We Want More Canadian Books!

Melody (Lyu) Chang at Waverly Park on Saturday getting a free book.
(Cover slightly altered) 

     In Canada the cost of putting a Canadian children’s book author’s work into the hands of a Canadian child is anywhere between fifty to seventy dollars per book. This is the result of a bizarre situation that has developed over the years creating a reality that few know exist or seem willing to deal with. It would cost us much less to simply give Canadian children books away for free.

     Regarding books, the two most important groups of people are the readers and the creators of the books. Everyone else is a middleman who are either helping us to connect or getting in our way. 

    Publishers and funding agencies will argue that they are doing their best with the current situation, but it is a situation that continues to pay their salaries regardless of detrimental effects elsewhere. If their primary job is to aid both the creative people and their audience they would be open to what needs to be changed. They are not.

     Last October I spoke on the phone with Gail Winskill of Pajama Press. Gail had written an email to me apologizing on behalf of Canadian publishers for the treatment of many authors and illustrators after she had read my blog post about the troubles I had with my former publisher. Gail was sick in bed when I called and we had a conversation about the reality of the industry in Canada. 

     Pajama Press used to regularly sell in Canada seven thousand copies of a new book. Today they sell only about seven hundred in Canada and typically five thousand copies in the U.S. “If it weren’t for the Americans,” said Gail, “I’d be sunk.”

    In other words, our funding agencies are subsidizing Canadian books sold to Americans, which increases the cost of producing a book for every book a Canadian child receives. 

     Fifteen years ago a Canadian publisher could be guaranteed to sell a few thousand books to school libraries across the country. Librarians were instrumental in ordering Canadian children’s books for their schools. Conservative governments over time have gutted school librarians and consolidated other libraries across the country with the argument that digital technology was changing everything. 

     Sadly, Doug Ford has already talked about closing more libraries. This despite books making a huge comeback with sales for YA novels specifically, skyrocketing. The love of e-readers and the zeal in digitizing everything has waned dramatically. Turns out that print is still a superior technology in many ways.

    Canadian money also vacates the country when books are printed in China or the United States. The paper for a book printed in Canada often comes from elsewhere, primarily the United States, and the cost jumps due to the exchange rate.

     Cost of shipping in Canada is prohibitive. Books make a grand circuitous route from the printer in China to a warehouse in Canada. Books are then shipped to Indigo across the country and back again to the warehouse for books that don’t sell. Publishers pay for their books’ return adding up to thirty-five percent of the retail cost of a book. Storage fees are paid and an incredible number of books that don’t sell are simply destroyed. There’s a cost for that too. 
Related Article: Con-Artists in the Canadian Publishing World

     The list of troubles goes on. Here’s one solution: cut out the publisher. 

     Select through a jury process an author, like me (of course!) and give me one hundred and thirty thousand dollars, all to print ten hardcover books, three thousand copies of each. This could be done over a five year period. 

     Of those ten books I will give a thousand copies of each to children for free. The rest of the books I will sell wherever I like to earn my money. That’s a total of ten thousand books given away to children for free costing the funding agency, or private company, only thirteen dollars per hardcover book. Find a way to get Canadian printing companies to compete for this money and the printing costs will drop and the money will be spent in Canada.With a little imagination we could get hundreds of thousands of Canadian children reading books by thousands of Canadian writers and illustrators and save ton of money in the process. And this is but one idea. 
Duncan Weller www.duncanweller.com

Espresso Nojoya: 88 Comical Ways to Laugh at the Haters

Thomas White, Neo Nazi and Alt-Right Trump supporter.
 White is spreading hate speech nationally. He uses funds
from the sale of his coffee to support hate groups in the
United States. Currently he works at the Resolute Mill
(Resolute Forest Products) in Thunder Bay. Hopefully
not for long as he bragged on his podcast about his
ability to convert his co-workers into committing hateful
acts against First Nations people. Locally, rumours are that
he is associated with the murderers of First Nations youths. 

Duncan Weller www.duncanweller.com
 Thunder Bay, specifically our arts community, suffered a particular nasty shock last week leaving some horrified, some visibly upset, many dumbfounded and a few of us bursting into laughter. We are not laughing because the situation isn’t serious, but because humour is often defensive and generated by a surprise incongruence, that is, two events slammed together so out of whack that we find it funny. 

     Last week an in-depth article of investigative journalism by the online media company, Vice, in collaboration with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, pieced together a plethora of patterns and clues to accuse Thunder Bay resident, Thomas White (right), former owner of Espresso Joya, of spreading hate speech, primarily through a podcast titled, This Hour Has 88 Minutes. 88 is a numeration of HH, meaning Heil Hitler for those in the know. The Vice article (Linked Here) quotes horrific racist comments and support for violence against leftists and brown people of all kinds. 
         Vice also featured this nut (below), a collaborator with Thomas White. Neo-Nazi Recruitment. Welcome to the new world of Trump inspired Neo-Nazi Nerds.   

Clayton Sanford, Cosplayer and Neo Nazi

     The actress, Renee Zellweger had enough dramatic facial reconstruction that for the public she may as well have passed on. The actress we knew vanished to become someone else, nothing horrific, just so different looking and unrecognizable that she may as well have just walked away from Hollywood. 

    A similar transformative vanishing act took place when a friend of the Thunder Bay community disappeared by becoming something unrecognizable and truly disgusting. Espresso Joya was a welcome addition to the North Core, bringing in musicians and artists with events and art shows. Thomas held figure drawing sessions at the Baggage Building and held regular little chess tournaments, introducing a chess board allowing four players to battle against each other simultaneously.

      That the owner of such a hub of leftist artsy and intellectual activity would be a Neo-Nazi is right out of a Monty Python skit, specifically where Mr and Mrs Johnson visiting a small boarding house in Somerset, England encounter Adolf Hitler, von Ribbentrop, and Heinrich Himmler trying to blend in and restart their Nazi movement.

     Or imagine the situ in reverse. Let’s say I moved to Harrison, Arkansas to open a steak shop or to Charlotte, North Carolina to run a NASCAR rally, all in order to raise money so I could purchase First Nations art and send 5 percent of my earnings to the NDP and feminist organizations in Ontario. In my spare time I would organize redneck gatherings featuring yoga and vegetarian dinners. 

    It’s funny while being totally insane. 

The ultimate Nazi and Cosplayer, Adolf Hitler - fashioned his own military uniforms. 

    One could imagine Magnus or Cambrian Theatre putting on a musical comedy, like Mel Brooks’, The Producers, where a coffee shop owner, dressed in black sporting a high-and-tight alt-right haircut sings and dances in dramatic soliloquies about his frustration with putting up with all his leftist, women, black, Indigenous and LBGTQ patrons. He hates them all, but is forced to smile and serve them “the best coffee in Thunder Bay,” occasionally seeming to forget who his enemies were.

    His theme song would be of his plot to destroy his coffee making competitors, especially his arch nemesis, the owner of the coffee shop at the Country Market. He would rail against the “mainstream media,” while his lefty employees advising White to spend less time reading Reddit on his laptop. And when he closes his doors for the night, he pulls the curtains, strips off his clothes to reveal his untanned body in order to dance naked to alt-right heavy metal music.

I swear there’s a ton of money to be made in taking down the racists and haters. Not only can’t they think hard enough to see the obvious error of their ways and thoughts, they can’t see themselves for what they really are: a big joke.

Art Without God

Duncan Weller www.duncanweller.com     
Most artists I know have no religious beliefs whatsoever, but that wouldn’t stop us from getting married in a church or attending a funeral. Most artists appreciate the cultural aspects of religion, but don’t need religion as a guide for life. Some contemporary artists will reflect their concerns for others using their own stories as social or political statements but most often they are geared towards an aesthetic or emotional approach that is without any moral code. Contemporary art is more often about art than about life, to the point where art can become its own ideology with little interest in making moral statements and little room for a competing ideology like a religion. 

    I consider myself a progressive classicist, meaning I do have my own moral code, but it is designed from an idea that art is integral in performing basic social functions that we can’t live without, and that these functions combined with a progressive viewpoint can be a guide for life. My progressive classicism is a blending of classical art functions with popular art and fine art. Many artists take the same approach without thinking about it much or putting a name to it.

    What is fascinating about contemporary art however, is that I’ve known three people who gave up religion for a strong ideological artistic belief. A formerly Christian friend of mine, I’ll call her Liz, in Victoria, British Columbia, has a son who overdosed years ago. At the age of fourteen with only one hit of crystal meth he went from being a shy teenage boy to a raging proselytizing miniature priest, with great lapses in memory and total loss of social intelligence. At the time I knew her, Liz had suffered through divorce, near poverty, health issues, and deaths in the family. Liz was a regular church goer and maintained her faith. Her church provided help and solace throughout her trials. But with her son’s total transformation for the worse Liz completely lost faith. She couldn’t understand how God could allow such a thing to happen to her son after she had already suffered so much while committing her life to God.

     Her interest in art, which brought us together as good friends suddenly became a passion that eventually broke our friendship. Liz returned to becoming a full time student in the  University of Victoria Fine Arts program. Only a few months into the program she became a die hard post-modernist. Nothing wrong with that, but her belief and faith in art also came with the sudden zeal to admonish other artists who didn’t believe what she believed. My illustration work suddenly made me beneath contempt. I put up with her hard core opinions for years until we finally drifted apart. 

     I have a vague understanding of what happened, but I never delved into thinking about it much until recently when reading a book called Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, written by Phil Zuckerman. It is a fascinating study revealing that the most content people live in countries with the fewest number who are religious, and those countries that are often the most religious have the most trouble with poverty, violence, health issues or massive inequality, as in the United States, which strangely claims to be a religious nation.

     We are fortunate enough to live in a country to be able to think and talk openly about such things, to question our beliefs, religious, artistic or otherwise. There were times among Western nations where questioning such authorities was extremely dangerous. Artists like Michelangelo could only hint of their lack of faith in their art, as seen in the Sistine Chapel. It has been thought that Michelangelo hinted at such with his painting of God creating Adam. The strange shape the robe takes, complete with a “stem,” looks amazingly like that of the human brain. The suggestion is that man made God. 

We may be able to live without God, and although man made art too I believe strongly that art is something we can’t live without. Yet what art is and what it does and how it best works for us is an ongoing discussion as deep and lasting and contentious as any discussion of religion.

Susan Ross at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery

     Canada’s Rembrandt of the North is represented well at the Thunder Bay Museum in the show, Susan Ross: From the Lakehead to the Arctic. Accompanying Ross’ works are paintings and drawings by other artists she knew well and had influence upon, including her active nephew, Patrick Doyle. Available in the Museum’s shop is a wonderful book in hard and soft cover by the prolific James R. Stevens, titled, Ten Generations, Then an Artist: The Susan A Ross Story. 

     With loving attention to detail Ross had the ability to capture those emblematic and small moments of humanity where words go unspoken. The ability to do this has always made for great art. It includes the ability to draw and paint, but paramount to begin with is the interest, the moral and empathic ability to see the value in what people share between each other, even in quiet repose. 

    Although often sad and sentimental, the beauty of her subjects are captured with a deft handling of various tools. Whether with a stylus for her etchings, a piece of charcoal or graphite for her drawings, or a brush for her paintings, Ross’ approach was to use a certain degree of spontaneity to capture the detail without getting caught up in it. She trusted in her abilities and allowed what was before her to speak. The subject is what she focused on, not herself or commitment to artistic ideology, but the people she clearly loved and respected. 

    Ross’ etchings are exceptional. And comparing her works to that of Rembrandt’s or the 19th Century French artist, Honoré Daumier is not done lightly. Rembrandt captured some famous sentimental moments, but Daumier’s is a little closer to home. Daumier’s love of the poor and hatred of the rich got him into trouble quite often, even kicked out of the country, but when he wasn’t skewering politicians or lawyers he could do the most amazing sentimental works. 

    Third Class Carriage by Daumier is more like a sketch with some paint than it is a full blown painting. This is one of his most brilliant works featuring working class people enduring the numbness of long distance travel on a cramped and crowded train. The mother feeds her child while the older woman sits in quiet contemplation, deep in thought, hands clasped as if in prayer while a boy sleeps against her bulky frame. 

    The painting has the perennial quality of applying to all kinds of people all over the world, no matter their culture. It’s something we can all identify with. It something we wish we could avoid, but know that life will always throw situations like this at us no matter what we do. 

    The same is true for many of Ross’ depictions of people. Here there is no fine art formalism concerned with style, but the functional effectiveness of bringing people alive, in their world in a way in which we can easily identify and identify with. What is here is not just the indigenous people she met on her extensive travels, but everyone, all of us.    

    Stories are told in this show for us with the use of foreground and background, with faces and hands, with clothes and blankets and canvas and gripped pillows. People gaze at each other, beyond one another and they look away from another’s attention, staring off into space, every one of them each telling a story of love and hardship, of wanting and relief. 

    Loneliness is here, loss, separation, anxiety, and the thankfulness that comes from living closely with family and a community that shares the basics. As small as this show might seem at first, the expanse of it is a wonderful introduction to the world captured by Susan Ross.

     Susan Ross: From the Lakehead to the Arctic is on display at the Thunder Bay Museum till June 17. 
Duncan Weller www.duncanweller.com

By Request: Collective Curation of the Permanent Collection

First Nations art from the Thunder Bay Gallery’s permanent collection graces the walls in a large show titled, by Request, one of the best collective exhibitions of visual art in recent years. Guaranteed to be a popular the works exhibit both quality and variety, representing decades worth of great work by established local and internationally known artists.  

     Described as a “dynamic approach to choosing artworks for exhibition” various individuals and groups involved in the region’s arts community had a say in choosing the work. This democratic process involved a survey employing nine batches of twenty works from the collection, five works to be chosen from each. The individuals and groups are listed in the show.

     Within all the works are references to the land, from the micro to the macro, from catgut to outer space. Nature infuses itself into the works, revitalizing the imagery revealing how nature supersedes manmade creations. Nature has a style all its own that survives artistic movements where style and ideology meld into artistic periods that can end up living in the history books and less so in our hearts, becoming more distant as the years pass.  

     Which is why so much of this work feels alive, fresh again, brought into the light for us to see. Having so much great art stored away for great lengths of time can feel like a disservice to the artists who create the work, and to the public who would love to see it. On the other hand the works are made special, reawakened for us to see again, a practice which happens naturally in other cultures, such as African tribes who bring stools, sculptures, weapons and clothing into view only during ceremonies, some taking place decades apart.  

   With so many wonderful artworks to choose from, I’ll pick a few favourites. 

     Ahmoo Angeconeb’s “The Gifts” is a lovely linocut on textured paper featuring a fish, bear and loon. With only minimal personal than most, especially for imagery that is minimal and stylized. 

     Daphne Odjig’s “The Grand Entrance” has wonderful movement created with a combination of bright colours and swirling lines.  Many of the faces are smiling and bubbling up from the surface of the painting, swirling before the viewer as if exploding through a wall or swarming at you in a dream. 

    “Eunice”, by Valerie Palmer is a beautiful oil painting with a spiritual serenity encompassing both the woman and the beautiful seascape. Connected by mood with somber tones there is an emblematic contemplation as seen in works by Frederick Varley, but with a more controlled use of paint. 

   A painting with one of the best titles, “Head Kicked In By Buffalo,” by Linus Woods, is painted with a more expressionist method employing colours and a style similar to that of Mexican artist Fernando de Szyszlo. A mixed media picture the painting employs characters of both foreground and background that are comic like in depiction, but abstract in execution. The trees make for little background cartoons. The painting is a fun image open to interpretation.
Duncan Weller www.duncanweller.com

Urban Infill 2018

The irony of hosting a major arts project like Urban Infill: Art in the Core, with the goal and theme of revitalizing the downtown core requiring lots of space is that should the project become successful the space required becomes limited year after year. And this year they almost lost out with empty spaces rented out last minute. Fortunately this didn’t stop a resourceful crew from finding alternates, which in the end provided Urban Infill with even more space giving this year’s show a completely new feel. 

     The big events are held this Saturday night where the public will be able to see work in a variety of locations with the help of a map and guides during the walking tour, but two main spaces have opened up that will be the primary draws: the 10,000 square feet of the lower level in the Eaton’s building, entrance on Park Avenue, and another 1,500 square feet on the main level. Combine this and other transformed spaces and it adds up to a total of about 13,000 square feet to host this extravaganza. 

     The variety of art, performance, installations are too long to list, which is good thing. To see the list you can go online: www.definitleysuperior.com. 

     “We adapt every year,” states gallery co-director David Karasiewicz. “Every year locations change and there’s new places with new performances appealing to a broader audience. More and more people are exposed to contemporary art.” 

    Co-director Renee Terpstra is equally enthusiastic about the twelfth anniversary of Urban Infill and describes how they have to adapt every year, but that adaptation is an integral part of what makes Urban Infill exciting. “None of us would have imagined what this would like like twelve years ago,” Renee states. 

     Definitely Superior Art Gallery and the many artists under its umbrella can take credit for that revitalization, along with the savvy restauranteurs opening businesses that have drawn both young and old. A long list of sponsors includes the local BIA, Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Walleye and a number of local businesses and other sponsors.

     This year there are 400 regional, national and international artist represented in 25 locations including live bands, dance theatre, fashion performance, fire performances, “activated window spaces”, body suspension, a 360 film immersion installation, video projections, karaoke, fringe performance, catered food and refreshments, and more! 

     If it’s possible to narrow it down, there are nine shows/categories of art to see. The Defsup gallery features three shows, a video installation, a member’s show and recent acquisitions of art by Dr. Bob Chaudhuri. Window performances and installations will be on the map and tour. Film installations include visiting works/artists along with our filmmakers from our own Confederation College film and multimedia departments. Lakehead University art students are having a graduates show. The Die Active New Generation Neechee Studio is a youth group will span a number of locations with 24 different projects. Downtown commercial galleries and business are contributing with their own cadre of local and international artists. The number of local artists involved is thought to be over four hundred.

     If you think that’s an exaggeration you’re welcome to come to the show and count. 

    The big event begins Saturday night at 7pm. Come early and get a map. The after party location is decided that night by a group of die-hards. All welcome to join.

The Baggage Building Arts Centre in Prince Arthur’s Landing

The Friends of the Grain Elevators have set up an historical exhibit at the Baggage Building Arts Centre in Prince Arthur’s Landing to tell the story of the grain industry in Canada with an emphasis on railways and the incredible amount of activity in our harbours since 1883 when the railways opened up the west. Thunder Bay was integral in developing the country. We had the the biggest grain port in the world for many years and gave primary aid to feed Europe after two world wars. With over twelve elevators, eight continue to operate, the reason for over five hundred ships passing through our harbours in 2016. 

      Part of the exhibit features a map of the world and twelve glass jars, each containing a different type of grain. Indicators tell the viewer where the grain was distributed throughout the world. All of this information lovingly provided by Rob Paterson while he and other members set up the exhibit. 

     As an analogy we could say that our local artists have been seeding the world with bits of our culture for many years. In operation for five years, a tourist destination is the The Gift Gallery which hosts sixty-five local artists producing paintings, prints, photography, various crafts, pottery, jewelry, candles, stained glass, Ahnisnabae arts of all stripes, locally produced books, CDs, and sundry edible items. 

     Located on the second floor of the arts centre the gift shop is what was once the old Canadian Pacific freight office, an historical site often incorrectly referred to as the Baggage Building, complete with its old tin ceiling. As a commercial and public venture in a city facility it operates as a collective of organizations; All the Days Theatre, the Community Arts and Heritage Program, the Posers Drawing Group, Waterfront Potters, Waterfront Printmaking Group, Connect the Dots: Roots and Branches, and Tango North. 

     Tango nights are Wednesdays and the drop in drawing sessions are Tuesdays at 7pm. Please call the Gift Shop or Facebook page for details. Exhibitions are featured in the mezzanine and main floor with beautiful tall windows and lovely wood framing.

     Upon completion of a beginners class in pottery you can take advantage of the open studio to work on your own. The setup includes mechanical wheels, two kick wheels, a slab roller, kiln, with clay and glazes made available. 

     From February 24th to March 25 the third annual Fibre Arts Exhibition is showcasing a selection of works from members from the Spinners and Weavers Guild and other local artists. You will see over sixty works by just over twenty artists, including works of crochet, needlepoint and felting. Birds of the Bay is part of the exhibition. Organized by Betty Carpick this is a community-engaged art project consisting of fibre arts sculpture to encourage people to understand and protect nature.

     Writers and videographers from Canadian Geographic have visited Prince Arthur’s Landing recently to research the history of the area for a potential upcoming extensive article and video. With ongoing construction and ventures both commercial and artistic we can safely assume that the waterfront will yield attractions for the city for many decades to come.

10th Anniversary Derelicte at Black Pirates Pub

     Black Pirates Pub will burst its seams this Saturday, January 27, with a major fashion show organized by the Definitely Superior Art Gallery. This is the gallery’s and Lakehead University Radio’s tenth anniversary fundraiser. The catwalk extravaganza called Derelicte features models wearing both wearable art sold locally at various retail outlets and outfits that may never be worn again. These singular works are amazingly creative one-offs fashioned by fifteen local artists to make aesthetic and social statements.

    One artistic costume designer, a local artist whose presence in Thunder Bay is stretching nationally is Michel Dumont. He is on a tight schedule. He has to get his costume completed before he flies off to a Queer and Peace show at the Warren G Flowers Art Gallery in Montreal where he has a work exhibited with others created by prominent Canadian artists. He returns on the day of Derelicte to organize his costumes and get the models into makeup. It takes Michel about a month to make an outfit. He started his latest dramatic creation back in December. 

     The models Michel is working with will represent two lovers who will spin down the catwalk in a “whirlwind of obsession and break up,” says Michel. “They will be a tornado circling down the catwalk to open up and reveal their inner turmoil, then get back together.” 

    The dress will be made of packing tape and cellphone crystals to represent the inside of the tornado with an amethyst geode and amethyst heart on the model’s chests. The wigs will employ fibre optics and LED lights to add to the shine. The semi precious pink and purple plastic crystal shapes that mimic semi-precious stones will reflect, refract and project light from the stage. The light will envelop the models and the movement is sure to dazzle. 

    The name “Derelicte” suggests an association with the forgotten, the vagrant and underprivileged undesirables you might find in ghettos of big cities. Yet because of its association to contemporary art and the catwalks of major cities there can be found elements of haute couture simultaneously projecting the rich and elegant. Thunder Bay’s version of such an event might only mimic such a clash of extreme cultural opposites for artistic purposes and for fun, but this event is as close as you will get to the real deal. And the artists who create their wearable art are certainly up to the challenge of creating pieces worthy of any catwalk in the world.   

    Performances are scattered throughout the night with four live bands, eight variety gigs, video mapping projections, a raffle, costume prizes, and catered food. The gigs include acrobatic yoga, flamenco and Bhangra dancing, drag, burlesque, go-go dancer performances, walk-off challenges and a do-it-yourself fashion costume contest.