The Sad Mag Archives
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!
Portraits of Brief Encounters // No Returns
Dispatches // Alex Waber and Lynol Lui
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!
Portraits of Brief Encounters // 3:1
Portraits of Brief Encounters // Cole Nowicki
Small prairie towns are no place for a fervid skateboarder. “The roads are crappy and there are no hills,” says ColeNowicki of his hometown Lac la Biche, Alberta.
The 24-year old came to Vancouver four years ago in pursuit of greener pastures (AKA smoother concrete) and settled in the Commercial Drive neighbourhood—in great proximity to the city’s skateparks, but also in prime people-watching territory.
In September 2013, Cole started documenting his “run-ins, pass-bys and overhears” with Vancouverites—capturing their quips and quirks, using them as a platform for reminiscence or introspection. He posts 2 or 3 original sketches each week on his Tumblr, “Portraits of Brief Encounters.” It’s what might happen if you placed Humans of New York in Vancouver, and replaced its photos and overt sincerity with a sharpie and a healthy dose of irony. Cole’s keen observations and wry sense of humour make Portraits a resonant visceral experience. The result is poetry, both written and visual.
“I’ve always liked making things—drawing painting, making figurines out of twist ties. And I like storytelling so this combination of art and text seemed like a natural progression,” he explains.
Inspired by fellow skateboarder and contemporary artist Ed Templeton, Cole loves the connection between skateboarding and art: “Skateboarding is my passion—the longest relationship I’ve ever been in—but it’s also where I gather creative inspiration.” He combines the two on his skate/art site: sundaydrivedigest.com
Cole will be creating an original sketch for Sad Mag once a week, but in between you can follow his Brief Encounters project on Tumblr and Instagram.
Phantoms in the art world (and the front yard) // Interview with Jonathan Sutton
Phantoms in the Front Yard is an arts collective dedicated to the pursuance of figurative, representational forms. This is a unique intention today as contemporary artists flourish into new mediums, embracing abstraction, fragmentation, and concepts that live behind veils—or sometimes duvets.
Lots of people who aren’t interested in art tend to posit themselves as victim, expressing the naïve and arrogant ideals expressed in “my kid could do that”. There is a cultural aversion to artwork which does not obviate itself to the viewer straightforwardly.
While Phantoms in the Front Yard chooses to work with forms considered more traditional (figurative, representational paintings), they by no means slander the non-traditional forms and approaches that have largely come to define contemporary art today. They’ve simply worked to create their own place in it, hearkening to the potential in the ideals and approaches of times past. They attempt to breathe freshness into the recognizable figure, one that modernism deemed passé and left in its wake.
The group includes Jonathan Sutton, Jay Senetchko, Marcus Macleod, Michael Abraham, Jeremiah Birnbaum, Paul Morstad, in collaboration with curator Pennylane Shen. They just opened up a show at Leigh Square Community Arts Village called Phantoms, a sort-of retrospective which takes advantage of this large venue to reflect on their work as a collective in seven different shows over the past four and half years. Check it out before it closes on February 17th.
Sad Mag: What did it feel like to realize that your artistic expression was changing mediums, from theatre and performance to painting?
Jonathan Sutton: I was drawing and painting all along, and meanwhile acting was becoming less of a means than I had thought it was to express the things important to me. It had seemed an obvious way to enter into an imagined space was to perform in it. I find though, that more space exists for me in the solitary arena of my small studio, and with far fewer stops between ideas and their developed expression.
SM: How did the group come together?
JS: Jay Senetchko and Marcus Macleod initiated the idea and fairly soon there was a core group. We are also committed to working with other artists in both the short and long term.
SM: The group’s artist statement mentions, “Figurative art has become the phantom of the fine art world, haunting Modernism and Postmodernism with its ties to a classical tradition, refusing to be dismissed, ignored, or forgotten.” Can you speak a little more about the current status of the figurative and representational in contemporary art from your perspective?
JM: It would be easier—for any of us in the group—to speak a lot more about that! Here goes a little …
We all have wide-ranging tastes and references, but a common thread is our respect for artists who reckon with history and traditions as they pave new directions in their own work and era. Jay Senetchko has written eloquently on the over-rating of originality as an end in itself, and we believe the more profound contributions are to be made by artists who distinguish their own voices within the larger dialogue of art history, and in doing so move the whole dialogue forward. It is counter to this process to accord any particular status to the figurative or representational per se—whether over-prioritizing these forms or shunning them. Our particular collective has gathered around an existing interest in figurative work and within this we have a very broad mandate, but this is not to say that we place it above other approaches in our appreciation of art in general. Our decision to embed the figure in our mandate is that there is much territory still to explore here—and create—and we are excited to share our discoveries. Now this position happens to have much counterpoint in contemporary trends that would dismiss the figure, or painting and drawing altogether. We didn’t decide to commit to figurative work to create a reaction to this line of thinking though; we were doing this work in any case and couldn’t find substance in trends that would place it outside contemporary art.
Representation will continually reinvent its own aesthetics because people and our surroundings are changing quickly enough—not to mention artistic media and technologies—that even straight journalistic depiction will continue to reflect novelty. Brian Boulton’s graphite portraits, to name one example, and a local one, reflect accuracy and fidelity of rendering, while looking arrestingly current and familiar by virtue of the very contemporary figures they examine.
SM: This idea is quite noticeably linked to the name of the collective. Can you tell us about the inspiration for the name? Why “the Front Yard”?
JS: We recognize these tendencies that would hold figurative representation, and traditional media associated with it, as phantoms in the art world. Even within this reading, which isn’t everyone’s, and certainly not ours—we’re interested in ushering such phantoms into full view.
SM: Part of your philosophy as a group is based on the idea that representational, figurative art is easier for people to find connection with because the elements are familiar and easily identifiable. However, lots of this kind of work also comes equipped with strong concepts and compositional complexity. How do you deal with the challenge to make people see as far as possible into the work?
JS: One aspect of the work in this collective that really impresses me is how often I see a balancing of immediate visual impact against dense underpinnings of suggestion, narrative, reference, concept, and philosophy. I’d say we find in figurative art an irrepressible history, and in the best cases, universality, without necessarily finding or seeking ease of connection. Aquinas held wholeness, harmony, and radiance to be requirements of beauty; these would strike a viewer as strongly upon the first impression as through prolonged scrutiny. We work to weave complex and diverse thinking into one image whose first impression is complete and integrated. We admire the kind of conceptual and compositional complexity you mention, in all manner of art forms whether figurative or not; in fact another layer to our mandate is to incorporate non-representational influences in our own representations. The act of depicting one or more bodies is constantly invigorated by ever-new responses that non-figurative works invite, be they abstract expressionism, collage, photo-conceptualism, or anything else.
SM: Since 2010, Phantoms in the Front Yard has been developing shows based on themes initiated by one of the members, which then prompts the creation of works by each of the others. There is also a lecture component, where you bring in an expert on the topic at hand. Why is dialogue important to you as a group?
JS: There is a beautiful solitude in creating and beholding a piece of art. We also want to include viewers, beyond this, in the spirit of dialogue and exchange that we invest in our processes as a collective. The development of each show starts and continues around our own conversations, research sharing, critiques of works as they progress, and general interaction, even while most of the time we spend on the pieces themselves is solitary. We want these parallel lines of private engagement and public interaction to run through the whole exhibition experience.
SM: What do you hope to achieve with this show?
JS: This particular grouping of pieces, in this space, with the artists, viewers, and interactions that create the exhibition will only come together in this way through this event. Our intention is to do the same thing a single work of art should do – create a lasting impression of a fleeting moment.
Phantoms is on now and runs until February 17th at Leigh Square Community Arts Village. Gallery hours are Mon, Wed 10:00am to 6:30pm; Tue, Thu 10:00am to 7:00pm; Friday 9:30am to 6:30pm; and Saturday 2:00pm to 4:00pm; Closed on Sundays. 1100-2253 Leigh Square (Behind City Hall) Port Coquitlam, BC, V3C 3B8. Call 604-927-8442 for more info. Please note the show is displayed in two adjacent buildings.
Crawling the Eastside
Octopus Studios on Powell St. seems unapproachable with its whitewash exterior and barred windows, but it was busy and humming inside with the Eastside Culture Crawl the weekend of November 15-17.
There was a DJ in the corner near the entrance and 16 artists installed in the two-storey, open plan studio—one of 85 buildings involved in the Eastside Culture Crawl this year. It had a diverse selection of artists—weekend and fulltime artists, graduates and students, and art teachers promoting public art classes. One artist adjusted flickering projections on the wall and others lingered near the booths, where ceramics, paintings, illustrations, leatherwork, and stringed instruments were exhibited beside each other.
The Eastside Culture Craw is focused in the area bound by Main Street, 1st Ave., Victoria Drive, and the Waterfront, and featured over 400 artists this year. As someone who doesn’t live in the area, or even as someone who does, the official map is a requisite in the hunt for the little studios many of us didn’t know where there.
Now an annual 3-day visual arts festival in November in which artists from the Eastside open their studios to the public, it began as a series of open studio fundraisers in the mid-90s. Paneficio Studios on Keefer St. held a fundraiser for Clayoquot Sound arrestees’ travel costs to Victoria – the series of logging protests that occurred over the summer of 1993 in Clayoquot Sound resulted in over 800 protestors arrested and many put on trial in front of the B.C. Provincial Court in Victoria.
Another fundraiser was held the following year to support Eastside artists with AIDS, and it was divided between Paneficio Studios and 1000 Parker St. Studio in order to host more work. It expanded the third year to include two more studios, Glass Onion and Apriori Studios, and the proceeds went to restoration following an Eastside neighbourhood fire. It expanded again the next year, with 45 artists and over 1000 attendees, and Eastside-based artists and founded board member Richard Tetrault named it the Eastside Culture Crawl.
While the Eastside Culture Crawl still seems imbedded in the Eastside where is began and continues to be focused, it is representative of the diverse communities of artists, both emerging and internationally recognized, currently working throughout Vancouver. I hope next year word about the event will spread further, as I think it is a show of Vancouver-based art more people should see.
For more information about the Eastside Culture Crawl or the Eastside Culture Crawl Society, visit them online. We hope to see you there next November.
Angela Fama x The Acorn // Main Street’s Car Free Day
Sad Mag loves Vancouver photographer Angela Fama and The Acorn Restaurant–we featured them both in our Vanimaux issue–so we were thrilled to discover that artist and eatery are teaming up to help celebrate Main Street’s Car Free Day, this Sunday, June 16th from noon to 7pm.
Fama will park herself and her mobile studio at the Acorn’s storefront, where she will be capturing portraits of willing participants. Select photographs from the day’s session will be included in an exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver as part of the Capture Photography Festival throughout October.
Fama was chosen, along with three other local photographers (Lincoln Clarkes, John Goldsmith and Brian Howell), to present work in conversation with legendary Vancouver post-war street photographer, Foncie Pulice, who is the subject of a full-scale exhibition on view at MOV from June 6 – January 5, 2014.
As part of The Acorn’s ongoing commitment to supporting art and artists in Vancouver, the collaboration with Angela Fama will extend to The Acorn Artist Series, where upon the restaurant will print 1000 complimentary postcard prints for customers during the month of October in conjunction with the Capture Photography Festival.
The Acorn will be open from 12pm onward for Car-Free Day, offering light snacks and refreshments.
Angela Fama is a Vancouver-based photographer who has exhibited at the National Gallery in Ottawa and the Elliot Louis Gallery in Vancouver. Her work delves into the recesses of the forgotten or ignored, often revealing unique perspectives on history through it’s temporal placement in the present day.
SNEAK PEEK! Disposal Camera Project w/ Austra’s Maya Postepski
This spring, Sad Mag mailed disposable cameras to various Canadian electro-pop bands so we could see what they see and wander where they wander. Maya Postepski, drummer of Austra and one half of goth duo TRST, was one of the lucky participants in Sad Mag’s Disposable Camera Project.
Get a sneak peek–before Saturday’s Mad Mad World Party–of the various objects, subjects and locales on Maya’s radar, and read her thoughts on music, feminism and feeling like a rock star.
ARIEL FOURNIER: Maya, you toured with Vancouver artist and musician Grimes, who holds strong opinions about stereotypes in music. What did you think about Grimes’ open letter about sexism in the music industry? Did you identify with any of her points in particular?
MAYA POSTEPSKI: Touring with Grimes was awesome, I think what she’s doing is relevant and interesting. Her open letter was brave and refreshing. So many female artists or public figures are afraid to even say they’re Feminists—I found her letter very intelligent and compassionate, and powerful. I liked how she specifically explained how being a feminist does not make one a ‘man hater’ and how she went into details about her family, her father and brothers. Being a feminist does not make one a man hater. I am in line with that and I think the word Feminist has way too many negative connotations, which is a such a shame. Being a feminist, in my mind, means I’m looking for women and men to gain equality
AF: What was it that grabbed you about The Organ’s music before you went on tour with them?
MP: I liked the sound, the aesthetic, [and] the nostalgia in Katie’s performance of the vocals. I loved how sad and romantic the songs were. I also loved how greatly they’re crafted—the pop structures in each track are impressive and sophisticated. Each song is barely over three minutes long and hits you where it hurts. Wicked songwriting and awesome musicianship.
AF: How influential was The Organ for you?
MP: They took me on my first real tour. That’s a huge deal—I felt like a real rock star, like my dreams came true, like they saved me from all the horrible thoughts I had of failure as an artist. I felt like I was finally real, like I mattered, and that was very empowering. As a fan I was also very inspired because I finally found a band that I looked up toward, that I could relate to on some distant level, and that I believed was writing music for people like me: young, gay, and confused.
AF: Maya, we talked about how Vancouver used to be less associated with an innovative music scene in your mind. Did Vancouver seem like a more interesting place to you when you were a teenager or when you joined up with The Organ’s tour? Do you feel now that that has changed?
MP: I don’t know Vancouver intimately enough to comment that deeply but I think it’s been a city that people in Canada consider to be kind of sophisticated or fancy, bourgeoisie. I guess it’s quite expensive and getting really developed with condos and the nouveau riche, as is Toronto. With money comes innovation, so there you go. I don’t think any of that affects the art scene though. In fact, I think it draws artists away because artists are generally not wealthy so they leave and go to cheaper cities like Berlin or Montreal. I might do that soon as well, heh.
***
More photos from the Disposable Camera Project will be on display at The Gam Gallery on May 18th. Come hang out with us at the Mad Mad World Party and peruse photographs by HUMANS (Robbie Slade), MODE MODERNE, AUSTRA and CITY OF GLASS; Lauren Zbarsky, Alex Waber, Brandon Gaukel and Matty Jeronimo.
{cover photo of Maya c/o Hannah Marshall}
“Sad Mag’s Disposable Camera Project is like a behind the scenes from the folks who are in the scenes you wanna get behind.” –Katie Stewart, Sad Mag’s Creative Director.
On Your Mark // Langley Fine Arts Alumni Exhibition
Artistic expression is one of life’s joys. Whether it’s painting, writing, or organize your underwear chromatically, aesthetic satisfaction is undeniable. Which is why Sag Mag is thrilled to let you know about On Your Mark, the Langley Fine Arts’ Alumni Exhibition.
Beginning Friday May 10th 2013, On Your Mark is an art and design exhibition taking place at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre.
This exhibition is a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the 1st graduating class from the Langley Fine Arts School.
Running through to Wednesday, May 22nd, the show will feature over 70 artists, from a multitude of disciplines.
It will be eclectic, inspiring and sure to thrill!