Hooray for you, Mari Sasano.

There is a huge photograph that will be installed in the new Animal Services Building, which is scheduled to open in 2010. I got to have a look at the artist’s proposal for the work, and I can’t wait to see it. It’s by a photographer named Rob McInnis. Here’s a little blurb I wrote about it:

The Farm Family, Animal Services Building
Art meant for a flat surface has its limitations: it will usually be a painting, photograph, or something likewise two-dimensional. Aside from the content, we are talking about quite traditional forms of “art.” Photographer Rob MacInnis has taken a traditional form, a traditional genre, and created a work that is thought-provoking and maybe a little uncomfortably beautiful.
The piece, called The Farm Family, depicts dozens of farm animals– cattle, horses, sheep, hogs, goats, and dogs– taken from farms that the artist visited in Prince Edward Island. The animals are lined up in front of farm buildings, as in a family portrait. The completed work will be very large, spanning about nine metres long and over a metre high. Of course, real farm animals would not be so cooperative as to stand and smile for the camera all at once, so each animal has been photographed separately and composited into one image.
The Farm Family is part of a larger series of work, featuring animal portraiture singly and in groups. The style of photography is meant to evoke fashion spreads, such as those by Annie Leibowitz and David LaChapelle– the fold-in covers of Vanity Fair spring to mind when seeing the group shots. And, like fashion photography, the models are at once elevated to be ideal images of beauty, while they are also debased as objects. The intent of the artist is to have us question the role that animals play in our society: can we imagine them not as workers or food, but as individuals equal to ourselves? Portraiture is inherently about showing the personality of the subject– are we willing to grant animals the same self-expression? What does it mean to capture them in this way?
As artwork in the Animal Services Building, where stray animals are housed and treated, Farm Family will be a reminder of how important animals are in our lives, and how each animal who is brought in by bylaw is worthy of respect.

Today I went to the City Archives to read up on the waterfall on the High Level Bridge. I was given some contracts between the engineers and the City, the agreement between the City and CP, and a thick file of newspaper clippings from that time. The drama of creating the waterfall was so intense I was moved to tears. Peter Lewis– this shaggy, bearded young man, so believed in his project that he schlepped plans to funders, businesses, and decision-makers until he saw it contructed. The arguments against it were so pedestrian and familiar– thanks, Edmonton Sun!– but the arguments in favour so beautifully put. I wish I had made copies. I’ll go back and get them, but here’s a draft of what I’ll eventually submit:

The Great Divide Waterfall
Peter Lewis

In 1978, a 29 year old Welsh émigré proposed that he build a waterfall across the High Level Bridge, an epic installation to impress the world for the Commonwealth Games. In an Edmonton Journal article, Lewis’ waterfall is described as  “… ambitious to be sure. And crazy in a way. And completely marvelous.”

In the end, Lewis didn’t get his international audience, but two years later, after delays and debates, The Great Divide Waterfall dazzled thousands of Edmontonians on September 1, 1980 as a grand 75th birthday present for the Province of Alberta.

Lewis was trained as a painter at St. Martin’s College in London, where he met his Edmontonian wife, Toti. Once Lewis arrived in Edmonton, he began to conceptualize art on a larger scale—creating and altering nature, rather than merely representing it. A landlocked waterfall would definitely be a statement—and a controversy.

The mayor at the time, Cec Purves, considered it a waste of money, as did the Great Divide’s most vocal opponent on city council, Alderman Bill Chmiliar who worried that the project would make us the laughingstock of Canada. Unnamed sources, in the Edmonton Sun, claimed that a waterfall would never work, that the most we would get was a fine mist.

The arguments sound frustratingly familiar to those who continue to argue in favour of arts and culture development in Edmonton: that culture is a frill when funds would be better spent repairing roads. But on the other side, there were rousing speeches and editorials in favour of a little vision—“madness”, even—and that Edmonton’s staid politics are more of a laughingstock than any public art project could be.

Despite the prolonged delays (debates continued on until July of that year), council members Olivia Butti, Lois Campbell, Paul Norris, and Gene Dub rallied in favour of the piece and the project eventually passed in a 7 to 5 vote, with a proposed completion date of September 1, 1980.

Initial plans involved piping river water up to the railway deck, where a trough would distribute the water across its length. Tests proved this to be unworkable, since the level of the river fluctuated throughout the summer. This plan was eventually scrapped in favour of bringing water under pressure from the city water main to 200 small pipes,

The project was funded through money granted to the city for Alberta’s 75th anniversary, but it was the persistent lobbying of Lewis to builders, unions, businesses, and lawyers that made the difference—Lewis estimated that at least $379, 000 worth of labour and supplies were donated. E.P.E.C. Consulting Western Ltd. provided engineering services throughout the process, and were paid $10, 000 by the city.

The Great Divide is now a familiar and loved landmark, running every year on Victoria Day, Canada Day, Heritage Day and Labour Day.

I read He’s Just Not That Into You in about 20 minutes at Chapters. Pretty obvious advice, really: don’t date people who don’t like you. The signs are obvious: if they want to see you, they do. If not, they make excuses. You know, like in The Pillow Book (of Sei Shonangon, not Peter Greenaway) —

“A good lover will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time. He drags himself out of bed with a look of dismay on his face. The lady urges him on: “Come, my friend, it’s getting light. You don’t want anyone to find you here.” He gives a deep sigh, as if to say that the night has not been nearly long enough and that it is agony to leave. Once up, he does not instantly pull on his trousers. Instead he comes close to the lady and whispers whatever was left unsaid during the night. Even when he is dressed, he still lingers, vaguely pretending to be fastening his sash.”

Doi.

But I am fascinated by popular culture’s one-liner dating advice. Relationship advice is kind of a hobby of mine, so I regard watching the crappy movie of a crappy book  as research. But oh my god, it’s TWO HOURS LONG.

So: not getting married is NOT “going against nature.” And I never have any problems telling friends the honest truth about the people they’re dating. I don’t want my friends to be dating a-holes. You gotta be nice about saying so, but c’mon. Real friends don’t let that happen. They definitely don’t encourage their friends to pursue married men. Stooooopit.

Drew Barrymore, you continue to be a version of me that I’m uncomfortable with. God, her name is Mary, even. Stop it! Scarlett Johanson—trying so hard to be funny! Are not! Jennifer Aniston, I wish I could love you. But your agent sends you shit scripts. And poor, poor Jennifer Connelly. Oh! Kris Kristofferson is Jen Aniston’s dad! I love him.

If you are going to reference a John Hughes movie, why is it Some Kind of Wonderful?
Ew! Ben Affleck starting at a painting that says, “Should should should.” Jennifer Connelly to Ginnifer Goodwin: “Let’s look up places for your destination wedding.” Barf. Why does it still make single people seem so sad and pathetic? C’mon. “Self-discovery”? That doesn’t sound like someone’s having any fun at all.

Wow, that was really, really terrible.

It’s a sex work double bill today. I watched the first four episodes of Secret Diary of a Call Girl this afternoon while trying to get a grip on this public art thing, and now I’m watching Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I’m not a fan of Kevin Smith, but what the hell. I like Seth Rogen. Here’s the first thing: “In the sack and of the sack.” Thank you! 

I love this 10th reunion thing. I went to mine, you know? Exactly like Zack and Miri, thinking that I wasn’t pretty enough. And just fired from my job and divorced. I was awesome. But when I got there, so happy to see the people I was supposed to be envious of tired (like, tiiiiiired) of their lives, in boring marriages that they did not yet have the nerve to leave. I had started freelancing, was getting a crazy enough sleep, and I was freeeeeee! I got a lot of free drinks that night, in any case. It was a really good experience. I’ll go to my 20th, definitely. If they invite me. Which they might not. Go Shep Class of ’91!

Oh, and never fuck a friend! That’s what friends-of-friends are for!