement in the eco-friendly scene. How do luxury and consumerism co-exist with frugality and restraint? Over the following days, Jess and Farah discovered quite a lot that is new (most of it vintage!) in fashion and the green movement. Part 2 of 3. {Read their first dispatch here.}
After an unbelievable runway show, Jess and Farah caught up with Vancouver eco-designer Kim Cathers. Cathers is a designer and vintage shop owner, a finalist on Project Runway and, excitingly, an advocate for environmentally friendly fashion. In the showrooms, Cathers chatted about her Fall/Winter collection, kdon, which is her second 68 pound challenge sponsored by Value Village. The 68lb challenge partnered up with Value Village to push Cathers to take risks beyond her comfort zone and make thirty pieces for a collection out of second-hand clothing.
KIM CATHERS and 68lbs OF CHIC BRILLIANCE // Eco-Fashion Week // P.2
Jess and Farah here! It is hard to sit still after Kim Cathers’ incredible show. We just watched as Cathers debuted one stunning look after another. Our favorite pieces included a shirt made of men’s blazers, a belted dress made entirely out of pants (the back pockets intentionally visible) and a collaged skirt made of the linings of men’s suits.
Cathers is fearless with her designs and on the runway, and her upbeat personality shone through when she danced down the runway to Disturbia. She was thrilled with how the show unfolded, especially how the balloons looked in the finale, and was eager to let us in on some of her guilty pleasures, unforgettable moments and insight on how we can ALL be more eco-friendly.
KDON, Cathers' collection for EFW 2013 and the 68lb challenge
Jess + Farah: We were surprised to discover that sixty-eight pounds is the amount of clothing each person throws away every year, do you think that a project like The 68lb Challenge will inspire others to be more eco-friendly?
Kim Cathers: I think that the stylists that showed before me [the Thrift Chic Challenge] show what you can do on your own. You can find pieces and put them together to make beautiful outfits without having any sewing skills. I think what I’m doing is showing that if you want to take it one step further…you can. A lot of the stuff I made was really simple, it may have looked really complicated but it wasn’t. I would cut one thing and put an elastic on it. A lot of it was deconstructed and made couture style. So I do the whole range of you could do that on your own or you could buy it from me. But I am hoping that by showing these kinds of styles it encourages people to see the different possibilities in what is discarded.
J+F: What was your budget for this project?
KC: Value Village allowed me this amazing privilege. I got to go during morning maintenance, which is when they take everything off the racks that has been there for three weeks, and I was able to look through the clothes and get stuff for free. The challenge was that not everything I wanted was being discarded that day. So they gave me five hundred dollars to supplement the collection. I spent most of the money on shoes and belts and some suits that I really loved that weren’t being thrown away any time soon. But for the most part it was all free. And when it gets taken off the rack it is literally going to be discarded, sent away, and never used again. So me and Myriam [founder of Eco-fashion week] have gone in the mornings at 3am to morning maintenance and it’s so fun and nobody gets to do that! It’s a huge privilege for me to be able to work with them. Value Village gave me free reign so I decided to put the challenge on myself this year to only use sweaters and men’s suits. I wanted to showcase all the things that could be made from a very small amount of material.
J+F: We loved your runway walk and we read that Disturbia is your favourite song. What is it about this song that you love so much?
KC: I will tell you a little secret. This collection was built with hundreds of hours of Disturbia on repeat. I found that my most productive time was between 12am and 5am, and I would put on my headphones and play it on repeat for five hours. And I figured out why it worked for me. It’s because I love the song and I know it off by heart and so my mind was able to not think about the music but to feel happy while it was playing and concentrate on creativity and sewing. I found that when I would try to listen to different mixes or a song came on that I didn’t know the beat would mess me up. But I just know that the song is my go-to song. So it was totally fitting that the finale song was Disturbia.
looks from kdon
J+F: How did your experience on Project Runway prepare you for this?
KC: I think that working in a time crunch with limited materials set the precedent for being able to produce something creative and that was my vision. The pressure on that show was crazy and here no one is after me every day with deadlines. But I know it’s there. And I don’t want to be the guy that shows up to the runway with no clothes or everything is shitty, so I put the pressure on myself and I was able to do that because of having that experience before.
J+F: What was the most memorable article of clothing that you found while looking through the clothing at Value Village and what is your favourite piece that you found?
KC: That is a HARD question. I’ve been shopping at Value Village since I was fifteen so I have found a whole host of things. Last season I found a beautiful peach coloured crinoline and I have a costume trunk at home full of tutus, sparkly things and masks and so I always collect things for that. So finding the crinoline for that was amazing. I am a huge thriftier, I love thrift shopping. I found these leather leggings, and these shoes both from value village. I didn’t touch them at all I didn’t do anything to them, no sewing. I found them when I was looking for the show and then I was like nope… I’m going to keep them. And all the shoes in the show were from Value Village as well, the boots, heels, everything. And everything I found was from the Value Village on Victoria and [the one on] 48th and Hastings. Last season when I did the show shoes were kind of an issue, it was a spring summer collection and I’m really fussy about shoes, so finding strappy summer shoes was tough. But this season I found all of them, it was awesome!
J+F: In the words of Macklemore: can someone step into a thrift shop with $20 and find an entire outfit?
KC: You can. You can get a whole outfit for $20. If you have a certain aesthetic you are trying to achieve and you have very specific guidelines of what you want to buy maybe not. Maybe the pants you want are $15 and the jackets is $20. But you can get a cool outfit for $20 that you would like. But if you are going to be all fashionista and diva about it maybe not, you might have to spend $50. But still you’re saving money regardless.
From November 23rd 2012 to January 18th 2013, Satellite Gallery curated (e)merging Art/Music/Poetry: The Vancouver Artpunk Archive of Doreen Grey, an inventive, interdisciplinary exploration of Vancouver’s emerging punk scene in the late 1970s. Centered around environmentalist, artist and videographer Lenore “Doreen Grey” Herb, who died in 2010, the exhibit delved into a vast archive of Herb’s creative works and memorabilia. Satellite Gallery’s curator, Jaime Clay, recalls Lenore Herb from both a personal and curatorial perspective.
Shazia: What was your first encounter with Lenore Herb’s work like?
Jaime Clay: My first encounter with Lenore was as she was filming one of the local music shows. I was in one of the bands and was introduced to her formally by our singer. It was from then on, as I played and attended those shows in the late 1970’s that I would see Lenore often recording. She would be there with all her gear, usually alone, trying to get some of the band’s music recorded on video.
As for seeing her work (product) for the first time, I would see it presented at a pop-up art gallery around the same time. Pop-up art galleries were a recurring event back then: they gave an outlet for both artists and musicians.
But seeing her work for the second time, 30 years later, was more of a revelation. I lost contact with her (and my lead singer) in the intervening years, so finding her again proved a little difficult. Once I did, then looking at her video footage, it was all pretty exciting – having the patina of 30 years.
How does her work compare and relate to her contemporaries? Who were her contemporaries?
There were really no contemporaries to her in this genre, and she pretty much worked by herself, a decision she made and kept to. Some contemporaries would be artists Paul Wong, John Anderson, Elizabeth Vander Zaag, who specialized in video at that time. Lenore made enemies easily. She marched to her own beat, so her ideas never met eye-to-eye with any of the other artists working in the same genre. Their paths met for sure, but no collaborations ever occurred, nor the sharing of ideas. Lenore wasn’t a conceptualist. She was more of a realist. Capture the moment.
What is your favourite piece by Lenore Herb?
I have many favourite pieces from her collection. From the show at the Belkin Satellite, I could stare forever at the picture or Lenore with her video camera, taken circa 1979. She looked so engrossed in her art, unaware a film camera was near her, capturing her image. I love all her musical video work. It is very difficult to pick out one piece. Yes, they stand out well on their own, but if you take many of them together (the compilation music video was done by me) you get a sense of the awesome power of the media and how it explored and exploited unknown territory from that period.
What is the significance of her work in a cultural and historical context?
Lenore’s work is historical; an important lost document to a period in Vancouver’s (and the West Coast/BC) art movement. There was no connection to New York, London or even San Francisco or Toronto’s art scene here in Vancouver. Lenore, having grown up with the local poets in the early 1960’s, and then the counterculture to the late ’60’ and early 1970’s, felt there was a need to record these short, undocumented times. At first she used film cameras, but it soon became evident, with the punk movement, that she needed to capture more than just still images. It was a catharsis on her part, and luckily the new medium of videotape was available in Vancouver.
Lenore Herb also ran an art collective in “Metro Media”. This was in the mid 1980’s. The storefront was a revolving door of artists, musicians and poets. She was active with “Mail Art” and received (and sent) mail art worldwide. She was also active in the new medium of colour Xerox, and the reciprocation of this art worldwide.
Her video footage alone contains rare performances of many local (and international) musicians from a time when no one else dared to record it. In addition to her music videography, she has hours and hours of poetry, again both local and international (Allan Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, etc) as well as many hours of political events, especially around the theme of sustainability – at a time when such a word barely existed.
How was her work interdisciplinary? How is this relevant to artists now, and has anyone been inspired by Lenore Herb’s work in the recent past?
Lenore straddled many genres. Video, color xerox art, poetry, film, mail art, music…the list is immense.
Up until now, she kept her work very private. Part of the problem was her video was on old formats that were difficult to transfer to newer formats. And this is true today. Her archive is in dire need of preserving, as the tapes are quickly deteriorating. So not too many people have seen her body of work, especially as completely as was shown at the recent Belkin Satellite gallery.
It isn’t easy to create funny looking portraits. Photographer Alex Waber took on the task of capturing the style and the seemingly effortless lack of grace of the comedians of Vancouver for Sad Mag’s Glamour issue. Waber is well versed in the glamorous and absurd: he has photographed for some of Canada’s best fashion magazines as well as created some unsettling satire of the industry; he elegantly portrayed a baker covered in flour, and he has even made a one man comedy show about a tinfoil sculpture seem dignified. To provide a glimpse of the method behind his madness, Waber sat down for a coffee at Revolver Cafe in Gastown to shoot the shit with Sad Mag on a rare not-rainy afternoon.
Sad Mag: What was the initial idea the magazine brought to you and how did it evolve?
Alex Waber: The concept was to do a series of portraits about the comedians of Vancouver in the style of 1940s glamour. They had a few ideas of character types they wanted to portray – because each comedian has their own personal style, whether it be improv, sketch performance or political comedy. [The magazine] had a skeleton and then we worked together to flesh it out.
SM: The sets are very elaborate. You even built a cityscape for the action man photos – what made you what to take on that task?
AW: The original name for that shoot was ‘heroes’ and when I was thinking back to 1940s heroes I immediately thought of the stereotypical scene with heroes standing on a rooftop with the wind blowing. I was initially thinking it would be awesome to put them in brightly coloured leotards and capes, but then I wanted to ground it more in spy thrillers from that era. I figured it would be more fitting with them wearing bomber jackets and dressed in that style. I love early Hollywood movies where there are blatantly painted backgrounds, and I wanted to portray that sense of artificiality in this glamorous situation; so we shot [the scene] in a studio rather than on an actual rooftop…which we actually ended up doing for another shoot.
SM: That’s right, the “heavy hitters” were drinking martinis on a roof – how did that come together?
AW: The rooftop one was a weird situation because originally we were going to shoot it in someone’s apartment that we decorated to make look like an office, but due to unforeseen allergies we had to rethink that plan half an hour before the [comedians] arrived on set. Rather than having one sneezy character in the background, it made more sense to move. The solution we came up with – aside from photoshopping in the background, which would have been a bit of a nightmare – was moving up to the roof of the building and setting it up like a fancy cocktail party, with a table cloth, drinks and all that. It was a fun scramble to set it all up.
SM: Is it difficult to come up with a photo shoot that will work as a visual-joke. Or at least seem jokey?
AW: Sometimes. I often will come up with a really big complicated ideas and then have to scale it back to something that is manageable for us. We can’t do the billion dollar sets quite yet, but one day. It’s a fine balance.
SM: What do you think brings the comedian photos all together? Do they speak to each other or do you think of them as separate concepts?
AW: I think they work together because they all have a nostalgic vibe to them, primarily because of the stylists. I had two awesome stylists, Burcu Ozdemir (from Burcu’s Angels) and Tyra Weitman. The clothing, hairstyling and the makeup – there was a whole team of makeup artists – really helped to tie it to a time period. The shoots themselves can be similar, but there a few of them that get pretty crazy – the action man photos were like nothing else in the series – so I think it was mainly the styling that helped keep it together.
SM: How did the comedians react to the intricacy of your set ups?
AW: I think they really enjoyed it. A lot of them said they had never done anything like this. They’re natural performers, so once we decided to do something, they were great. The only challenge was that they’d make me laugh and then I’d jiggle the camera, so not the worst problem in the world, really.
JudeJube (JJ): Your performances on stage challenge common understandings of gender, performance, bodies, and sexuality. Describe your interpretation of drag as it relates to traditional gender performance.
Tran Apus Rex (T Rx): Drag is about fun, performance, and gender and it is both a representation of who you are and not who you are at the same time…Traditionally drag has been about the performance of the opposite gender. This creates a “visual denial” for the audience. When I perform people think they are experiencing a visual denial of my gender and I take off my shirt and somehow it does not confirm anything, this is a powerful moment. I pursue this ambiguity. I love cocks, but if I were to whip out a dildo in a way that revealed a truth about my body, it wouldn’t be fun for me.
JJ: What has sparked your interest in gender performance
T Rx: Part of the reason I started this project is because I’m becoming man at 30. I had no typical coming of age and now I have to create my own. I’ve been fooling around with the idea of initiation, a rite of passage, liminal stages between male and female. There are normative ideas of what masculinity and femininity are, we cannot escape these, we respond to them. We also disrupt these, everyone does. There are roles that I take on and play with. In all this, I’m trying to figure out what means to be a good man…thankfully, I’ve had a lot of help from women in my life.
JJ: Traditional drag defies gender identity and gender expression, generally from a non-trans perspective. In contrast, what is trans drag?
T Rx: If you’re doing drag and you’re a trans person with a trans body, which mine is, then what does it mean to be opposite? I’ve had other trans identified people assert that I should be a drag queen because that is ‘true drag’ in the sense of my gender. But what is true? My performance of masculinity on stage is very different from my expression of masculinity in my personal life.
JJ: What role does removing clothing play on stage?
T Rx: Going topless is important to my performance. The way that my chest is shaped does not confirm or deny anything… It’s disruptive. After my first few performances I had people coming up to me and not knowing if I was a drag queen with estrogen or king on T or if I identified as a trans man or trans woman. I don’t feel exposed, it’s the audience that is exposed. In terms of trans male bodies or trans bodies in general, taking my shirt off on stage means that other people have to confront their assumptions of what a male body looks like.
JJ: The Glamour Issue features Bloody Betty, a performer you’ve worked with before. What is your experience of her style of drag and performance art?
T Rx: Bloody Betty is a fantastic performer. I am inspired by her. Betty’s performances are characterized by a lot of excess. The blood is so gratuitous it becomes something completely different. In general, I hate gore, I do not watch gory movies, but Betty is changing that for me. She has challenged me because I don’t like a lot of violence on stage. A lot of people in my community are affected by violence and I find it troublesome to have violence on stage, but I’m fascinated by ritual. This is our common ground, where the bodily fluids, milk, hair, power, and gender come together…At the Sad Mag launch I will be disrupting the ideas of what beautiful and what’s glamorous.
Clement has a portfolio case full of bits and pieces, old woodprint scraps, and ink and paint swatches as a kind of storehouse of materials. “I like the idea that bits of discarded pieces of paper can regain value and take on a new role. I love the thrill of finding exactly the right piece. It is through this layering process that my drawings come to life. The anatomically correct beetle escapes the mundane realm of ‘textbook drawing,’ and escapes the flat surface of the paper too. Through my flowing lines and vibrant colours, I hope to give my beetle, bird or tree, personality.”
Sad Mag is going digital-photography-free in 2012, so we asked Kevin Kerr to reflect on the value of film photography in the context of his study of photographer-scientist Eadweard Muybridge. Read on for a discussion of authenticity, trust and the artist-audience relationship.
I think the transition back to film from digital is representative of the persistent desire for craftsmanship in the art we engage with and authenticity in our experiences. Photography was a profound innovation that moved the locus of where we drew our understanding of “truth” from within our selves to outside of ourselves. Muybridge’s instantaneous photography encouraged the belief that technology would reveal the secrets of nature that were kept from us by our own physical limitations. We became convinced that a photograph couldn’t lie and that it was a portal to an authentic moment in time and space.
Digital photography, for all of its advantages, has eroded that trust in the photograph as something inherently genuine and sincere. We look at photographs today, and instead of them being proof of the remarkable around us, they are instantly suspect and we question the photo-maker’s motives rather than focus on the subject being depicted in the picture.
With the advent of instantaneous photography, Muybridge moved away from the interpretive, subjective qualities of his landscape photography (which he frequently manipulated, making him an early pioneer of photoshop as well as cinema), in favour for a pursuit of objective, scientifically verifiable “truth”. He wanted to shed all artifice and lift the veil off of nature. But even so, when viewing his body of work in the animal locomotion series, it doesn’t take long to see the artist at work behind the science. The craftsmanship is there with his attention to not only the factual results, but an aesthetic experience as well.
A portion of the fascination comes from understanding the process undertaken to achieve the results. We’re astounded by the results knowing the limitations within the technique. I think a certain amount of satisfaction of knowing that Sad Mag is going to be returning to film is imagining the quality of the experience of not only the viewer, but of the photographer. We can imagine the required specificity of the artist’s intention when taking a picture, as she can’t cheaply fire off an unlimited number of quick images, but is restricted in the number of exposures by the length of celluloid. There is a genuine connection to the materials, a basic understanding of the chemistry as the photographer becomes familiar with the interaction between light and shadow on the particular film stock. And we appreciate that there is required an added degree of intuition required in the making of the photo as there is no instant preview of the image in the digital display. The photographer must place all of her attention cleanly on the subject and trust her eye and her intimate relationship with the camera. And then simply wait and see, long after the subject is gone, the results of the intuition. There’s a sort of beauty in this pause — a chance to let the real moment complete and dissolve before its transformation into representation, media, simulacrum.
It’s a sunny Spring evening. I’m in the warehouse that houses the office and work space of the Electric Company in East Van to interview its Artistic Director, Kevin Kerr. I’m here mostly to talk about Kerr’s 2006 play, Studies in Motion, based on the life and work of the revolutionary photographer-scientist Eadweard Muybridge, whose photographic studies of human and animal locomotion stand at the dividing line between still photography and film. The conversation ends up roving far and wide across theatre, art and truth.
While he speaks, though, my eye keeps being drawn to two items on the overstuffed shelves behind his head: a book entitled Lucid Dreaming, and a box for the game Twister. There’s something about these two artifacts that sum up what Electric Company is. Dreams. Memory. Pure physical energy.
Muybridge was, as Kerr puts it, ‘an enigmatic character’—landscape photographer turned scientist, his photographs were produced using a series of cameras shooting in sequence. He produced approximately 100,000 images between 1883 and 1886. This body of work (of which 20,000 images were published in plates available to subscribers) revolutionized the way that physical locomotion was understood.
But, though this was what Kerr stumbled upon originally—in the form of a series of VHS cassettes containing strung-together animations of the plates—it was Eadweard Muybridge the man that drew his attention to the ‘theatrical possibilities’ of his story. As Kerr watched the cassettes, he felt that ‘a sense of obsession began to emanate from’ them, which he initially put down to some kind of Walt Whitman-esque fascination with the human body. What he found couldn’t have been further from that impression. He discovered an awkward, intensely serious man with a failed marriage who had murdered his wife’s lover (an act followed by an acquittal on the basis of justifiable homicide)—‘It just felt like melodrama,’ says Kerr.
He goes on to describe his fascination with ‘this interesting duality between these motion studies which seemed to be very clinical…everything stripped away from the actions. Everything’s sort of— All sorts of indicators of intention are stripped away… They seemed to be very anti-narrative. They were just actions, raw.’
At this point Kerr seems lost in the world of the ideas for a moment. ”There’s this curious sort of choice of actions’—action that, in the human studies, contain substantial themes of ‘sensuality, eroticism, humor, and violence’. Kerr realized that the ‘photos felt like a metaphoric attempt to atomize life’—actions that weren’t ‘corrupted by emotions’. An attempt to get to some kind of unadulterated truth about the violence in Muybridge’s past by fragmenting the complexities of similar motions until each moment could be studied individually: ‘rearranged and assembled to suit yourself’.
What does all this say to a modern theatre audience looking for a meaningful experience? Kerr observes this moment in history as ‘a point in the ongoing birth of a really visually oriented culture… We’re pretty skeptical about our physical perception of the world as being a source for our understanding of our total truth. Or the idea of truth being outside of us, I guess—it’s the contemporary kind of thing—you separate the human subjective experience from the notion of truth. And Muybridge’s work was one big part of an ongoing series of events that convinced us that truth was not available to us except through science and technology. So that there are things that we can’t—we’re not afforded the ability to see without some sort of mechanism or medium that will lift the veil off of nature and give us insight, and so today we are all about the things that we use to negotiate our world and that we turn to, to give us truth, like MRIs or some Google algorithm.’ Or a photograph. Evidence.
I ask him, ‘As an artist, are you creating something that replaces people’s ways of processing events for themselves?’ This is not a new question for Kevin Kerr, or for Electric Company. He counters: ‘Art can be one of those agents that installs itself into your being’—‘art that sedates us and assures us… On the other hand, the other version of art is the art that shocks and stimulates us; that tears that membrane open and allows us to see the world in a new way…’
Kerr articulates for himself and for us that ‘art is experiential at its core’. The vibrant, image-rich, site-specific theatre for which Electric Company is well-known demonstrates this concept to its fullest. The upcoming ‘You are Very Star’ at the H.R. MacMillan Planetarium, following last year’s (now touring) ‘Tear the Curtain’ devised around Vancouver’s historic Stanley Theatre, promises an opportunity to enter a lucid dream with Electric Company. Let’s just hope that Twister stays up on the shelf behind Kevin Kerr’s head.
Sad Mag: Tell us about yourselves.
From November 23rd 2012 to January 18th 2013,
It isn’t easy to create funny looking portraits. Photographer Alex Waber took on the task of capturing the style and the seemingly effortless lack of grace of the comedians of Vancouver for Sad Mag’s Glamour issue. Waber is well versed in the glamorous and absurd: he has photographed for some of Canada’s best fashion magazines as well as created
Clement has a portfolio case full of bits and pieces, old woodprint scraps, and ink and paint swatches as a kind of storehouse of materials. “I like the idea that bits of discarded pieces of paper can regain value and take on a new role. I love the thrill of finding exactly the right piece. It is through this layering process that my drawings come to life. The anatomically correct beetle escapes the mundane realm of ‘textbook drawing,’ and escapes the flat surface of the paper too. Through my flowing lines and vibrant colours, I hope to give my beetle, bird or tree, personality.”
