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The Vancouver’s International Burlesque Festival kicks off this evening at the Rickshaw Theatre. Sad Mag‘s issue three cover star, Crystal Precious, is the festival’s President and one of the many talented performers slated to take the stage this weekend. Stopping for a moment in the busy week before the launch, Crystal answered some of our questions about the 2010 festival and the resurgence of all things Burlesque.
Our centerfold and Queen of Sass, Crystal Precious. Photograph by Brandon Gaukel
Sad Mag: Tell me about how the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival got started. Were you involved at that time?
Crystal Precious: Basically Screaming Chicken wanted to do this type of festival and came to me and we made it work—a collaboration to get all the troupes together. We are all volunteer run, non-profit, [and] our community [came] together to showcase.
SM: You’ve been on hiatus from the Board for a couple of years—what has changed in that time for the Festival? What’s new?
CP: The biggest and best change for this year is the fact that the entire festival is at one location, The Rickshaw Theatre. Instead have having all the venues all around the city and having the troupes produce, perform, and promote their own show, all they have to do is come down to the Theatre and be fabulous.
SM: Makes it easier for the crowd and festival goers, too!
CP: Yeah!
SM: Burlesque has become phenomenally popular among general audiences in Vancouver in the past few years. To what would you attribute its resurgence, and its success in Vancouver?
CP: There was need, obviously. [Giggle]. People are into it and there is something for everyone—[from] classic to weird performance art.
SM: Yeah sexual or humorous. I love it. Vancouver seems very supportive of the Burlesque community.
CP: Vancouver has been a huge support for us.
SM: You guys are saucy bitches with talent. To quote RuPaul, “Creativity, uniqueness, nerve, and talent.” What do you hope audiences will take away from the shows and workshops at the Festival this year?
CP: The main thing is that I want the audience to view Burlesque as a medium not a genre. For someone to say “oh yeah, I have seen burlesque before,” is like me saying I have seen music. Burlesque has different genres, like music has jazz, rock, et cetera.
SM: The Festival is less than a week away. What are you doing now to prepare?
CP: Well the festival is pretty much all ready. I am mostly getting ready for guests at my house. Cleaning and things like that.
Crystal Precious and Sweet Soul Burlesque perform their showcase on Friday at 11pm. RSVP on Facebook. Sad Mag will be present to support this amazing talent and give away lots of copies of issue three!
1988creative's Justin Longoz and Chris McKinlay. Photograph by Brandon Gaukel.
A hookah gurgles and gargles in Chris McKinlay’s basement. McKinlay passes the hookah to Justin Longoz, but it is largely ignored as the two excitedly launch into our conversation, often saying the same thing at the same time. Longoz and McKinlay are friends, and the film production duo 1998creative. Working for Global Mechanic, the filmmakers produced their Ten Commandments series, for which they were featured on the Huffington Post and in Juxtapoz magazine earlier this year. 1998creative and their unique films have remarkably captured the limited attention spans of web video audiences around the world.
Their internet fame—and their creative partnership—has been years in the making. Born and bred Vancouverites, McKinlay and Longoz met in grade one while attending Vancouver College, an all-boys, shirt-and-tie Catholic school. “The whole origin of [1998creative] came in high school when we would work on social studies video projects,” says McKinlay. “We got better marks than we ever had in school.”
“Period,” Longoz continues, “Whenever we did a video project, we got As.” Their long friendship would be apparent to anyone who meets them today. One instant, Longoz is complimenting McKinlay’s mad cow illustrations, the next, McKinlay is locking Longoz out of the house in the midst of brotherly warfare.
Following high school, the pair attended Langara College with the intention of studying psychology and transferring to UBC. “Wherever we go, we kind of puppet the other [one] and follow to the same place,” says McKinlay. The friends soon encountered boredom with the traditional academic route, and McKinlay enrolled in a film program at BCIT. Longoz quickly followed suit. “Even when we were at Langara taking psychology, we were still doing video projects,” says Longoz.
Never ones to settle anywhere for too long, Longoz and McKinlay quickly realized that they would learn more about film through experience than in the classroom, and spent most of their time at BCIT away from BCIT. “I failed out of film school because I didn’t want to go to all the law courses and we’d be out screwing around with a video camera,” says McKinlay. Longoz laughs, “I want it to be on record that I didn’t fail film school. I passed the law classes.”
The friends abhor wasted time. For them, the best route is the one that leads quickly to the joy of creation. This explains their choice to work as a collaborative team for Global Mechanic, a relatively small studio, rather than for large institutions, which Longoz describes as “dinosaurs.” McKinlay, nods, adding, “The workflow is just archaic.” The two go on to explain the standard flow of film production. A large studio will create a concept and delegate the work to various other large studios – each accomplishing just one part of the project. “They hand it off and hand it off,” Longoz continues. “It’s a game of telephone that’s passed on and the message is lost,” says McKinlay.
Under Global Mechanic, 1998creative aspires to be a full-service film production operation. “You come to us and we can do your creative, we can do your production we can do your post-production, we can do everything on top of the fact that you haven’t gone through eight different people and the message doesn’t get watered down through each step,” explains Longoz.
Longoz and McKinlay formalized their ventures as 1998creative two years ago. The name channels their love of nostalgia—it was the year they began social studies video projects, and a year bursting with movies and music that continue to influence them today. They have worked on a variety of projects from backing videos for musicians to award-winning animation shorts, to painting murals in McKinlay’s soon to be destroyed house. The Ten Commandments, one of their most popular projects, is reflective of their religious background.
Roughly two minutes long, each stop motion short enacts a Commandment with fruit. The shorts are funny, poignant and universally relatable, much like 1998creative themselves. “Without being hyper sacrilegious or hyper-religious, we just wanted to tell the story,” says Longoz. “It’s part of the nostalgia. To go to a religious Catholic all boys school for twelve years,” says McKinlay. “Kind of influences you a bit,” finishes Longoz. “We like to take the serious part away and show it for what it is,” McKinlay continues. “… like, ‘These are the Ten Commandments—with fruit!” Longoz exclaims.
Most of their projects are released with a post on the Global Mechanic blog detailing the creative process. This is in part because of Longoz and McKinlay’s shared sentimental values. They want to share the personal investment made in their art. For a mural project, the duo created a time-lapse video of the production process in McKinlay’s kitchen. “When we did our wall mural, it could’ve just been this photoset that doesn’t tell the whole story of all the love. I look at the mural and it’s beautiful, but when I actually watch the video I have the fond memories. I hope there are people watching the video who can have that same appreciation, and be there alongside us when we create it.”
Sharing the more technical aspects of their work, Longoz and McKinlay exude a confidence that comes from experience. “I think that’s something a lot of people are afraid of—the idea that you can’t be bad and then get better,” says McKinlay. “Rather than hiding from a past project that fails or not you can actually tangibly look your past work and improve upon it. We see what we love and what we don’t love and we extrapolate what we learned from that and move forward. There’s no fear from us.”
A wall mural by 1988creative. Photograph by Brandon Gaukel.
“Nope,” says Longoz. “I just hope that when we do stuff like that other people will see that and think, ‘well they’re not afraid, maybe we shouldn’t be afraid either!’ Because if there’s a collective sharing of how people do things everyone’s going to get better, right? You can make money off of it, but there’s no point if you’re just going to hoard it. Then, nobody learns anything.”
They just want to fill the world with great art—regardless of money. Not that they’re worried; they’re having a good time. McKinlay smiles, “successful or not, at the end of the day, you realize what makes you happy and I think for us, we’ve found it.”
Karen Pinchin talks to Sad Mag. Photo by Tina Kulic
People clutch mugs of mulled apple cider, both with and without rum. Their breath faintly marks the air while they listen to tales from a diverse cross-section of Vancouverites. Rain City Chronicles is an evening of storytelling that could easily be a variation on standup comedy, but it is more than an audience passively watching performances. Elianna Lev, Lizzy Karp and Karen Pinchin have created an inclusive community-building event that blends humour with touching insight.
Each of the creators told a story at the premiere in December of last year, with the fitting theme of “first times.” In an effort to keep Rain City as heterogeneous as possible, the ladies have now assumed the role of backup storytellers. “This was never started as a vanity project,” Pinchin says. “We don’t want this to be a place where comedians and performers and type-A journalists get up onstage and tell self-indulgent stories.”
Born in Etobicoke, just west of Toronto, Pinchin has resided in Vancouver for just over two years, working as a freelance writer. She and Lev met as neighbours and Karp entered the scene when she wrote Lev a fan letter asking how she could become involved with her podcast, The People’s Program Project, before moving to Vancouver from Toronto. “It’s sort of like we were the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of writers,” laughs Pinchin. “You know those really weird moments when everything in the universe aligns to bring you together? All of a sudden we were just sitting around one day and we said we should start a storytelling night.”
The diversity in Vancouver’s residents is both its strength and flaw. What keeps the city bustling also constructs a shield. “People are sort of sick of attaching themselves to people who eventually pick up their roots and move,” says Pinchin. Rain City’s creators feel a desire to facilitate sharing among Vancouver’s guarded population. “I think there’s a hunger for that. I think people are really tired of sitting on the bus full of people wearing iPods and not having any dialogue with their neighbours,” Pinchin continues. While she has struggled with these standards, she still regards the city of Vancouver as an exciting place. “There’s a lot in this city that hasn’t been discovered, that’s still sort of really burgeoning and really coming to life and it’s what it must have been like to be in Montreal in the ’70s.”
Pinchin describes her experiences in approaching people to participate in the event: “Most hesitate insisting that they have nothing worth saying in front of a crowd but then digress into a captivating story—for example, the time they French kissed Jimmy Carter, as with Linda Solomon, who dished her experience at Rain City’s premiere. It’s such an intuitive concept that it seems redundant to say it out loud: that people are interesting and that people have interesting stories and that the only way to really build community is to communicate with one another. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for people to sometimes just let themselves open up a little bit and to tell their stories.”
The flow of Rain City’s evening speaks to the creators’ intuition. They curate the storytellers to be as varied as possible but then allow each to take control and speak about what moves them. “The most important thing is to keep it open so people can see themselves reflected in the topic. The worst thing would be to micro-manage because that would be totally egomaniacal for us to do—to say, ‘this is what your story is.’ People just need a bump in the right direction.”
At Rain City’s first event, papers were left on each seat asking for attendees to write down their stories about the next evening’s theme, “luck.” A staggering number of people wrote anonymous stories in response. “If we accomplish anything, it’s that someone is a little bit interested, that they come, that they see it’s a safe space for them to tell a story…and eventually it’ll just catch on and it’ll spread and all these apathetic, jaded, cynical people of our generation will just let a little light in.”
The creators never aspired to monetary goals. Eventually, they would like to donate the profits to local literacy charities and to host monthly installments at their dream venue, The Cultch. For now, they are happy to patiently coax Vancouver out of its shell. “We’re not doing anything remarkable—it’s the oldest form of communication in the world. All we’re doing is making a little bit of space for it. Making people stop and take a break. Just take a few hours to listen to stories, and tell stories, and share stories.”
-Rebecca Slaven for Sad Mag
The next installment of Rain City Chronicles takes place at 7:00 pm on Monday, March 29th at The Western Front. RSVP on Facebook.
Creative Director Brandon Gaukel photographs Crystal Precious. The Queen of Sass. Photograph by Tina Kulic.
Check out photographer Tina Kulic‘s behind the scene photographs of Issue Three’s cover shoot. Sad Mag’s Brandon Gaukel photographs our cover star, Crystal Precious on location at Vancouver’s legendary after hours club, The Dollhouse. Watch here, or on YouTube.
Special thanks to The Dollhouse, writer Jeff Lawrence and photographer Tina Kulic.
Issue Three comes out March 19, 2010 and is filled with shiny black and white art. With of course some shades of grey!
Poerty is Dead's Editor Daniel Zomparelli sandwiched between Sad Mag's Deanne Beattie and Brandon Gaukel
Sad Mag loves magazines. It is even more exciting when your friend starts up a new Vancouver publication!
The Sad Mag team was very happy to attend the launch of Poetry is Dead at the Grace Gallery on Superbowl Sunday.
If you would like to learn more about editor Daniel Zomparelli’s take on poetry and learn about the magazine check out here.
“I am waiting for the zombie poetry to come back and seek revenge on the world that killed it.”-Daniel Zomparelli
In the next couple of weeks we will around town. The city is a buzz with some culture thanks to you know what. But importantly keep March 19th free, we have many surprises up our sleeve.
If you wanna be in tune to what Sad Mag is doing in this great city of ours, follow us on Twitter! We also love fans on Facebook.
Pick up your jaws, ladies and gentlemen: these dapper fellows sound just as good as they look behind their turntables, not that they are mindful of appearances. Lazerbomb! and DJ Jeff Leppard just want you to party like no one is watching.
Hailing from small towns around B.C., all three men found Vancouver was not quite what they were anticipating. “When youfirst move out here it’s a shock because you’re expecting a lot more; then you get over that and you find out about the secret stuff—[the stuff] that you have to know people in order to find out about,” explains Dan Parker, who comprises Lazerbomb! along with Eric Cairns. “I went to the Morrissey because it was the only decent place to have a drink,” adds Cairns.
The Morrissey is just one of many downtown venues Cairns, Parker, and Jeff Lawrence list when discussing the nightlife they first experienced after arriving in Vancouver. Lawrence, known at the table as Jeff Leppard, talks about his happy discovery of DJ Dickie Doo’s Sunday nights at Shine—an oasis of hip hop that, unlike other queer nights, doesn’tlimit their music to traditional disco glam.
This disregard for expectations is the common ground between Leppard and Lazerbomb!, and its the quality that sets them apart from the rest. “I love playing two songs that you would never think would go together: some gangster rap followed by Roy Orbison,” Parker says. Lazerbomb!’s Sunday nights at the Narrow are host to many guest DJs who relish the opportunity to let loose and dust off beloved dormant tunes. “The nights that seem to flourish the most are those where the DJs play everything.” Cairns continues, “We play shit that we think is awesome… but also a variety. There’s no point in limiting yourself to one genre.”
Lazerbomb!’s and Jeff Leppard’s organic sets reflect their transition from party-goers to party-makers. Both Cairns and Parker have been interested in DJing for some time. Cairns often filled the DJ role for friends’ parties and fundraisers, while Parker’s interest piqued when residing in Brighton—England’s DJ capital. After Brighton, Parker found Vancouver to be a difficult scene to break into.
“You gotta be friends with people who throw parties, or throw parties yourself,” says Parker. The DJ scene requires an abundance of energy, a night owl nature, and the ability to party all the time. “You have to show support for everyone else so that they’ll show support for you,” confirms Cairns. The imperative for self-promotion is the one lackluster requirement felt by all three. “I didn’t really promote myself much. You feel dirty,” says Lawrence. “We do it shamelessly now,” laughs Cairns.
Lawrence also experienced some tough times when starting out. “A friend and I thought, ‘Let’s do a fundraiser and we’ll learn to DJ,’ and a lot of people showed up. It was at the Gecko Club, which was the shittiest club that only lasted about six months… We thought it’d be cool but then the interior was covered with lizards.”
Lazerbomb! first fused together when throwing a few back at the Narrow one March. Cairns and Parker, who had been friends for three years, struck up a conversation with some Irish folk and threw around the idea of DJing a St. Patty’s night. “We made some promises that night in an inebriated fashion and then figured we should actually follow through,” says Cairns. They made good on their promise and have been a regular fixture at Narrow since.
Lazerbomb! was also the DJ for Sad Mag’s July 1st fundraiser, during which they completed an eight-hour DJ marathon. “We got shut down to Conga by Gloria Estefan,” says Cairns. “The neighbour even came out on her porch [and commented], ‘You guys were great! Where else do you throw parties?’” adds Parker.
Lawrence now DJs every Friday at Junction and although this upcoming Thursday is his second Sad Mag stint, he is a familiar feature at the Anza Club. Lawrence delves into his love for the Anza Club and the way it forces attendees to commit to the party. “People come to the Anza to party their faces off.” Cairns nods in agreement saying, “It reminds me of a teen dance. You’re there because you’re just having a good time and you don’t care who’s looking. You’re not at a nightclub, so it doesn’t matter since you’re not there for that vibe to begin with.”
This is one secret everyone should be in on. Come check out what Lazerbomb! and DJ Jeff Leppard are bringing to Vancouver’s Eastside at the Anza this Thursday at Sad Mag’s holiday party! Details here.
Lazerbomb! DJs Sunday nights at the Narrow
DJ Jeff Leppard can be found every Friday night at Junction
Former Victoria resident Zan Comerford defends her hometown from the lashing so eloquently delivered in “Cascadia Defied” by Racan Souiedan, in Sad Magissue one.
Yes, Vancouver, we know. You’re all grown up now.
Your music scene is good, and you have dozens of independent art spaces. East Van holds its own in the art world, and the city brims with gorgeous, fit, stylish types on beat up bikes with passions for good espresso.
Vancouver can even claim to possess the one true criterion of any progressive West Coast city: it has more freelance graphic designers / writers / artists than one would care to shake a stick at, all of them drinking lattes in the afternoon with their dogs.
But, c’mon Vancouver, let’s not get cruel. Racan Souiedan’s article “Cascadia Defied” in the Autumn 2009 issue of Sad Mag would have us believe that there is hardly another Canadian city that comes close to your brilliance.
Victoria may be small, awkward and kind of annoying. Sure, it’s the runt of the litter, but as a city, it has something to offer too. It offers you things that none of its littermates can—only the best of those things that make life worth living: dating, art, and partying.
Let’s start where it all starts, really: sex. Victoria’s dating pool is the Don Perignon of getting it on. With a liberal university, hundreds of hospitality jobs, and thriving art and music scenes, Victoria is a destination for attractive, educated, and artistic twenty-somethings. And it gets better. Because of a phenomenon commonly known by Islanders as “The Velvet Rut,” Victoria is so comfortable that all of these eligible beauties stick around long enough to give everyone—and I mean everyone—a shot. Long known as “The Land of Ladies,” Victoria boasts three women to every man. Beyond doing wonders for one’s odds from a merely statistical standpoint, it also does wonders for your chances of “Nailing a Ten!” as they say on the street.
Strolling hand-in-hand with a good dating scene is, of course, a good nightlife. Victoria has more restaurants, pubs and bars per capita than New York, not to mention a handful of organic microbreweries that give Red Truck a run for its money.
Victoria’s music scene is longstanding, and contrary to Mr. Souiedan’s article, the well-worn music scene makes the local shows anything but boring. From grungy basement bars to scenester havens, Victoria’s music venues are attuned to exactly what makes the Island lifestyle so attractive: good beer, and good friends. Walking into a local show is to see arms thrown around shoulders, as 250 of the band’s closest friends belt out the songs to lyrics they never get tired of hearing.
Should big name acts forge the treacherous Strait of Georgia (which they do with surprising regularity) they are delighted to find a young, willing and eager audience that get just enough entertainment to keep them ravenous for a good time. Audiences rather satiated from regular snacking on live shows are tougher, blander crowds in larger metropolitan cities.
Victoria’s enthusiasm means we can hold our own among the big boys of Vancouver, Portland and Seattle in terms of art and culture. The very quality that finds Victoria being compared to these cultural havens is exactly what sets it apart.
Victoria isn’t trying to be something it’s not.
Instead of lining up to see expensive international film festivals, Victorians flock to abandoned warehouses, where guys with dreadlocks are stringing up a stolen projector. Instead of art openings with wine, cheese and pretension, groups like Panikon Deima are setting up guerrilla art installations in the creakiest fire escapes and oldest alleys in the city.
Above all, Victoria isn’t trying to compete with Vancouver, doesn’t want to be like Portland, and couldn’t care less just what Seattle would say about its coffee (as delicious and well crafted as it may be).
Victoria is too busy doing just what its inhabitants have always been doing: hanging out, relaxing, and enjoying itself.
We had the pleasure of inviting filmmaker Jocelyne Chaput to contribute to Sad Mag. She came up with a dreamy short film about the anticipation of Issue Two. Featuring music by ok vancouver ok. Check out their Myspace here.
Shari-Anne Gibson smiles and delights. Photograph by Brandon Gaukel.
Shari-Anne Gibson is a newly wed. Buzzing around her new apartment she talks about love, making art, and the simple life. The fall is the season that marks new beginnings: a new husband and her first solo show in Vancouver. Now The Trees Have Grown Up is Gibson’s collection of new paintings and drawings that represent innocence, our relationship with nature and an insight into the artist’s imagination. The work is characteristic of Gibson’s aesthetic, which is thematically connected by a sense of interrupted innocence.
The 28-year-old painter said she gets “late night energy.” Since the start of the year, she has spent the evenings working on this project. Her work came to an abrupt halt, however when she was in a car accident, which resulted in months in a neck brace. Taking time off her “Joe job,” she spent the months creating and planning. She was forced to reflect and spend time with her art. The experience made her more involved with her art and more confident about her work. When I joked about having a Frida Kahlo moment, she corrected me: “Less intense.”
Over tea, I asked Gibson about her upcoming show and we watched the rain fall.
Sad Mag: Tell me about the title of the show. And the significance to the work?
Shari-Anne Gibson: Now The Trees Have Grown Up is intended to make the viewers think about trees as having sensibilities, accumulating experience, losing innocence. I want the trees in the pieces to be seen in a new way, and allow the fragmented landscapes to become personal, perhaps reflecting the viewer in some way.
SM: Where were you trained and how long have you been painting?
SG: I studied both at the University of the Fraser Valley and at the Ontario College of Art and Design where I received my BFA. I’ve always loved to draw and paint, so a long time.
SM: What do you think is missing from Vancouver’s art scene today? Or do you feel it has a mighty strength?
SG: After living in Toronto, Vancouver feels very photo-conceptual in contrast, which I absolutely appreciate, however I sense that real painting is a little out of style here. But I know the tides are changing as more painters are getting attention and the MFA program at Emily Carr is gaining a national reputation for its painting program.
Shari-Anne in the studio. Photograph by Brandon Gaukel.
SM: Some of your favourite visual artists?
SG: Johan Creten, Janet Cardiff, Peter Doig, Laura Owens, Katja Strunz, Nan Goldin, Egon Schiele, Fra Angelico, Makiko Kudo.
SM: Where did you grab your inspiration for this collection of work?
SG: I love the natural environment and also appreciate work that is psychological and philosophical. I wanted to create spaces which interrupt our experience of nature, which play with our sense of perception. I wanted to depict the natural world in a way that reveals something about our human experience.
SM: What inspires you in your daily life?
SG: Colors. Photography. Music. When people are free and comfortable with themselves. One evening I went for a walk and a man was singing opera at the top of his voice while I was strolling through his neighborhood. I love that.
SM: After the show, plans? New work? Vacation?
SG: Oh! Right! There is life after the show! Ha ha. I am planning to shift my practice a little and focus on drawing for the rest of the year. It is something I love and haven’t spent enough time with recently. My friend and I hope to start a daily blog together sharing our pieces. I also plan to go on holiday in February. . .maybe to Iceland!
Outside the SUB Art Gallery. Photograph by Brandon Gaukel
Update [26 October 2009]: Drippytown was cancelled last week. In place of the exhibit, the AMS Art Gallery has expertly put together VANIMAUX, which opens today:
VANIMAUX explores the Vancouver animal in its native environment drawing other stories from six perspectives. The contemporary landscape is unpacked by six [local emerging] artists.
The show features Sad Mag contributors and family members Daniel Elstone, Kristina Fiedrich,Brandon Gaukel, Tina Krueger, Judit Navratil, and Katie Stewart. VANIMAUX further unpacks the idea of urban Vancouver, wiping the Olympics sanctioned hype away and showing the beast for what it is.
VANIMAUX. AMS Art Gallery. 6000 Student Union Boulevard. Exhibit opening October 26, 2009, from 5-8 pm.
Jeremy Jaud is nearly choking on his words. His excited phrases are gunning through the empty gallery and splatterings upon impact. Jaud is the art commissioner of the Student Union Building (SUB) Art Gallery at UBC.
Until recently, most UBC students knew the the SUB Art Gallery as the site of the annual poster sale. Today, the gallery is a fixture for art aficionados in Vancouver’s scene, in major part because of Jaud. After meeting the gallery’s previous art commissioner in an Art History seminar last spring, Jaud took over the position and oversaw dramatic renovations over eight months. Jaud is all passion and smiles as he shares what led him to this position. “I saw it as an opportunity to bear all my skill sets on one direction, having a background in art history, visual arts, budgeting, management, and volunteer work.”
Last month, the new space was inaugurated with the show “Vancityscapes,” featuring Morgan Dunnet, a local artist whose impressionistic paintings reveal the city of Vancouver in its simplest moments of glory—images you might recall from late night stumbles through the rainy streets of Gastown. The opening night of “Vancityscapes” saw over two hundred visitors, many of them students, like myself, who had been on UBC’s campus for years, never set foot in the space, but gushed at its reinvention. This was just the start of the gallery’s continuing celebration of Vancouver. Jaud, originally from Yellowknife, is drawn to Vancouver’s new developments and the sense of community it provides. “Vancouver is constantly changing, it’s always in the moment, it’s infectious.”
Jaud envisions the the SUB Art Gallery as a window on the landscape of art to the Belkin Gallery, Museum of Anthropology, Koerner Library, and beyond campus to the rest of Vancouver. He discusses the uniqueness of the gallery in its daily access to thousands of students—the future powerhouses of Vancouver—and its opportunity to initiate or foster artistic interest within them.
The man himself, Jeremy Jaud. Photograph by Brandon Gaukel
At the end of this month, the gallery is hosting an extension of an exhibition called “Drippytown: Vancouver Life Through the Eyes of its Independent Artists” at the Rare Books and Special Collections Library (RBSC) at UBC. The exhibition showcases the RBSC’s collection of print comics created by Vancouver artists, including Colin Upton and James Lawrence, whose work together on a cover for the comic “Drippytown” gave the exhibition both its name and narrative. “Drippytown” presents Vancouver and its characteristic rain, gray skies, and silver linings, as seen through the eyes of six local artists using the comic medium. Like Vancouver, the collection seems dreary at first but is ultimately inspiring.
The exhibition is made possible by the coordination of several forces: students of UBC’s School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies program, RBSC staff, Francesca Marini – a professor within the department, the artists, and Jaud.
Says Jaud, “UBC has such a broad range of art producers and people already interested in the arts; conduits and reflectors. More bridges need to be built between these various groups so that our ideas can be shared, our messages can strengthen and access can blossom.”
The SUB Art Gallery is currently showing “Tragically Rescuing His Family From the Wreckage of a Destroyed Sinking Battleship”, works by Kevin Day, from Oct. 13th – Oct. 23rd.
“Drippytown” shows at the SUB Art Gallery from Oct. 26th – Nov. 3rd and at Rare Books and Special Collections from Oct. 23 – Jan. 31st.
