Although I chose to ignore the dress code sign on my way in, wearing plaid and denim myself, it came to haunt my every observation.  I wasn’t sure if it was the sign, or the retinal sandpapering of gaudy sequins, aggressive heels and leathern tits spilling out of tight polyester that made me want to be instantly transported back to my cozy little apartment, in my jammies on the couch, sharing popcorn with my dog.  A perfectly acceptable date for a Wednesday night, right?

But I was not wearing glittering ruby slippers, and after clicking my heels, I opened my eyes to find myself standing in front of a used car salesman who was trying to pour wine into my glass, which was not yet empty.  When I stopped him, he informed me that the wine I was drinking, from the competitor’s table across from his, was derogatorily known as “Desperate Housewives Wine” in the States.  The wine was excellent, and much better than his own table’s offering (no wineries mentioned), although it was difficult to be objective after witnessing such poor form.

Since the event was more of a social affair than a wine tasting, navigating around tables was difficult, there weren’t many wines open to try at each table, and no one had ‘the big guns out,’ so to speak.  But I was happy to take my time with some stellar wines, and by the time I got to the fourth or fifth sample, I observed that wine reps were starting to pour near glass-sized portions because, they too, realized people were just there to drink and get tipsy.  And maybe find a date.

Or watch attractive women contort their tiny bodies.  Two female acrobats assumed 80s-inspired rhinestone-studded positions in narrow nooks in the wall, and finished the show on a table shamelessly fashioned from a silver spray-painted cable spool acquired, I assume, just for their routine.  I think I was successful in refraining from laughing while I snapped ironic pictures.  Tragically, CANVAS’ website talks extensively about its social consciousness, but the lounge does not seem to think exploiting women’s bodies for cheap and unconsciously campy entertainment is something, merely, to refrain from, especially when profits are to be had.  I would cry foul and say that what happens in Vegas should stay there,  but the tackiness and low-budget execution of this spectacle made the sleazy Vegas showgirl shtick look like something authentic and legitimate.

For all the venue lacked, and I’m talking basics – the walls and ceilings needed fresh paint, the railings were decorated with xmas lights, there was a disco ball above the bar (did someone hire their 13-year-old to decorate the place?) – it employed in photographers with impressive cameras circulating about, preserving the wonder of the evening.  They took pictures all night long, and periodically uploaded them onto a projector slide show.  People were almost as amused with watching photos of the event they were currently attending as they were with the bewildering acrobatic performance.  Servers circulated with plates of bite-sized food:  sliders, fig-and-blue cheese breads, bocconcini tomato skewers, and chocolate-covered strawberries.  Of course, none of the plates offered were vegan (although most were vegetarian), so I can’t comment on them except to say that they all looked beautiful with exception of the sliders.  Is that fad not over yet?  I suppose it’s unfair for me to criticize CANVAS Lounge for a food fad that everyone seems to love, even if it is going the way of the salad bar.

Oh, and CANVAS is listed on the VPIWF‘s event page as “Canvas Lounge and Gallery in Gastown” although it does not seem to call itself a gallery on its own website.  Either way, the venue seemed to be exhibiting at least two distinct series that were marked with title/artist/medium placards.  Now that I’ve criticized amateur wine enthusiasts for acting pretentious about wine, I don’t want to do the same thing about art.  But I will say that the images lining CANVAS’ walls seemed quite commercial; most of it appeared to be digital/graphic art, printed, framed, and under glass.  One series was sports-themed:  back-lit and stylized collages of Trevor Linden and Geroy Simon of the BC Lions, for example.  Perhaps the glorified memorabilia were brought in for Olympics hype; regardless, they looked a bit like they belonged in a rich bachelor’s basement or a high-end sports pub rather than an atmospheric lounge.

One benefit to what I perceived as a horrid waste of opportunity was, well, that everyone was wasting opportunity.  While important-looking people guzzled Chardonnay and ogled the two acrobats tying themselves into one titillating knot of shiny spandex, I held extensive conversations with many of California’s most renowned wine elite:  Ted Seghesio of Seghesio Family Vineyards, Alan Cannon of Rombauer Vineyards, and Randy Ullom of Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates just to name a few.  And, they seemed genuinely happy to meet folks interested in wine because we were a rare breed at this event.  When it was time to leave, I must admit, I was enjoying myself immensely:  taking ironic pictures of the tacky disco ball, the fetishized acrobats, the ugly bathroom and the filthy red carpet.  But, as this event in no way resembled a proper wine tasting, there were, of course, no spittoons, and I take no responsibility for my sarcastic revelry.

On my way out, the men at the door were kind enough to indulge my request to photograph the dress code sign in the window, and they joked about my acknowledging the “no douchebags” rule as they so-called it.  The security guards were friendly and funny, and although I share their distaste for certain fashion wear, the irony of the anti ‘gang-wear’ sign was hilarious; I think it, in fact, summoned the very clientele it stood to prohibit, if there was a grain of truth in the guards’ joking.  On this particular night, the place was as fresh as a summer’s eve, if you catch my drift.

All kidding aside, I should concede that most California Cruisin’ attendees enjoyed themselves immensely, and found the lounge cool and kitschy.  I even heard folks talking about it the next day – about how much fun they had and how they buy the $55 tickets every year, and intend to do so next year too.

I should also say that the venue is only responsible for so much, and CANVAS was hired to provide services that I, personally, did not fully appreciate.  I assume the wine tasting itself was commissioned and organized by a party associated with the VPIWF, and not CANVAS Lounge.

Yeah, okay, so I took a picture of a picture of myself when it rotated on the projector. This is me with Vancouver's own joe corkscrew and a sip of Chardonnay in my mouth.

Well, friends, I can’t love everything.  I’d be a tad masochistic to go to California Cruisin’ again, even with free tickets.  Had I known that the event was a glorified club affair and not the legitimate wine tasting it was advertised and endorsed as, I probably would not have been so disappointed.  And I’m sure the folks at CANVAS Lounge, should they happen to come across this post, would regard me an unfit patron, let alone critic, of their fine establishment.

– ruby

]]> http://veganmisanthrope.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/california-cruisin-at-canvas-lounge-free-tickets-wasted-on-me/feed/ 1 ruby bricks California Cruisin' DSC03387 DSC03277 DSC03362 decor sports seghesio bar watch cali cruisin http://veganmisanthrope.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/conceiving-the-sublime-tegan-whitesel%e2%80%99s-beginnings-i-and-ii-at-metascope/ http://veganmisanthrope.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/conceiving-the-sublime-tegan-whitesel%e2%80%99s-beginnings-i-and-ii-at-metascope/#comments Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:46:20 +0000 nora noël http://veganmisanthrope.wordpress.com/?p=292 ]]>

'Beginnings I' and 'Beginnings II'

Tegan Whitesel knows a thing or two about scale.  And her execution is impeccable, with crucial attention to detail.  When I visited Metascope:  Perceiving and Portraying the Sublime, I was drawn immediately to the magnitude, the enormity, the sublime beauty of two canvases dominating the left wall of the relatively small foyer at Emily Carr:  these were Beginnings I and Beginnings II.   I will discuss the two paintings first together, and then separately, here, because I feel as though they are profoundly intertwined.  They are not merely pieces in the same series; despite their concrete separateness; to contemplate one is to contemplate the other, and that is precisely why Beginnings I and Beginnings II are so extraordinary.

First, though, a few words about the rest of the show.

I filtered into the modest gallery and observed the artists, the art-types, and the like – young women in tights and loose, bohemian tops, scratching at short, blunt bangs; young men in misshapen beards and thick-rimmed glasses jamming slender hands into tight pockets.  As I found myself amid this socially indulgent din, I wondered how many were here to look at art.  Maybe I was just late, or antisocial.  Probably both.

I approached the first piece in the room, closest to the entrance or exit, depending on your point of view.  Sean Mills’s Untitled hung perpendicular to the rest of the exhibit, and its attention to simplistic precision is truly beautiful. White(ish) lines interwoven with white(ish) lines of another depth (and I realize this horrifically limited description does the painting little justice) seemed to sneer in the face of the whimsical and picturesque paintings it introduced.Although I noticed the minimalist canvas on my way into the gallery, truthfully, I did not completely appreciate its mathematical beauty, its serenity and its austere comment, until I was on my way out of the show.

Sean Mills, 'Untitled', acrylic on canvas 59 x 59 inches

The piece is a graceful remark, I think, on the sublime experience.  It distills perceived natural beauty to its foundation and celebrates the mere beauty in its existence, whether it is embodied in an insurmountable peak, or perfectly taped off and painted white lines intersecting perfectly taped off and painted white lines: a vast and beautiful canvas of white.  Both, I think, manifest the psychological Zen achieved in careful meditation.  Contemplating Mills’ painting, somehow, encourages the mind and body to dismiss the mundane, and instead, to consider the texture and the therapeutic presence of interlocking lines.   Perhaps it is the meticulous, painstaking labour involved, or the tangible beauty in mathematical patterns that, here, takes form as paint on canvas, but occupies the natural world all around us – a woven basket, a honeycomb, a blossoming tree – that make this painting a work of art, and such a minimalist, yet reachable, representation of perceiving the sublime.  Interestingly, however, the piece at once embraces measured exactness in uniform vertical lines, but there is a sense of vagueness where they interlock, a fogginess of white that enables the artist and the viewer alike to contemplate the beauty in the unpredictable, imperfect sublime, too.

On the same perpendicular wall, but across the walkway, hung Caroline Mousseau’s eclectic Puddle of Clouds that dripped paint and plastic pieces up its canvas.

Caroline Mousseau, 'Puddle of Clouds', oil, acrylic, prism plastic, silver leaf on canvas 78 x 36 inches

I noticed that most of the art-viewers at the show seemed to admire the oil, acrylic, prism plastic, and silver leaf on canvas, but I must admit the particular aesthetic did not appeal to me, although it might be a successful inspiration for the next Lady Gaga outfit.  Pieces of rough plastic pressed upon metallic drips that contradict gravity and fall toward the top of the painting, perhaps, reference the sublime in a mythical world.  It also has a lovely feeling of oil and water that, again, to me, suggests a version of the sublime found in confusion and disorder.  I suspect the painting is subverting, and indeed, literally overturning, an artistic convention of which I am entirely unaware, and I appreciate the literal aspect of the comment (if it indeed is so), but I felt as though it was not a comment on the sublime as much as it was a comment on the (consciously) aesthetic.

Chia-Chen Hsu’s Untitled garnered little attention from the gallery patrons, at least in the short time I was there, but is quite provoking, I thought.

Chia-Chen Hsu, 'Untitled', oil on canvas, 36 x 72 inches

Hsu seems to manipulate conventions of abstract art and comic-book art with this piece.  Of course, I know nothing of either.  Interestingly, the canvas depicts a series of striped clouds filled with a spectrum of white-alternated colours piled on top of cartoonish, even Chad Van-Gaalen-esque, rendered feet on a rudimentarily painted conventional floor mat. My initial feeling is that this piece is informed by comic or cartoon conventions, but whether or not this is so, the stacked, rainbow-laden bubbles seem to turn a critical eye on the sublime aesthetic of the natural world by its obvious, cookie-cutter cloud shapes and deliberate, horizontal spectral lines that seem to get darker as they descend the image.  The clouds almost suggest dialogue bubbles, too.  If Hsu is representing the anticipations of a word from a faceless character, and then another word and then another word and then another word, this image compounds its viewers’ impotent expectations, and leaves us to rely on our own devices, a naked and bodiless figure to imagine.  The sublime, here, perhaps, is the colour of imagination.

And now, readers, my sincerest apologies for keeping you; I will return to Tegan Whitesel’s Beginnings I and Beginnings II, which truly stole the show, and took their collective interpretation of the sublime in a unique direction.  The obvious benefit to creating larger than life art that occupies so much real estate on the gallery wall is that it is difficult to ignore; it is impressive in its vastness alone.  But Whitesel’s Beginnings I and Beginnings II are not merely incredible paintings that are incredibly large – although they certainly are that; they are, in my humble opinion, images that require 72 x 84 inches of space.

Both pictures are interesting because they at once create their own, distinct environments, or atmospheres, and feature a singular and unique subject, enlarged and centered, almost as a character featured in a movie poster or a video game ‘choose your character screen’ is, yet they follow a parallel design.  These ‘characters’ appear entirely other-worldly, like things from the pages of a colourful sci-fi novel or a biology textbook.  I think the similar treatment of the two subjects, or characters, or species, or whatever they are, despite their distinctness, is an interesting artistic statement, especially if the subjects are indeed representations of life, or nature, or beauty, or all of the above.  Whitesel’s blatant centering and magnifying her organism-like creations, a hallmark of her work, rejects the tendency of artistic (and social) standards to marginalize certain images, or certain parts of images, to force the unknown and unfamiliar to the edges of the canvas and instead privilege a conventionally pleasing aesthetic that distributes images and colour in a familiar, rolling landscape kind of way.  By framing her subjects as she has – almost like portraiture – Whitesel privileges an unconventional and inclusive sublime:  all life, even human life, is unfamiliar in its earliest stages, all life is dynamic, all life has a beginning and an end, and all life is beautiful.

For all their interconnectedness, Beginnings I and II are equally distinctive.

Tegan Whitesel, 'Beginnings I', acrylic, oil and charcoal on canvas, 72 x 84 inches

The atmosphere in Beginnings I feels, to me, like it exists in on a larger plane than Beginnings II, perhaps, because I find the biological inspirations for Beginnings I so much more familiar.  The image is an interesting fusion of plant and animal life.  I want to describe it as a tangled plantlike tube with huge vacuoles, or chlorophyll-stained intestines, with cuplike openings that spit vibrant, fresh, oxygenated blood.  For me, this piece speaks to the interconnectedness and interdependence of animal and plant life, and I think the red splatters make my response to it more visceral.  Interestingly, upon looking closely at what I interpret to be blood spatters, tiny outlines, subtle suggestions, of the image portrayed in Beginnings II emerge.

These ‘microscopic’ insinuations ultimately suggest that Beginnings I is an organism that exists on a larger plane of existence, and that the two ‘species’ are linked in an even more fundamental way than I may have initially thought:  existence of the first necessitates existence of the second.  Or vice versa.

Close up of the right corner of 'Beginnings I'

Or, the two are symbiotic life forms, requiring each other to survive, just as the paintings themselves, I think, require each other to be completely understood.  The pieces, together, are interesting representations of a creative ecological chain, not in terms of what eats what, but in terms of what gives rise to what, what needs what, what enables what.  I interpret this connection as a clandestine overturning of the classic hierarchical schema of life, The Great Chain of Being, which in many ways still dictates perceptions of the moral functions different life forms fulfill in this world.  (And as a vegan, I feel especially familiar with this – the rationalization, for example, that animal life is not as valuable as human life, and/or that “God put animals on this world for human purpose”).  Rather than suggesting a system of biological and spiritual superiority, the paintings, together, reflect the interconnectedness, the symbiotic and cyclical nature, of life as it exists in the natural world.  Conceptually, I think, it also shows viewers, especially art neophytes like myself, how the creative idea is not born in a vacuum, but arises from another idea, another concept, another canvas.

The zoomed-in image suggested in the blood spatters, and foregrounded in Beginnings II supports my interpretation that there are two scales of existence, here, and Beginnings II is the  more minute of the two.

Tegan Whitesel, 'Beginnings II', acrylic and oil on canvas, 72 x 84 inches

The centered object, this time, is duplicated repeatedly in the background and (relatively) large orange plasma-like blobs float about, which also suggests a world further removed from our own in terms of scale, but perhaps more connected to human life on a fundamental level:  who knows what strange-looking little beasts are floating around in our bloodstream?  Well, biologists know, but I don’t.  The suggestion of blood plasma cells, too, supports a biological interpretation of Beginnings I, and leads me to believe the red sprays are indeed blood.  Maybe Beginnings II depicts ominous life – although interconnected and symbiotic; maybe it is a disease or a virus, benign or detrimental, infecting Beginnings I.  The enlarged image itself is a cluster of irregular, surreal, yellowish spheres with ominous green thorns protruding from their centers.  Interestingly, they do not look unlike an abnormally ripening raspberry.  So, from my perspective, the interesting cluster is both reminiscent of strange young plant life and cellular animal life, and even primordial life:  beginnings indeed. 

The tiny ‘single-cell’ replicas of the centered cluster not only indicate its presence in a vast world full of others like itself, they accentuate the under-the-microscope feel, and they add to the environmental authenticity in Beginnings II, and by extension, Beginnings I.  I feel as though I am not merely looking through the microscope at some weird little bacterial creature; I am there, with it, under the microscope too.  And I think that might be the point.  Life is alien, unfamiliar, uniform, and it embodies sublime, awe-inspiring beauty in all its forms, whether they are visible through a microscope, in the diagrams on textbook pages, by the naked eye, or on Whitesel’s tremendous canvases.

My amateur musings do not begin to convey the complexity and the sophisticated beauty in Whitesel’s aesthetics, and the unique way she approaches “perceiving and portraying the sublime.”  Although Metascope is over now, you can see some of her work for yourself at the Emily Carr Grad Show Opening 2010.  Don’t miss it!

– nora

Thanks to Tegan Whitesel, Metascope, and Rory Conroy for the images.

Three Rhône wines, one from the Châteauneuf-du-Pape appellation, that are all blends of red and white grape varieties.

For many wine neophytes, like myself some years ago, French wine is a bit of a mystery because it does not label grape varieties, although this is changing to meet demands of new world consumers.  The Rhône valley, in the South of France, produces many blends of both red and white varieties, including some familiar Côtes-du-Rhône wines, and the Côte-Rôtie is only one of several Rhône appellations renowned for them.  In fact, the Côte-Rôtie is the original Shiraz-Viognier producer; these two varieties are, indeed, the two grapes of the appellation, but here the red variety goes by its original moniker, Syrah.

While there are many Côtes-du-Rhône bottles available at varying prices at most wine shops, Côte-Rôtie wines available in BC are not for everyday sipping.  Also bear in mind, reader, that only some wines from the South of France are blends of both red and white varieties, if this post has influenced your shopping list.

Three wines from the Côte-Rôtie, all Syrah-Viognier blends. The Rostaing (center) is worth $140 and the two Guigal wines (right and left) are both over $450 each.

Most red and white blends, like Shiraz/Syrah-Viognier, contain only a small amount of white, and French wines follow strict regulations; AOC law permits only 5% of white wine in Côtes-du-Rhône red blends, for example, and Côte-Rôtie Syrah-Viognier wines can include as much as 20% of the white variety.  But just a touch of Viognier goes a long way.  This unique variety typically adds a delightful perfume of stewed apricot and floral notes and softer palate to red grape varieties.

An array of some Australian Shiraz-Viognier blends available at Everything Wine, North Vancouver. From left: Wolf Blass Gold Label, Rocky Gully, Zonte's Footsteps, Angove Nine Vines, Kangarilla Road, Grant Burge Balthasar, Tatachilla Keystone, Yalumba half bottle, The Black Chook, Yalumba, Hobbs, Yalumba Y Series, Alkoomi

As the world’s second largest grower of Syrah, and the country to give it its second name, Shiraz, Australia is also the new world frontrunner in Shiraz-Viognier blends.  The Aussie version usually includes around 4% Viognier, and it is found nearly everywhere in Australia wine is produced.  Shiraz-Viognier blends are often wines of exceptional value that offer characteristics unique to this particular red-and-white blend, and come at a fraction of the cost of rare and exclusive wines from the Côte-Rôtie.

And the red-and-white blend adventure traverses the wine world with seemingly limitless blending possibilities.

From left: Aprilskloof Pinotage, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Grenache, Shiraz, Viognier, and Carignan (South Africa); Montes Alpha Syrah with Cabernet Sauvignon and Viognier (Chile); First Drop 2% Shiraz-Albarino (Australia); See Ya Later Ranch Rover Shiraz-Viogner (BC, Canada).

Wolf Blass Gold Label 2005 Shiraz-Viognier is a classic example of an Australian Shiraz-Viognier blend that has a note of apricot and a soft, rich, cuddly palate.  The Viognier also adds a subtle note of violets on the nose, and the Shiraz bursts dark, jammy fruit:  cassis, plum, and blackberry pie.  The palate is luscious and concentrated.  A delicious wine for $33.99.  Joe Corkscrew had similar, but more comprehensive tasting notes.

Left: Montes Alpha Syrah and right: Wolf Blass Gold Label Shiraz-Viognier.

Montes Alpha 2006 Syrah is an elegant blend, although it, like many blends that are almost entirely one variety, its label does not tell us it includes 5% Viognier.  It actually has a touch of Cabernet Sauvignon, too, for structure and complexity.  Viognier enhances the wine and adds a delightful floral perfume to layers of cassis from the Cabernet, and strawberry, cherry, spice and smoke from the Syrah.  The wine has soft, velvety, long tannins and it truly develops in the glass, with tertiary leather and tobacco notes showing through as the wine opens up.  It is a beautifully elegant and complex wine, rated 91 points by Wine Advocate, and well worth $31.99.

Blending wines of both white and red grapes is certainly not a new trend in winemaking.  The old world has been at it for years; even Chianti DOC regulations allow for a significant percentage of white varieties, such as Malvasia Bianca and Trebbiano, in its red blend, and Champagne has been blending Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier with Chardonnay since the Middle Ages.  So even though I was a naïve young wine lover to think my first bottle of Shiraz-Viognier was an exciting new wine trend, my continued enthusiasm for the affordable, new-world version of a time-honoured winemaking technique has been a rewarding journey.

–  ruby

This post also appears on Everything Wine’s Blog.

*wines reviewed in this post are not necessarily vegan.

defacedbook: my point is loud

As a facebook ‘fan’ of PETA, I receive their updates.  When I saw their link to a blog entitled “Is Your Man a Hegan?” and responded with a status, and an appropriate amount of disdain, the following conversation amongst Star Wars toys ensued:

For anyone confused about what happened to the conversation at the end, it’s yet another Flight of the Conchords reference.  I think I was the fool for trying to be serious.

My link, although tangential to the argument, is to this National Post Editorial.

Though this facebook exchange ends lightheartedly, sadly, I think it reveals some anxieties surrounding the underlying issue of blatant sexism, even misandry, entrenched in general perceptions of veganism/vegetarianism.

– ruby

Tomato begged me to do it. He took the serrated edge in his green leafy hands, and smiled in ecstasy as he guided the steak knife through his ripe, juicy flesh. Goodbye, Tomato; you will not be forgotten.

Recently, I’ve made a sincere effort to understand this tendency of some non-vegetarians to hate, and disseminate hate of, vegetarians.  And make no mistake:  it is indeed hate.  (I know all y’all who are out there, reading this and hating me now, and saying you don’t hate me).  Some folks oppose vegetarianism/veganism without hate, granted, but I’m sure they, too, can acknowledge the substantial degree of anger directed, by non-vegetarians, at those of us who choose to eat plants instead.  I truly can’t quite comprehend this bigotry, and make no mistake, it is indeed bigotry.  I mean, I think I perceive the psychology behind it, but I suppose what I don’t understand is the source of the hate itself.  I have a couple of theories, but I’ll save those for the end.

Before I address the systematic hate for vegetarians as a group and some arguments against the lifestyle I encounter, I first want to tell you a bit about how I came to be vegan, and what it means to me.

All my life, I knew I should be, and I would be, vegetarian eventually.  And my parents knew it too.  When I was growing up, my brother and I were playfully referred to as ‘Bart and Lisa’ respectively.  And I think the characterizations still hold true to this day, although, we’re all grown up now;  Bart has a family of his own, and Lisa’s a bit of a lush.

Anyway, my parents dismissed my half-assed attempts at vegetarianism as silliness, which they were, for without my mother’s support, and, indeed, her efforts, I would not have made a successful campaign.  They did only give me half a steak, or whatever the meat portion of dinner was, because my natural inclination was to eat less meat.  I have never craved a steak, or a chop or a fillet.  Shortly after I moved out of my parents’ house, I cut all red meat and pork from my diet.  I was 19, and reading some influential literature on vegetarianism, and the effect eating meat has on the world, so I started with the animals I thought were the worst in terms of environmental damage and world hunger, I ate less meat in general, and I practiced The David Suzuki Challenge.  It took me nearly ten more years before I became completely vegan, and, for a long time I didn’t make the change only because I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone or deal with awkward social situations, and I still struggle with this from time to time.

Vegans define their lifestyles differently.  For me, veganism is integral to who I am; it’s almost a spiritual connection I have with the world.  My first steps, as I’ve already mentioned, were motivated by my desire to mitigate the damages my consumption made on this planet, and while those reasons still inform my choice to refuse animal products, I am much more sympathetic to animals and animal rights now.

After I graduated university, I felt a little lost; I was utterly alone, and I had no plan.  At the same time, a friend of a friend had a litter of puppies, one of whom was looking for a home.  I was introduced to the runt, and shortly thereafter, I was on my way home with a shiny new kennel and a whining pup inside.  I coddled my skinny little hound; she wouldn’t eat, so I threw her kibbles around the room, and she chased them in fun, and crunched them down aggressively.  When my mother saw this pathetic behaviour, she assured me the dog would eat when she got hungry, and of course, mom was right.  My parents, too, fell in love with my dog (they now have two) and my mom named her Madison.  Madi and I have been together 5 years now, and she may in fact have more rights in my home than I do.  She is not a good dog, but I love her, and even though I don’t condone her cranky moods, I understand them.  Ironically, it’s her intemperate nature that makes her such a person, to me, and my love for her informs my veganism in a new way:  it is wrong, I believe, to exploit animals for human interests.  Period.  I am a member of PETA, and I strongly agree with their five basic tenets (although I sometimes dislike their ways of marketing them):

• Animals Are Not Ours to Eat
• Animals Are Not Ours to Wear
• Animals Are Not Ours to Experiment On
• Animals Are Not Ours to Use for Entertainment
• Animals Are Not Ours to Abuse in Any Way

Animals are not ours.  I call my dog “my dog,” but I live for her at least as much as she lives for me, and if she were a cow or a chicken, I would feel the same way… although I might not take her to bed with me!  So, for me, veganism is not living a lie; it’s not being a hypocrite.

o hai. iz jus sittin hear. cookeh? i haddin notissed.

i can has cookeh? ..............................orly?

omnomnomnomnom

Most people, however, relate to my initial reasons for making the shift to veganism:  the environment.  Eating meat is the worst thing humans do to this planet.  Many species are lost forever, or endangered, from overhunting, and removing a species or severely reducing its populations has serious effects on the ecosystem.  And farming animals is so much worse.  We destroy land to make steaks.  We pollute our rivers and streams with animal shit.  We destroy forests, in countries where most people are starving, to raise cattle that supply our favourite fast food chains.  If lands used to graze and grow feed for animals (for meat) were planted with crops like wheat, to feed people, we would have enough food in the world for everyone.  So, you see, veganism is also about human rights.  I know a lot of you are reading this, and rolling your eyes at my lofty ideology – I realize I don’t have all the answers – but how is vegetarianism/veganism not a rational, relevant, and maybe even noble reason to choose tofu instead of chicken, or mushrooms instead of ground beef?

And I actually prefer vegetarian fare.

I don’t eat meat or dairy or honey; I don’t consume products that contain ingredients made from animal bones or insect parts; I don’t purchase or wear leather or fur or feather or bone or wool.  This is my method.

Before I continue, I want to say, also, that I am not a “militant vegan,” as I cheekily refer to some of my peers.  I was not born vegetarian, and I absolutely do not think everyone else should come to the same epiphany I have just because I have.  I support friends who wish to make this transition on their own accord (so proud of you Jordan and Rory), and I take pains to ensure that I don’t inconvenience others, or make them feel uncomfortable expressing themselves around me.  So, when a friend asks for a wine suggestion for their lamb dinner, I happily show them to a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Shiraz.  I talk about my veganism candidly, and often, with many of my open-minded and compassionate friends, and that, I think, is the best way to generate awareness and understanding amongst the people I know and love.  (The rest of you can read about it here, if you like.  )  Anyway, the point of this concession is that while I believe consuming animals is wrong, I don’t think people who consume animals are bad; for most people, it is normal, and I understand that; it was for me at one time too.

I am critical of animal consumers who deny the nature of their consumption, however.  If, for example, you eat meat and you flinched at reading me referring to you as an ‘animal consumer,’ then you might be a redneck.  Just kidding.  But you might not be entirely at peace with some of your lifestyle choices.  The faceless pieces of fresh flesh pressed between sanitary Styrofoam and cellophane make it easy for people to ignore the fact that an animal died to put that steak on the barbie.  Eating animals is cruelty, no matter how many “humane,” “free range,” and “organic” stickers dot the package (and those often misleading marketing strategies are another discussion for another day).  Sure, there are degrees of humaneness, and I encourage animal consumers to choose the most humanely treated and slaughtered animal products, and to boycott the most inhumane ones.  But acknowledge that killing an animal for any reason other than compassion for the animal is cruel.  And I do think it is important for animal consumers to be informed about how the animals they eat are treated and slaughtered, and to be content with it.  I realize plenty of folks, without hesitation, can answer the following questions in the affirmative, but some folks might like to consider them:

• Do you think you could watch, not on TV or youtube, but in real life, the animal you are about to eat strung up, and ‘humanely’ slaughtered?
• Do you think you could spend time on a farm, call the animals by their names, feed them and scratch their ears, if they have ears, and then prepare them for slaughter and witness their deaths (and then eat their cooked flesh)?
• Do you think you could shoot a wild animal, like a moose or a deer, on a hunt, or even just watch someone else shoot the animal, and butcher the carcass (and then enjoy the game meat for dinner)?
• Do you think that eating meat, and farming animals, is good for the planet, or that it is a necessity of daily life regardless of how it affects the environment?

If so, by all means, don’t let me interrupt your steak dinner.  But if you find these questions unsettling, and you don’t like to think about the life that used to move and make noise before it ended up on your plate, then, perhaps, you are ethically conflicted, and perhaps these are questions you might consider.  The answer for you may be learning more about meat production and farming and making better-informed choices about the products you consume, it may be volunteering and/or donating to animal rights causes, it may be vegetarianism/veganism.

Another bone of contention, forgive the pun, I have is with an alarming majority of people who take issue only with ‘cute’ or ‘lovable’ animals that are killed for food, like dogs in certain parts of the world.  I know lots of readers will disagree with me here, but I strongly believe that distinguishing between which species are acceptable to eat and which are not based on preconceived notions that selfishly define the purpose(s) of animal life is highly problematic.  I am obviously not condoning the eating of dogs, here, but it upsets me when people who eat way more meat than their diets require, and all varieties of meat that are available to them, criticize other cultures for eating our pets.

Alright, so, now, to address the folks who insist that veganism is a) not good for my health, and b) unnatural:  I’m not going say, for certain, whether or not either of these premises are true.  I’m no authority, and frankly, I don’t care to get into the scientific/medical details.  I don’t care at all.  My main concern in not consuming animal products is not myself, and I think I this is true of most vegetarians/vegans.

The health defense is often a slippery eel in the hands of ethics debate; it is, and has been, used to justify many prejudices – homophobia and HIV/AIDS in the 70s (and now), for example.  But vegetarianism/veganism is unique in that if it is indeed unhealthy, it is only detrimental to my health, and I feel like my health is nobody’s business but mine, not that I believe contagion is a justification for discrimination, to be clear.  Anyway, I am healthier now than I have ever been.  I will concede that being healthy and vegan was challenging for me at first; it required research, and change.  Yet, veganism has made me as healthy as I am because, for me, the lifestyle necessitates it.  That vegetarians are sickly and protein-deprived is a misconception; there are many vegetarian sources of complete proteins – combinations such as legumes and grains or corn or nuts or seeds, soy products, quinoa, etc – and most people in the western world consume way more protein than the body requires.  I find it odd that, statistically, vegetarians live longer than meat-eaters, and yet animal consumers so often criticize my health when they learn I’m vegan.  Some sources report that the majority of unhealthy people in North America eat more meat than is recommended.  Of course, there are plenty of terribly unhealthy vegetarian/vegan foods, but vegetarians as a group, are actually quite a healthy demographic.  I will concede that vegetarianism/veganism and meat-eating both seem to lead to their own, respective health defects, linked specifically to meat consumption, or the lack thereof, but I don’t think vegetarianism/veganism is worse in this respect than an omnivorous diet.

I’ve also encountered the argument that vegetarianism causes anorexia.  I’m not sure why the same people who say this don’t also say that meat-eating leads to anorexia when meat-eaters suffer the affliction, but either way, the argument has been refuted by evidence that many sufferers of anorexia use vegetarianism as an excuse to refuse food in social situations, rather than that the eating disorder is a result of the vegetarian lifestyle.

If the vegan-haters are right about me, and I’m slowly killing myself with cancer sticks – also known as baby carrots and celery stalks – I’m fine with that. So be it.  Something is going to kill me eventually.  I’d rather slowly kill myself, if indeed, I am (and I do not in any way acknowledge that I am) than quickly kill masses of animals and support a system responsible for losing masses of human lives to starvation.

I know I’m not going to die for this cause, but I would.

Mr. Beefsteak, on the other hand: he had to die. Mwahahahaha.

Now for b), the contention that vegetarianism/veganism is unnatural: some of the most vehement opposition to my lifestyle makes this argument.  I’m told, repeatedly, humans have canine teeth for eating meat.  There is just as much biased, vegetarian/vegan, information out there to support the premise that vegetarianism is natural and eating meat is not, and I am, frankly, not interested in either debate.  I don’t understand how this argument is relevant, and it is often yoked with the statement that begins, “God put animals on earth for us to…” which is yet another diatribe that attempts to justify a lot of unjustifiable shit.  Anyway, I know that fruit bats have canine teeth, and that humans have to cook meat to process the protein, and people contract diseases from meat that meat-eating animals don’t, and whatever other (ir)relevant and arbitrary articles that could be listed here.  I suspect that humans share characteristics with omnivores, herbivores, and carnivores, and that many other animals do as well, regardless of their diets.  Either way, I could care less.  The ‘natural’ argument is sometimes a thorny one when it comes to human behaviour, because we’re civilized and socialized and we define ourselves apart from the rest of the ‘natural’ world by our ‘unnatural’ behaviour.  We like to think we’re above the savage chaos of raw nature, and we also like to think we’re benevolent and ‘natural’ when we buy expensive granola, and prettily-packaged candy bars – I mean ‘organic health’ bars.  Why can’t we all just retreat to the forest and run around naked?  Screw this day job!  Whether a behavior is perceived as natural or not is not reason enough (for me) to do it, especially if you (I) believe it is wrong.

Finally, I want to address all the people who contend that if eating animals is wrong, eating plants is wrong also, because plants are alive.  And somehow, they believe this refutes vegetarianism/veganism.  Personally, I value animal life over plant life, and it is indeed different.  But if you believe killing plant life is also unethical, then perhaps you should not eat animals or plant products that require the death of the plant.  Eat fruits and vegetables that are harvested without destroying the plant itself and plants that only live one season, and pamper your garden like it’s a child.  I’m not saying anyone should actually do this, unless they want to, but how is the argument that people should not be vegetarian because eating plants is wrong too, and therefore, everyone should eat both plants and animals, relevant?  So should I just kill everything?  Should I eat people too?  Although I don’t condemn those who refuse to eat certain plant life, I don’t feel the same compassion.  The distinction between the rights animals and plants merit, as I perceive it, can be understood thusly:  a lot of folks, when they’re feeling a bit randy and adventurous, or just being corny romantics, feed each other strawberries in the bedroom.  Nudge nudge.  And, some folks, even, get a bit kinky with the bananas and the cucumbers – you know who you are; it’s okay.  A little “getting lewd with [the] food,” as Flight of the Conchords describe it, is perfectly harmless, and, well, fun.  So, now my distinction between animal life  and plant life should be clear, and if it’s not, perhaps you belong in jail.  Bestiality is not okay, and it’s illegal for a reason.  I hope I’ve made my point.

A group of suicidal tomatoes gather on my windowsill and peer down at the dreary Vancouver street... do it.

Alright, so this post is for vegans, vegetarians, and non-vegetarians alike.  These are my views.  This is my veganism.  And this is what I think, and occasionally attempt to communicate, in response to the objections I’ve received, and continue to receive.  I suspect that many of the people who so passionately take issue with vegetarianism/veganism have some amount of internal ethical conflict, and attack the vegetarian lifestyle in an attempt to justify their own.  Or, they may simply resent the vegetarian/vegan demographic for its self-perceived ethical superiority, and sadly, backlash against a lifestyle that is truly hurting no one.  Before I leave off, I would like to make clear that most of the antagonism I’ve described here, in my experience, comes from mere acquaintances and complete strangers.  Fortunately for me, I am surrounded by wonderfully supportive friends and family, and even coworkers, who love and respect me regardless of what I bring to the potluck, and even go to troubles to accommodate me, and I love and appreciate them immeasurably.

Live and let live.

– robyn

From left: JoieFarm 2009 A Noble Blend, Ironstone Obsession 2008 Symphony, Sperling Vineyards 2009 The Market White.

I’ve noticed that a majority of consumers drink only red, or very little white, and almost everyone, it seems, is afraid of a touch of sweetness in their wine.  I’m not sure if it’s the memory of sugary, flavourless, mass-produced American White Zinfandel circa 1980, or the surprisingly explosive sweetness of that first sip of quality icewine, but it seems to me there is a general reluctance to try off-dry, or, as many people mistakenly call them, ‘sweet’ wines.  An off-dry wine, unlike a sweet wine such icewine, late harvest wine, or port, has just a touch of residual sugar, and, if made to my liking, a good amount of mouthwatering  acidity to balance the sweetness; indeed, this is precisely the difference between an exquisite off-dry Gewürztraminer, and an unpalatably cloying wine of the 80s blush variety.  Acidity in off-dry wine is kind of like a squeeze of lemon in a good recipe; it brightens the flavours of the wine, adds a bit of tartness to balance the sweetness, and provides a clean finish to a round palate.

Now, to answer the obvious question I’ve neglected thus far:  What is an aromatic wine?  Wines that are considered ‘aromatic’ exhibit an intense nose, or fragrance, of flowers, fruit, and spice that come from the grape itself.  Ageing and vinification, or the winemaker’s tinkering, by contrast, produce what we call the bouquet rather than the aroma of the wine.  For instance, the aroma of a Syrah might exhibit characteristics of luscious black fruit and white pepper, and its bouquet might reveal complex layers of vanilla and forest-floor from ageing in oak and bottle respectively.
Some wine varieties (or grapes) considered aromatic are Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, Riesling, Muscat, and Pinot Blanc, although wines from these grapes do not always exhibit the intense nose characteristic of an aromatic wine, and sometimes wines can be aromatic even if they’re not made from grapes that are typically considered ‘aromatic.’

The wines I poured on Sunday, however, were all exceptional examples of aromatic wines, and perfect for welcoming the spring season, with their bright aromas of fresh fruit and flowers.  Each was slightly more off-dry, or sweet than the last, and the first wine I poured was JoieFarm’s recently-released 2009 A Noble Blend.  This boutique winery in Naramata, BC, Canada produces a slightly different Alsatian-style blend each vintage, and the 2009 blend is mostly Gewürztraminer with some Pinot Gris, Pinot Auxerrois and Riesling.  On the nose, the domination of Gewürztraminer in the blend was apparent immediately:  it exhibited a bright, intense, nose of lychee and aloe, with a touch of that cold-cream characteristic typical of the Gewürztraminer grape.  There were also notes of rose water and spice on the nose, which came through on the palate.  The fruit on the palate, however, was quite different from the tropical, lychee-rose aroma.  Although the nose of the wine lead me to assume it was going to be quite off-dry, on tasting it, I was surprised that only a very small touch of residual sugar was left in the wine, and it actually finished relatively dry, with flavours of fresh ruby red grapefruit and lemonade lingering.  At $28.99 CAD, JoieFarm’s A Noble Blend is a complex, delicious wine that will delight both lovers of the most off-dry aromatic wines like myself, as well as folks who want beautiful, intense aromas without all the sweetness.

The second wine I poured was only a tiny bit sweeter than the first.  At $16.99, Obsession from Ironstone Vineyards is an excellent value wine from California; it’s difficult to find a quality aromatic wine under $20.  Although it was not my particular favourite, as a subjective aromatic-appreciator, it was certainly unique, interesting, and well-received.  Obsession is made from the American varietal, Symphony, which was created in California in 1948 by crossing the two Vitis vinifera grapes, Grenache Gris and Muscat of Alexandria.  The nose is intensely floral, and very uniquely so.  I often smell rose, or lilac, or jasmine, or even violet in a wine, but Obsession smelled of large, ‘polleny’ garden flowers like daffodils and lilies.  There was also a layer of something sweet on the nose; it reminded me of lemon custard or crème brûlée.  The intense floral note came through on the palate, and was complimented nicely with vibrant acidity and buttery richness that made the unique floral character quite delectable.  Indeed, Ironstone’s 2008 Obsession was the most-purchased wine of the tasting.

The third and final wine I poured proved an excellent finish to the flight.  Sperling Vineyards‘ The Market White from Kelowna, BC, Canada is also an Alsatian-style blend like the JoieFarm, although it is considerably sweeter.  The blend here is predominantly Pinot Gris with some Gewürztraminer and a smidgen of Riesling.  The Market White was distinctive in this lineup because it exhibited an intense nose of exclusively fruity characteristics.  Vibrant notes of orchard fruit – peaches and apricots – that one might expect from an Okanagan wine, came through on both the nose and the palate.  I detected a slight note of something herbaceous, but the residual sugar and fruit characteristics of the wine gave it a delightful fruit-cocktail finish.  At only $19.99 CAD, Sperling’s 2009 The Market White is wonderful as an aperitif, a dessert or cheese plate wine, or an excellent and inexpensive compliment to the spiciest of Indian and Thai cuisines.

My humble advice:  don’t be afraid of a little bit of sugar.  Some of the best white wines in the world are off-dry, aromatic, perfect for some difficult food pairings, and delicious!

–  ruby

This post also appears on Everything Wine’s Blog.

*wines reviewed in this post are not necessarily vegan.

From left: Anna Marie Repstock, 'A Sense of Rhythm'; Casey Wei, 'All Dried Up'; Anna Marie Repstock, 'Free Verse'

Although A Kid in Vancouver already offers an insightful review of Readings, and s/he acknowledges the marked cohesiveness between the two artists’ contributions to this show – and I agree with A Kid’s assessment – I did feel as though I could easily distinguish the two artists’ pieces in the exhibit.  Now, that’s not to say they weren’t cohesive, but I think they were, on a trajectory of meaning, running in different, antithetical directions, and I love their grouping in this show for that very reason.

Here I am commenting on Repstock’s pieces, mostly, because, well, they dominated the exhibit, not only in number, but in provocation.  They are collectively titled, The Legibility of Being.

From left: Anna Marie Repstock's, 'Howl', 'Return', and 'The Long Poem'

First, I should say, the show was incredible, and if you are ever able to see Anna Marie Repstock’s work, I recommend you seize the opportunity.

I particularly enjoyed this show because of the way it bridged the artistic representations of the written word and the visual — and, I suppose, that makes it especially accessible to me, as writer, teacher, and student of English. Even though the show was aptly paired, my instinct was to notice differences between representations — which may be a result of an education that champions the compare-and-contrast template, that always does one or the other and seldom accomplishes both.

I first observed the antithetical directions Repstock and Wei seemed to take as artists. Wei’s approach struck me as more concrete. She seemed to use the written word — her written word — to create something ‘new.’  All Dried Up, manipulates the iconic Vancouverite artist, Rodney Graham’s image of the upside-down tree to make its own comment about art and language as bisecting media. Wei’s inverted tree, however, is composed of the repeated and seemingly infinite phrase, ‘All Dried Up.’  I interpret this piece, and its ‘new’ meaning to be critical of Graham’s established conventions, but I hesitate to offer this interpretation, for fear I’m off the mark, and unfairly implicating another artist.

Wei also contributed an audio component to the show, which I think added a lot to the atmosphere and experience of the artistic dialogue.  The incessant sound of a typewriter in motion complimented both Wei’s and Repstock’s work.  The audio was most emphatic in the basement, because, well, that’s where the speakers were located, and that’s where Wei’s The Past is Better Left A Bone sculpture was carefully placed on the bare, concrete floor.  The sculpture resembled a small, papier–mâché femur, and as the title card told me, it was sculpted from Wei’s own printed, torn, and mâchéd blogs.  I immediately wondered why I was hearing the sound of a typewriter and not a keyboard, given the medium of the sculpture.  And I crinkled my nose at the smell of rats, a criticism of the venue, perhaps, but a detail that may have accentuated the atmosphere of death I interpreted the little bone made of destroyed diary entries to represent.  Wei, indeed, has taken the written word and created new meaning.

Casey Wei, 'The Past is Better Left a Bone', Blogs from 1998 - 2008 (2009), mixed media installation

The sound of typing, conversely, fit well with Repstock’s paintings because they reflect particular aspects of writing that are classic and timeless. That said, however, the typewriter is an interesting presence in all of this because it symbolizes writing so absolutely. The typewriter as an obsolete technology is an interesting symbol for trite, overwrought literary convention, and that its only function is (was) transcription is interesting as a constant, repetitive reminder about the fickle power of language, and that is, indeed, what Readings addresses so profoundly — by Wei’s cathartic and destructive typed art, and Repstock’s painted, universal language.

The juxtaposition between the two directions of representation:  Repstock’s canvases and Wei’s  typed image, sculpture and sound, highlighted the visual effect of Repstock’s paintings, which seemed to reflect language, meaning, and literary convention artistically, as opposed to Wei’s using language to represent something ‘new.’

When I think about Repstock’s series, I catch myself referring to myself, the art viewer, as ‘reader.’   Repstock’s work is almost didactic, to me; it teaches one to read both literature and art in an interesting way. The visual representations do not just convey the power of language and poetic form — and our visceral responses to it — they actually enable appreciators to experience the written word where it does not ‘exist,’  and at the same time, they expose, sometimes critically, sometimes generously, the processes and conventions of producing written and painted art.

Here I will give a brief description that truly does disservice to the beauty and importance of Repstock’s collection:  Repstock has essentially created a series of paintings, oil on canvas, that share the blue lines we all know and love (or hate) from a typical notebook page.  Some of her paintings include margins, some do not, but all of the pieces are conceived upon an imperfect, yet astonishingly precise, hand-painted blue-lined canvas.  The medium, here, itself, is truly beautiful.  Interestingly, the evidently painstaking labour involved in painting perfectly measured lines yokes the process of painting and the process of writing.

Anna Marie Repstock, 'Concrete', oil & acrylic on canvas, 30 x 36 inches, August 2008

Concrete is the only piece in the series that includes written text; it reads ‘meditation on a line’ and I love the way it forces its viewer to stop: to think about this sentence, this painting, and to think about the meaning the seemingly simplistic statement embodies, and communicates so clearly: all the anxieties we, as interpreters and artists, writers, builders, bakers — communicators — experience in the process of creation are focused into a literary and artistic zen.  And before we realize it, we, as readers and viewers are indeed meditating on a line as it is telling us to do just that.  The imperfectly painted, written phrase further complicates our meditation, too, and for me at least, champions an understanding that supersedes technical, measurable precision.  When I first beheld this painting, I found myself wondering whether I was meditating on language or art.  And, clearly, it was my own limitation that kept me from immediately realizing that I am, for the first time, doing both.

Anna Marie Repstock, 'Howl', oil and acrylic on canvas, 42 x 54 inches, April 2009

I especially love Repstock’s Howl for this reason – the boundaries of visual art and written art are so innovatively challenged and merged.  Not only does art, here, evoke the kind of emotional, audible, bodily meaning Howl seems to represent, it rejects the confines of the lined paper in the most profound way:  it contradicts them visually and physically, by its disregard for their borders, as bold orange lashings leap across meticulously painted blue lines.  And, it offers a meaning that does the same; it seems, at once, to reject the confines of the artist, the confines of the writer, and indeed, the confines of a larger set of rules by which all things are created and defined.  But the blue lines do not disperse; they do not relent and fade away in the confrontation of such artistic freedom, which, to me, says something about the importance of challenging conventions in the bold face of tradition, yet acknowledging its longstanding, irrevocable power.

Anna Marie Repstock, 'The Long Poem', oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 by 42 inches, September 2008

Repstock’s paintings that portray bold rays of colour across the paginated lines, such as Long Poem and A Sense of Rhythm, are interesting to me because they make the technical, mathematical part of literary art, which is beautiful in poetry but normally invisible, visible, and beautiful.  These pieces explore different aspects of this linguistic/artistic aesthetic.  And, again, the way they seem to contemplate poetic composition leads the reader to do the same. It’s as if there is a poem on that page. It is a poem.  Repstock’s paintings do not merely resemble poems. They are poems.

The degree to which this revelation thrills an art lover, an amateur reviewer, and a writer is immense.

Anna Marie Repstock, 'Return', oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 by 36 inches, November 2008

I also really liked Return; which was interestingly placed perpendicular to Howl in the gallery.  In Howl, it’s as if the otherwise symmetrical square is disrupted by emotional and visceral thoughts and movements, and then in Return, it seems as though this ‘aberration’ has settled, and peace is ‘restored:’  a perfect orange square confined by those incessant, compulsive blue lines.  It’s almost the Hyde to Howl’s Jekyll (as a Victorianist, I can’t help myself from such an analysis).  In Return, markedly, the colour is quite transparent, suggesting, perhaps, that Howl is the unrestrained manifestation, the id, maybe, and Return is the putting it back in its ‘proper’ place:  the super-ego, even (again, I can’t resist indulging the Victorian-Freudian take).  It struck me, too, in watching other appreciators of art peruse the gallery, and pass by this piece more quickly than others, that it, indeed, if representing the most technically precise and limiting of literary conventions, like when meaning is forced into patterns of rhyme and syllable – a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g — also comments on the limitations of understanding language so confined.  I love that the canvas corner is folded over. It also exposes the limitations of the artist’s conventional medium, a trademark of Repstock’s art, and maybe even the unrealistic, righteous, morality of the impulse that constrains us.  And it yet again bridges literary and fine arts; it is reminiscent of the reader/writer who dog-ears pages that are of particular significance  — pages that evoke something — an unfinished thought, a most profound revelation — to which we, as readers and thinkers, must return.  Repstock is not only offering another poem in the guise of a painting (or painting in the guise of a poem); she is asking us to stop, to think, and to ponder meaning and its construction.

As I traversed the gallery, it felt as though Repstock’s series moved from the more technically confined poetic form, to the more liberal/liberating.  I felt almost as if I was walking through from iambic pentameter to Free Verse, then onto the cathartic Howl and, at last, the contemplative, sardonic Return.  This movement was particularly compelling to me because it revealed the invisible and restricting conventions of modern and ‘free’ poetics that we like to assume are happily devoid of rules, but can be just as entrenched in literary principles as the Shakespearean sonnet is; we just can’t see them as easily until they take the form of bold rays on blue-lined canvas.  Repstock’s images strike, at once, from both ends.  She simultaneously manipulates the conventions of both literary and fine arts, and she not only exposes the limitations of both, but also, her entrenchment in them as artist herself.  Repstock’s The Legibility of Being, coupled with Wei’s ambient typewriter, and revealing, critical use typescript as artist’s tool, offer fascinating, and truly novel representations of the written word and contemporary art.  Their works comment on process: the creation, communication, and comprehension of meaning itself, of Readings.

I’m not sure anything I’ve said here is at all insightful, and it’s difficult to talk about images I may not correctly perceive, so let’s just say that I thoroughly enjoyed the show!

–  nora

Welcome to my humble and somewhat confused corner in cyberspace.  My name is Robyn, I live in Vancouver, BC, Canada and I call myself a misanthropic vegan.  That’s right:  I love animals, and I hate people.  Of course, I’m only joking when I say I hate people, but I am quite cynical, and at times, misanthropic.  But over the years, I’ve acquired other titles as well:  I’m a feminist, a liberal, a socialist, an atheist and a professional wino.  And, I haven’t quit my day job; I’m a graduate student of Victorian Literature, a teacher of English, and I work at a wine shop.  I love living in East Van; I spend much of my spare time in and out of coffee shops and organic markets, checking out the local music and art scenes, perusing overpriced boutique vintage shops, cooking, drinking wine, and smothering my dog (often, these last two go hand-in-hand).
I love my dog in a way that some people might deem pathetic or annoying.  I don’t put her in clothes or anything like that; but, I kiss her nose repeatedly, I refer to her paws as hands and feet, I snuggle her more than she would like, and I’m convinced she understands me, so long as I talk to her like she’s a baby.

So, my blog, bitch casserole, is essentially a hodgepodge of the interests and opinions that float around in the space between my ears, and need a place to go; it’s like my Sunday night casserole, that is just as much a product of my cleaning out the fridge as it is my making dinner.  Because this blog will do several seemingly incongruous things –  art reviews, music uploads, sociopolitical rants, creative writing, wine tasting notes, diary entries –  I’ve divided my psyche up into three:  myself, Robyn, and my two alters, Nora Noёl and Ruby Bricks, the names of whom I’ve arranged from all the letters that comprise my own real, full, name.  Posts by Robyn will be those that are most neutral, and those which cannot be easily separated into vice or virtue.  Nora Noёl, therefore, will function as the angel on the shoulder of this blog; she will author the ‘high culture’ content of the site – art reviews, literature responses – as well as other ‘good’ and/or ‘domestic’ miscellany, like recipes and tips, charity work and activism, and the odd happy, fuzzy, opinion piece.  Ruby Bricks, as the counterpart to Nora, then, will author the more indulgent, debaucherous, devilish, and often-angry posts, as well as the wine and spirit tasting notes.  Her commentary will indeed be the most therapeutic for me, but I’ll do my best to keep her from using overly offensive language, or taking over this site entirely.  These alters are not characters; they are divisions of myself, and although they offer a pseudonym for me to hide behind, they express my true thoughts and interests.
And many issues will find their way into posts by all three personae:  veganism, for example.  Robyn might mention it in a diary entry, Nora might post a recipe, and Ruby might lash out against a less-than-supportive sentiment.

This blog is an informal, unofficial, often opinionated and un-researched, personal dialogue, and I acknowledge there is no particular reason for anyone to read it; those who do are welcome to contribute, even if that means with disagreement.   I only ask that you come in peace.

– robyn