Visual Arts Newsletter

Your assignment, should you wish to accept it, is as follows:

#1 Create an inventory of twenty things that you have put “on display” in your home – that is, things that you have expressly made visible for guests to see in your living space. ...Read more

I am in a love/hate relationship. I met my love in 1986, and since then, my love has made my life unbelievably richer and easier; my love has brought the whole world into my life and totally changed the nature of the work I do....Read more

Forget the H1N1 virus, there is a plague of artists in BC, according to Hill Strategies Research (HSR), a company that conducts research on the arts in Canada. The revelations of their analyses can seem, on the surface, rather depressing....Read more

For this month's column, I am touching briefly on a few topics that I have wanted to mention for awhile....Read more

I've never heard of an artist uninterested in exhibiting. I know of artists who have declined invitations to show at a specific time or venue, but never of an artist who has "retired" from exhibiting. Lately, however, I have been questioning that impulse to exhibit that seems to be a given in the mindset of artists as changes continue to rock the arts industry. ...Read more

The current arts funding crisis in BC has reignited embers of debate that have been recurring as long as our forest fires. I recently attended a closed-door rally for artists and arts administrators held at the Museum of Vancouver to strategize an industry response to the government’s recent draconian cuts to arts funding in BC....Read more

I once read a list of ten principles of organizational behavior. The last one was “the punishment of the innocent”; the second to the last was “the rewarding of non-participants”. These are the only two I have remembered because they reflected, to a considerable degree, my professional experience plus a wicked sense of humour. ...Read more

I’ve had to face the facts. No one has been more surprised at the success of my book, Artist Survival Skills, than I. I was stunned to see the book go into its second (modest) printing—the result, mostly, of the interest of Opus customers. And for that, I thank you sincerely. But beside the sales success, I have been extremely pleased with artists’ response to it....Read more

When I was a teenager, I witnessed the hijacking of a hospital.

For most of my life my mother lived peacefully and well cared for in a residential facility administered by the hospital next door. Her life was unsettled one year by a rush of dramatic changes in policy that also affected the costs of her care. All the changes came about because of a 100% change in the membership of the board of directors of the non-profit society that governed her residence—a board elected at that year’s annual general meeting (AGM)....Read more

I met artist Gary Sim through Emily Carr University (www.sim-publishing.com/home.htm) and I think his recent "Salon" was a very good one. Here is Gary in his own words (edited for brevity):

"It was actually quite a complex affair, thrown together in a three-week period. It greatly helped to have already done a huge amount of work on my collection (inventory: titles, dates, costs, images, condition assessments)....Read more