This is why I love East Vancouver. People do things that realtors and interior designers tell you not to, like painting their house in polka dots.

Not too many Westsiders are willing to compromise their yuppie aesthetics, not to mention their property values, to paint their house with polka dots. It takes a certain amount of cojones to cover a perfectly nice house with red circles. This is no subtle faux finish tone-on-tone decorating touch. This is bright red on pure white. Every time I pass by, I wonder how the polka dot house came to be.

In Thunder Bay, there was a pagoda on the beach that some kids decorated with rainbow polka dots as a grad prank. The city found it so charming, city workers dutifully repainted the dots year after year. Could this house also be the result of felicitous vandalism? Honey! Look at what those little brats did to our house! Hmm-you know, it's kind of growing on me.

But suppose it wasn't a mistake, but someone's long cherished vision? How on earth do you broach the subject of your dream house with your nearest and dearest? Instead of laying out a card shark's hand of neat squares from the Benjamin More store, do you just present a Strawberry Shortcake doll?

When my sister was in high school, my dad used to make preposterous bets with her to encourage her to transform her Cs into As. Once, he even ripped a $100 in half and pinned one piece to her wall and promised her the other half if she could just get one A. She never collected. Maybe this house is the outcome of a similar bet? "Hey, little Suzy, if you get through Kindergarten and don't burn down the school, we'll paint the house any colour (...read more...)

Text and photos inspired by rain and general malaise. All done by Dorothy-June Fraser

Playlists I am compiling for the week.

A: anything by Godspeed You Black Emperor/Almagamated Sons of Rest, Songs:Ohia. Long, slow buildup to magestic ocean deaths.
The point of this is obvious: wallow in the rain, gray skies and the looming presence of winter: it's coming. Uhuh. The dread of soaking wet socks is upon the city, long pants and sweater sets are quivering with certain anticipation in the closet, relieved to be back in circulation. The long summer is at an end and the perfect compliment is obviously the dark, moody, sometimes over-the-top rolling orchestra of GSYBE. The wailing sea chanties of ASOR slowly coat my skin like Labrador salt spray display the history, sadness and the hungry heritage of the coastline itself. Not only does it make the gloom seem slightly more like you’re in some form of independant cinema, it really inspires one to BE the season. This is around the same time that I start to read a lot of Sylvia Plath. Coincidence? Of course. I’m not oblivious to my own shortcomings/patterns/behavioural “disorders”. I have a team of health professionals who would really be unhappy with my progress if I didn’t see the "signs". Foreboding and creepily formal, old-fashioned poetry aside, I really do like this in-between seasonal purgatory we have on our hands. Vancouver posesses a special kind of autumn. We call it ‘wet’. Or other such words that describe the same visceral emotion that permeates our climate from the end of september onward: the winter rains. The gray notes of GSYBE and ASOR match it.
“I opened up my wallet, and it was full of blood.”
That’s all I need to say, isn’t it?
Secondably:
“Lay Lady Lay” by Bob Dylan over (...read more...)

Dorothy-June Fraser

Galas. The cream of society’s production, they usuallly have some charitable connection. This time around, it was Performance Works on Granville Island and an auction for the benefit of underpriveldged children. Seeing that I consider myself very child-like and am an artist (aka starving) I figured it was apt enough for me to go and hoard food at the catering table for about 20 minutes. So, as I was stuffing my face with mini brioche with duck bacon, I didn’t pay much attention to the crowd at first. An odd event for myself, FREE liquor and FOOD. This are things normally not so happening at the art parties I go to. It’s more of a three dollar beer thing. Maybe a slice of pizza if I’m downtown.
That being said, any party that serves food that is on spoons made out of fancy pastry is good. Which it was. I’m not just talking about the food. It was fun, and oh yeah, there was art there too. Did I mention I was really hungry?
Anyway, among the exhibiting artists, Western Front-runner Paul Wong was there, exhibiting an alphabet series that has a close tie-in with a series of four letter words he is currently working on.

Paul Wong (2006)

While wandering around the exhibit I had a chance to talk to some of the artists, including Veronica Foster

Veronica Foster (2006)

(check her website- http://www.veronicafoster.com) We had a conversation about the importance of creativity as the answer to mental illness and a continuing sense of well-beiing and self-worth. That being said, at this point I had hoarded as much of the free chocolate strewn around the room as I could without feeling too out of place, and my purse was smelling suspiciously of duck bacon. Food is also important (...read more...)

HEY!
Look!
Art!

Oct.13th to Nov.7th
Little Mountain Studios
195 E. 26th (at Main, locale of Ye Olde Butcher Shop)

text by or transmitted through the media vessel that is Neal Nolan

Bolo:A new show curated by Adam Dodd, submits a challenge for all of us to Be on the Lookout. The old adage, "No news is good news" has taken on an entirely new meaning in an age where everyone understands media.

As travelers of voids, drifters though nullifying information, post-modern refugees in a world of nukes and split-ends, we're constantly on the lookout for new stimulation. In the midst of our daily grind, we are passively consuming sources of superficial media and doing absolutely nothing about it. Developing a guilt complex doesn't sound all that productive, so some television might suffice, but the pressures of trying to keep interest along with the longing to shout-out against burdening information seems to blend together to form a cloak, enveloping us with a sensational numbness.

Bolo makes an attempt to acknowledge the importance of media, to appreciate its constant source of stimulus on our daily lives as well for providing a plethora of visual material that enriches our imagination.

Dorothy-June Fraser


"Oppenheimer Park" (2006)

Vancouver/world-reknowned artist Attila Richard Lukacs has a show at Anti-Soical skate shop (located on Main, at Broadway).
Hmmmm, the world of skateboarding and art in combo?
Yeah, it’s not new. But what is these days?
Well, actually, I’m going to go straight back and contradict myself. Not only is the fact that a “high-brow” artist exhibiting at a skate shop new, the politics involved with the work itself is new to the skate world.
Being somewhat involved with the skate scene of the Lower Mainland, I have been to many shows of the “low-brow” skate art-type. Or Skart, if you will, and you should.
But contractions aside, the world of skating and politics don’t usually interweave so tightly.
In fact, this show, based on local and world atrocities, is possibly the most political work I have seen Lukacs do since a show a few years ago when he made a connection between the Columbia shuttle crash and Palestine, in his piece "Texas, Palestine" .
The texture of Lukacs’ work this time around is somewhat more defined in the piece, Oppenheimer Park than his others. Perhaps the locality and closeness of the subject itself, our crumbling social network in Strathcona and the DTES made it something more sensual, touchable.
While his other work in the show focuses on war and destruction, human atrocities, human monsters, even, the Oppenheimer piece is the first you see in the gallery that is past the shoes, boards and clothes that populate the rather social Anti-Social.
Is there too much to deal with here? Is relating war at home with war abroad a hard subject to broach. Uhm, no.
The show itself provides the viewer with a provocative attempt at reestablishing a North American connection to the war on “terror” going on (...read more...)

Welcome to readingvancouver.com. I’m Dorothy-June. I am the editor and alternately, an international spy.
I hate mission statements, it just means people can keep tabs on you. So, in lieu of such things, here is the closest and farthest away thing:
let’s hear about our city. What makes us tick? I am not talking about lattes and the Grind. That is not the Vancouver I know, nor the one I want to represent. What DO we have here? Music, art, “culture”...culture being the lovely blanket term. So, underneath this crunchy, woolly outside layer of trees, mountains and protein shakes, what lies beneath?

Is it dirty? Sometimes, yes. Is it smelly? For sure.

Who is behind this “culture” I speak of?

Well, why don’t you tell me, because me telling you all the time would be redundant (and ultimately, more work on my part).
We all share the city...how about some of it’s high/low points? What do we all like? Well, I don’t know if there is something existing that we ALL like and me wasting space with that kind of silly, homogenous question is too ridiculous, even to type.
To sum up:
hey, hello, I’m Dorothy-June aka D.J. I don’t believe in espresso with milk (yes, it is foamy. I would like to express here that I do not discriminate against those who DO like lattes, that's really A-OK with me) and hiking as culture, I don’t think we should accept it as our fate.There’s a reason people laugh at us in the East. Then again, they all went to business school. Go forth, and experience!

Oh yeah, write about it, too. It will soothe my ulcers.

Dorothy-June Fraser

Shenanigan-loving ManMan hit the Media Club on Saturday night (Sept.30th). Being the always-prepared bon-a-fide journalist that I am, I had a plan to get to them at the show, seeing as I had no contact information (nor did I search for any prior to arrival). I had to get motivated to make some sort of rememberable splash (how many journalists in how many cities use these kind of tactics, I don't know...) in the brain of whoever happened to be connected to the band themselves.

Approaching the merch table on my way back from the bar, with caeser in hand, I saw that they were selling the second ManMan album, Six Demon Bag, on ten-inch, double vinyl. I had to give them immediate kudos and buy one. This has to do with my own long-running analog fetish/obsession. I keep insisting that analog is the new digital, but the idea lacked enough pectin to gel. At least within my immediate circle of friends, colleagues, aqquaintances. Not to mention the title of the album alone could have gotten me to buy several copies. Nothing like bad Kurt Russell '80s movies to title crazy, experimental music after.

So, the bearded man who sat behind the fabulous card table that serves as the merch display told me that he was their manager (after I inquired and chatted about vinyl for a while). This struck me like my fourth caesar, and so I left in a daze. What's my hook? Do I just come out and ask for interviewing rights? Do I demnad them? Do I sit and observe quietly and involve myself in nothing?

It came to me after the first song of their set, which involved much moustached and sweat-banded antics. Make a splash. Showmanship. Yes. So I went back to the (...read more...)

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