This Saturday local pop-surrealist artist Camilla D’Errico will be having a release party for a limited edition series of clothing, handbags and art prints at El Kartel. Starts at 9. Goes till late. Pop on by for a drink and some great and affordable Christmas gifts. Preview pics of some of the adorable wares for sale after the jump.

Tony got into art and fashion in an unlikely way, his English sucked. Unable to get into the University of British Columbia, he enrolled in the communication design program at Emily Carr. When he wasn’t studying, he was sneaking into the darkrooms and screenprint labs to hone his talents. After graduating he did a brief stint as a commercial designer in Hong Kong then returned to Vancouver. Fashion wasn’t the goal from the onset and he began making limited edition art prints, or “fucking exclusive” art prints as they’re called on the Wrongwroks website.

“I found out that paper was expensive so I printed on a whole bunch of Fed Ex boxes and anything I could flatten out. It started out as an art thing but then I got into fashion because people don’t buy the boxes. So I printed the same graphics on t-shirts.”

Wrongwroks streetwear is playful urban art brandalism, offering clever and cheeky apes of popular fashion lines like Supreme and Marc Jacobs or poppy cartoon characters like SpongeBob and Doraemon.

“When people first see my stuff they think it’s kind of fake and I’m ripping off someone. Like the Supreme logo or Doraemon. Japanese are really strict about counterfeits and it doesn’t exist in that culture. Later, when they pick up what it is though, boom, everyone wants it.” Demand overseas is so high that some shirts have been printing everyday in factories since last year. Wrongwroks is carried in stores all over Asia and is especially popular in the notoriously fickle Harajuku fashion district in Tokyo.

Much like the quintessential “big in Japan” artist/fashion designer, Kaws, Tony provides art and T-shirt junkies with a steady supply of familiar and delicious eye candy that one can’t help but buy. A jovial and likable Tony openly admits this much. Like Kaws, he’s trying “to do something in a style where people go, ‘Oh, I want it.’ But people don’t know why they want it. That’s the trick.”

While Tony is busy appropriating imagery for his designs, the companies he’s taking them from are paying close attention. Not just for legal reasons, though there have been a few, but for new ideas.
“They’ll use the same graphic and collaborate with a real company and make a whole bunch of clothes. With Doraemon they did the same thing as me except with no Adidas sneakers. I do that clothing, they do that clothing. I do a keychain, they make a keychain. The only difference is no Wrongwroks logo and no kicks. People think my stuff is everywhere, but no, that’s not mine.”

Tony doesn’t have any immediate plans to conquer North America with his line. All of Asia and parts of Europe are fine for now. “North America is cool but it’s not the biggest. It doesn’t matter where I sell. The more people who wear my stuff, the more happy I am.”

www.wrongwroks.com
All images courtesy of Wrongwroks.

New issue of Ion Magazine just went online. You should be able to grab a hard copy from the following locations by week’s end. This fashion heavy issue features articles on french music sensation Sebastien Tellier, country rock favs Eldorado as well as local artist designed shirt lines Rad Attack and Wrongwroks. You can download the full issue from this link.

Another issue of Sneeze Magazine showed up in the newspaper box on the corner of Abbott and Water this week. Once again, it makes the cheap laminate flooring in my apartment look that much better. It’s also the first magazine to have photos of Darryl Strawberry, Ricky Henderson, skateboarding and fur suit sex all in the same issue. Go pick yourself up a copy for two bucks. If you missed the premier issue you can have a look at it here or order a copy from the Sneeze website

Cheap out some photos of Sneeze Magazine Issue Two after the jump.

www.sneezemag.com

Boys' Night Out by Andrew Salgado. Oil on Canvas. 60x48

Rising artstar, Andrew Salgado, will have his first ever solo exhibition in Vancouver from August 26 to September 7 at the Interurban Gallery on 1 East Hastings. Young Salgado currently has a bit of a buzz swirling around him and recently enrolled in the prestigious Chelsea College of Art in London. The body of work on display is entitled Boys’ Night Out and was inspired with the artist’s personal experience with hate crime (the preview image above is a self-portrait of Salgado). It’s not all one big downer though. A percentage of the proceeds will go to Spread The Net, Belinda Stronach’s charity that’s hoping to eradicate Malaria. The artists reception takes place on Thursday September 4 from 6-11pm. The artist will be in attendance and rumour has it Belinda Stronach may be there too.
www.andrewsalgado.com

An extremely ambitious, interesting and slick new site called Lushpad launched in Vancouver over the weekend. Lushpad aims to be an online home for collectors of modern and vintage furniture as well as fine art. Or “part gallery, part auction house and part design magazine,” as Lushpad owner Melanie Carlson puts it. For way way cheaper than eBay, with no hidden charges, you can list your rarities for sale. Wanted ads or ads Items under $250 are free, items ranging between $250 to $800 will cost you $8 to list, anything over $800 only cost $12 to list. Lushpad will also be publishing monthly features on designers and artists for as well as articles for collectors, both new and old. It’s free to sign up and when you do so, if you tick the little box to receive the Lushpad newsletter, you’ll be entered to win a licensed original Eames molded plywood chair worth over $750. So check it out.

www.lushpad.com

What are you doing on August 16? Celebrating Stockwell Day or Rumer Willis’ birthday? Eating Halloumi, a delicious cheese that’s made from goat and sheep milk, to commemorate Cyprus gaining independence from the UK? That all sounds just fine but a way better idea would be to dress up like a zombie and lurch around the streets of Vancouver then attend a wicked awesome party at The Fall afterwards.

The Fall opened almost a year ago on 644 Seymour and it’s a pretty a slick tattoo and piercing parlour slash clothing store slash art gallery slash place to get artistically slashed (the correct term is ’scarification’ if you were wondering). On Saturday August 16, the knives and needles will play second fiddle to a daylong Zombie extravaganza. Between 9am and 4pm, makeup artists will be on hand to sufficiently zombify you for the Vancouver Zombie Walk. After you’re done freaking out tourists and old people, you can come back to The Fall for The Flesheaters’ Ball, an a all night zombie celebration with zombie themed art installations, live painting, a zombie fashion show and a whole lot of liquor. People without costume will be attacked and probably have something sharp shoved through their nose or eyebrow. If you cant make it out, the art show runs from August 14-17. Oh, and in case anyone asks you what your favourite zombie movie of all time is, the correct answers are George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead or Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2.

www.thefalltattooing.com

Check out the latest collaboration between your favourite local shoe store, Livestock, and your favourite local artist, Ben Tour.

Pics of some Livestock shirts that have been Toured after the jump.

Livestock has two locations:
239 abbott st (gastown)
604.685.1433
and
1709 west 4th ave (kitsilano)
604.568.1444

Livestock
Ben Tour

Along with Bad Kids Magazine, there’s now a second new tabloid sized magazine on the streets of Vancouver called Sneeze. This one’s a bit more interesting than Bad Kids. It’s distributing online and from a newspaper box, that’s fittingly been tagged, on the corner of Abbott and Water in Gastown, across from the Lamplighter. Sneeze is basically a mixture of two other great Vancouver publications, Color Magazine and the now defunct Made Magazine. Sneeze Magazine is much like a regular sneeze in that sense that it gives me 1/10th of an orgasm when reading it. It’s edited by someone who calls himself Mr. Sneeze and features some excellent photography by Dennis McGrath and Trevor Owsley, an article on Dr. Smoov by Ania Mafi and an interview with skateboarder Satva Leung by Nic Fensom. A copy of Sneeze will cost you $2 or you can buy them from me for $1.50 since I grabbed seven extras. Interesting trades entertained. Good luck Sneeze Magazine.

Pictures of some spreads from Sneeze after the jump.

A nifty new magazine called Bad Kids turned up on the streets of Vancouver recently. This arty and cryptic tabloid-sized mag has no masthead so one can only guess who’s behind it. Smart money is on Erik Devereaux, Cam Dales and Andrew Andrew Andrew judging by the massive back cover ad for their night ‘Eighteen’ at the Royal Unicorn on Saturdays. It features some great photography, a mini-article on local artist Chris Turner and a poem by Chad Buchholz. You can grab Bad Kids at better boutiques in Gastown, Main Street and Yaletown (as if). Good luck to the Bad Kids.

Check out some pictures of some spreads after the jump.

Bad Kids Magazine’s Facebook

From July 11 to 13, The Chapel Art Gallery will be hosting Across The Board, “a celebration of board culture.” Across the Board will consist of an art show with the following artists participating: Alex Rothbauer, AmFreshaus, Andrew McGuire, Brent Clowater, Chris Serna, Chrystale Thompson, Colin Moore, Darren Camplin, Denial, Jeff Donomme, Jon Boulanger, Jordan Quinn, Josh Van Dyke, 12Midnite, Nathan Matthews, Lee Saunders, Mark Jansen, Peter Ricq, Phresha, Soltron, Sueme and more. Preview runs from 5-7, opening party from 8-1. Music by Chris Brady and Adaline. $8 gets you into the party and the show runs till mid-August if you can’t make the opening.

On Saturday they’re shutting the street down for a skatejam block party which goes from 1-7 on the 300 Block of Dunleavy Avenue. Two Block east of Main, off Hastings. It will be tough to miss.

Following this will be another party at the Chapel going from 9-1. Once again, Eight bucks gets you in. If you make it through all of this, there’s a wrap up party on Sunday from 1-4. Phew!

His band July Fourth Toilet was playing at one the Vancouver Art Galley’s popular FUSE parties to promote their new album “Balls Boogie.” The event, called Go KRAZY! All Night, was meant to be an all night musical celebration of VAG’s current exhibit. The turn out was excellent and even someone from The Georgia Straight was there to pen this half-assed review “My friends went into the room where July Fourth Toilet was performing its eight-hour show, but they quickly came out as they said it was boring, crowded, and sweltering in the room.” One can’t help but wonder if the writer was even there though as his review has no mention of the show getting shut down.

Around 1:30 AM Go KRAZY! All Night got crazy with a capital H. In the middle of an epic July Fourth Toilet set spread out over three rooms, the plug got pulled and the show was over. The reason the all night show was shut down early was because, oh and this is just incredible, a couple was busted shooting heroin in the Vancouver Fucking Art Gallery. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a show be cancelled due to heroin abuse. However it’s almost poetically fitting that this happened at a July Fourth Toilet album release show, a band that’s both dark and funny.

I watched Dayton knock back a bubble tea and he told me all about the difficulties of making it as an artist in our fair city, the new July Fourth Toilet album, and the mess that went down at the art gallery .

Dayton: I’ve been doing stuff in this city since the early Nineties and most people don’t know or care because there’s no infrastructure here. Lots of culture but no infrastructure. I’ve been doing my thing forever. I’m sort of semi-tooting my own horn here but I’m trying to make a point. Near 99-00 I did a newspaper. I co-edited it and co-created it. It eventually became a comic book funded by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle money; it was called The Drippy Gazette. I was a cultural voice with the free column in Terminal City and I didn’t get paid one red cent for any of that shit. Well, I got paid for a brief period of time but then they reneged on that.

That was the beginning of the end for Terminal City as soon as they started paying people.
Getting to my point. Do I have any paying writing gigs right now? No. Is there anything I wanna write for in this city? No, not really. I’ve got a Bachelor of Fine Arts. I make art and have it on display quite regularly. Granted, I did the thing at the VAG the other night with July Fourth Toilet. I was part of the whole Nog A Dod scene so I have some stuff in the Nog A Dod book. All that west coast psychedelia from the Nineties. It took a publisher from Chicago to put that book out probably because no one in Canada would put it out. It’s making waves all over Europe. So I got that. But do I have any art shows coming up or any interest? No. I’ve put out six albums and I’ve got two more in the can. Do I have any label interest or support? No. I did a movie Male Fantasy and it’s finally out on DVD. I didn’t get paid for it and the director Blaine Thurier didn’t get paid because it was a no-budget film. I did all the festivals and I got an agent out of the deal so that was a plus. I actually got an agent out of the deal who says he’ll rep me when I move to Toronto. So that’s why I’m leaving Vancouver. Maybe nothing will happen in Toronto but I’m living in a city that’s for the rich and cultureless. I think I’d be more successful doing shit somewhere.

A lot of people say that.
I’m not the only one!

My theory on why there are so many talented people in this city struggling to get by is because people have better things to do than cultural events in this city. Maybe not for you and me but…
…In their minds.

Right. We have mountains, and beaches and forests. Look at a city like Toronto. What else is there to do there except cultural events?
Jason McLean’s out there. Jason McLean called me and he said “My God, it’s insane. People go out over here.” It was his wife’s birthday and within 24 hours they planned a party and 40 people showed up. And they just moved to Toronto. He says there’s no limit of cultural stuff to do there. People go out, they do it, they partake, it happens. Here, I’m struggling and no one could give a rat’s ass who I am and yet I do all those things I mentioned. No one cares.

Why don’t you tell me about the new July Fourth Toilet album. It’s out now and you’re releasing it independently?
Yeah, no label would touch it because it’s not easily classifiable by genre. People want stuff that they can market easily. Not stuff that’s good. I might sound full of myself here but I’m very critical. I’ve written for years, listened to music for years and had to review albums for years. I myself also have to be very critical with myself and make sure what’s coming out better be worth coming out as opposed to something that’s just adding to the cultural dung heap. Every album I make has gotta be good. Sure there might be flaws I notice later but generally I think I’m pretty successful. So it doesn’t easily fit into a genre and it’s a little bit funny. It’s dark too. Comedy people would put it out if it was straight comedy. But it’s also got weird instrumentals that definitely aren’t funny. Then it’s too funny for other labels to put out. Also, labels are folding everywhere.

Are you just going to give it away or are you going to try and sell it?
No, it’s on vinyl. It’s gotta be a vinyl record. It’s designed to have two sides. Everything about it had to be on vinyl but it comes with a free MP3 download.

So tell me about how the FUSE show at the Vancouver Art Gallery came about cuz it sounded like an interesting event.
If you go to the site there’s a whole history of the band that’s done in the first person. We broke it down year-by-year and show by show for 14 years. Every show has a different context and a different theme. I think people who run galleries might really like that. It wasn’t too hard to pitch when they found out that, as a band, we’re malleable. That malleability showed that we’re not just a regular four-piece rock band. That made it easy for them to book us for this all night party. They seemed like they were into it from the start. When we saw the space we began to shape our performance.

What was the theme you went with for this performance?
Here’s the thing, we wanted to make the most amazing disappointing second album ever. The first album was warm psychedelic pop. This is the most amazing disappointing second album ever. A mind-blowing, disappointing second album. We want you to keep coming back to it again and again and go “what the hell is going on here.” As a bit of loose template there was this budget department store record called “Up Up and Away.” You’d see it and you’d think “Oh good, I love that song [by Jimmy Webb].” Turns out it’s just a bunch of session hacks plugging away at that song and then it’s all their own songs after that. No covers after that. So they’re doing a cover of “Up Up and Away” then it’s all their own songs. Then you flip the record over and you listen to the second side and all the sudden there’s these four psychedelic rock instrumentals. It’s compelling. So we used that as a loose template. We wanted to open with a very innocuous song “Me and Bobby McGee” [by Kris Kristofferson], which is kind of like “Up Up and Away.” We had to open with a song that is just so common, then move on with our own hard driving rock. The other caveat was it needed G-Funk keyboards so we also added some G-Funk keyboards. Then when you flip the record over—that’s why it’s a record—and it opens with the song “Thanks Drugs.” You’ll notice it’s almost the same backing track of “Stoned on You” which is on the first side with completely different lyrics, harmonies and melodies going on. That’s because with these department store albums sometime you’d buy “MacArthur Park” by the Stone Jammy Rock Band. Then you’d go, why is there this song called “Most of All it’s You” the same as this song called “Lisa” that’s on the Generation Gap album. I always found that kind of funny; renaming songs and putting them on different albums by different bands. So we wanted to do that our own way…. So we did that and then we put in our five instrumentals. It couldn’t rock though. So we took the rock away and had very exploratory visions in sound. It’s a bit of a trip and then ends with a nice warm ballad. We wanted a nice soft song to end it as you’re going on this intense journey of substance abuse and stereotypical visions of masculinity.

Substance abuse and stereotypical visions of masculinity? That’s a very nice segue into me asking you more about what went on at the FUSE show.
Clancy Dennehy has a 30-second on the record called “Enter the Princess.” He re-envisioned it live as a 40 minute piece. It’s an intense little piece but he stretched it to 40 minutes and did it in the Rotunda, which is that big circular stairway. So there are all these people in robes—male and female chanters—he’s got his gongs and this weird projected light in the centre and some Kokoro dancers. We were doing some cosmic synthy stuff in Courtroom B, on the third floor, a lot like what is on side B of the album. The Rotunda thing wrapped up around 10. Then we played Courtroom A, which was like side A of the album. Hard driving rock in a cold classic courtroom… it kind of worked. So at 10 and midnight we just did a really good hard-driving rock set. It was awesome in this nice wooden courtroom with all these beautiful rugs. Meanwhile, there was a lot of other stuff going on in the gallery but I didn’t really know about so much as I was too busy running around.

Was it well attended?
It was but people seemed unsure how to find us. So the rock sets were awesome. Then we moved into courtroom B and we started adding to what was going on in there. Because there were musicians in there the whole time doing their thing. So we started adding to it. July Fourth Toilet was playing across the hall from each other. We weren’t listening to what we were doing but we were playing simultaneously. We’re really starting to get rolling—just building and building and building—then all the sudden the lights go out.

What time was this?
Oh god, this would be after midnight. Around 1:30. So the lights go out and Jay Mirus from Much Music goes to find another lighting source and we’re noticing there’s less people. Where did all the people go? This guy tells us that the security guard was not letting people up. I went “why not?” and he said “I don’t know, I almost had trouble coming back in and I went to use the washroom.” This is crazy because the show was supposed to go till 5am. Well, I find out that they made a big decision to shut the FUSE down.

And why was that?
Well, I heard from a few authorities that basically in the gallery there were a few people who turned the art gallery into a shooting gallery. Mixing some heroin with some original George Herriman in the comic section of the gallery. I was kind of suggesting, well why don’t you just take them out to the alley? Why let one bad apple spoil the party? They also said there was a lot of post-bar crowd coming and it was just too much to handle.

Would you be able to speculate if it one was one of the rowdy bar people who was shooting heroin?
I don’t know who was shooting heroin. Maybe it was an art piece?

What do you think it is about this show that brought out opiate users?
I have some theories. But it wasn’t so much that. It was these rowdies wanting to fight that I heard about. Granted, I do think that the security guards there didn’t seem like they could handle too much. They seemed challenged. They didn’t have the proper answers to questions. I asked one of these guys a million questions and his only answer was “I don’t know.” The security could not handle this. Then again, you look at our history of our city in the last 30 years and there is a history in this city of people rioting, showing up at fireworks with knives…

And now people showing up at the art gallery with heroin?
Yeah, but I’m not even thinking about that but the rowdies that showed up along with that. The post-bar rowdies. This city’s got that history. Then to counteract that, we have this over aggressive authority figures that act on way too much power. “Oh well, since we’re here at the GnR riot, we might as well pummel these people who just want to get home that have nothing to do with the concert as well.” That’s what this city is like. Its too extreme. It’s absurd. One person I know’s theory is that it dates back to Mayor Tom Campbell who had the whole Gastown riots and that abuse of authority. We have poor city planning. City planning is run by developers and people with money. It’s like “Hey, having a bunch of bars all on the same street brought nothing but problems to other cities, but hey, let’s see if our city can do this.”

Have you been on Granville on the weekend? It’s terrifying.
It’s disturbing. At my work people come in asking what to do. I tell them to avoid Hastings because it’s unpleasant but it’s not really dangerous. It’s got preservation through neglect. It’s a neglected street, not for long though. But where you’re gonna find trouble is Granville. Walk along Granville and that’s where the problem is. Don’t go along Granville. It’s scary. It’s true, you could get seriously hurt. It’s blocked off, there’s paddy wagons, it’s a nightmare. It’s like “Hey, we need to find a solution to this problem that we ourselves caused. We need to find a solution that we, the people in authority, caused.” That’s the city’s mentality and this is just an extension. Can you have a nice safe all-night gallery event? It worked last year but I guess not this year. We had a great time, I gotta say that. It was awesome. The show was awesome but it’s a shame we had to quit the show early. One gal thought the show was still going and was wondering what was going on next. I went “No, didn’t you hear?” She was so depressed. People paid $20 so they could get violent or shoot heroin? Like what the? In an art gallery?

Why would you do this?
Would this happen in any other city?

No.
No, this would not happen in another city. City’s can do these big events with ten times as many people and there’s never a situation like this. Why do these kind of things repeatedly happen in our city?

I wish I had an answer.

July Fourth Toilet’s Album “Balls Boogie” is available at better record stores that actually sell records.
July Fourth Toilet’s Website
July Fourth Toilet on MySpace

Being sleep deprived at 3 am with a high-speed internet connection and a Paypal account can get you into trouble. My friends will never let me live down that authentic alien corpse I paid $800 for. Sometimes though, impaired judgement and twoclick payment can be a good thing.

I was reading a news site and a member informed everyone that a highly sought after art print was just released. It was a nifty work by a famous artist (It was a portrait of some guy named Barack Obama in case you were curious). The kicker is it went on sale while the entire continent of people who would want it were asleep. If you have any experience purchasing sought after art prints, you’ll know scoring one typically involves 24 hours of sitting in front of your computer hitting the refresh button every five minutes. When they eventually go on sale they’re sold out in under five seconds—no joke, this actually happens.

I’m saying all this in hindsight though. My thought process at the time was “Looks cool. Wouldn’t hang it on the wall but it’s only $45. Sure, why not?” Then I pulled the trigger and promptly passed out. The next morning when I checked out the news site there were a bunch of babies crying foul that they missed the sale of this print.

A quick hop over to ebay, where all the world’s greatest artists go to sell their wares, and you could see the demand for this print was crazy. The first one went for $400. The next one went for $600. Then over the next few days $800, $1000, $1800, $2800. My heart was palpitating. I still hadn’t received the print in the mail but I’ve listened to “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers at least twice and knew it was time cash in my chips, so I listed the print on ebay.

I’ve now entered the morally dubious world of the art flipper (a euphemism the art world uses to refer to flippers is the secondary market). People who flip art are loved by people who own the work and loathed by people who don’t. Loved by the haves since they drive up the prices. Loathed by the have-nots since they’re getting charged outrageous amounts of cash for something they want. What do the artists think of art flippers? It is my understanding that artists love it when you buy their work for cheap then turn around and sell it at an inflated price. Who wouldn’t?

It turns out I was mistaken. The glee of watchingthe bidding escalate on my ebay auction was cut short when I received an email from the assistant of the artist who made the prints. He informed me that I had been busted flipping his work, they were canceling my order and the print would be given to someone who plans to hang it on their wall. After I finished reading the email, as if on cue, I received another email from Paypal informing me I had just been refunded my $45.

I responded to the assistant with about a million questions. Do I not have the right to sell something I own? How much time needs to pass before you’re allowed to sell a piece of art you own? Isn’t this all a little Orwellian? But I got no response. I’ll just blame the whole sad affair on a finicky and pretentious artist. So there’s nothing I can do except constantly refresh the artist’s page and wait for the next big print to drop. However, next time, I’ll wait till I have the piece in hand before I make the big sale.

I don’t really get the “hyper” part of “hyper collage” so I ask. Trautrimas explains that most people think of collage as work that combines disparate source images. “I’m doing a similar thing, but taking it to the next level by creating my own source images in a really controlled manner, and using them to create a collage that is much more seamless than a typical scissors and glue approach.”

The show at LE Gallery is only Trautrimas’ second solo exhibition, but he says he’s already made a departure from his previous style. “I’d say a lot of the apparent humour is gone,” he says, explaining that much of the work he completed before (some while he was a still a student at the Ontario College of Art and Design) was more “whimsical” and “leaning toward the old Monty Python work of Terry Gilliam.” That influence is still vaguely apparent, but Industrial Parkland is also definitely something different. It’s more grown up, much like Trautrimas himself, more serious than you might expect, and extremely precise. Every review I’ve read so far manages to work in some reference to architecture in order to describe it.

Trautrimas worked for a good eight months on the project, holing up in his apartment in order to get it done on time (and still had to ask for an extension from the gallery). “There were definitely times that I was really stressed about the project,” he says. “I can’t speak for all artists, but I think there’s always a healthy fear that the body of work you’re creating has the potential to completely flop.” Luckily, by the time Trautrimas and I spoke, favourable reviews of the show were already cropping up in local and national publications.

Trautrimas is pleased at the positive reception, and likely more than a little relieved. At the show’s opening, he says one visitor stood in front of his Automobile Factory piece—the largest work in the show at 37” x 60”—for an extended period of time, and finally remarked that he could actually “hear it” operating. It one of the nicest things anyone has said about his work, ever.

Personally, what I like best about Industrial Parkland is the retro styling of the items Trautrimas chose to work with. There’s something particularly appealing about the palate of older items—the pewter of the blades used in Oscillating Fan Factory and the light amber of some of the ancient bulbs in Lamp Factory.

“I’m an obsessive junk hunter,” Trautrimas admits, describing himself scouring local Value Villages and other second hand shops in order to find new materials to dissect. He even took apart his own car (an ’88 Toyota dubbed “the dung beetle”) to make a piece. Sometimes, he admits, he buys higher end items at the sort of Toronto antique stores that cater to the movie industry, and after dismantling and using them, will return them for a refund. He’s obviously a little abashed about it, but I’m complimentary. After all, he must be ridiculously handy, technically inclined and careful if he’s able to mess with so many different mechanical and electrical systems without ruining them. “Not really,” he says, smiling, and as ever, charmingly modest about the whole thing.

-Jen Selk
Jen Selk’s Website

That’s fair. And to be honest, while there is something vaguely Escher-esque about Pirrie’s work, I was mostly talking out of my ass. The two artists have little in common.

Pirrie, a BC based visual artist, is currently working on and showing a project titled Risk Analysis. He describes it to me as being about “technology and the arc of human vulnerability; about how we assess risk both metaphorically and in our day to day undertakings.” He also says “Through strict composition and repetition, I am trying to formulate an idea of a conceptual moment in time, a static reminder of our own vulnerability.” That’s artist talk. Basically, it’s pictures of cars. Cars that are alternately smashed up and wrapped around trees.

Before you write him off as a pompous, academic spewer, keep in mind that I often tease artists about their verbose and oh-so-serious statements, and many don’t take it well, but Pirrie doesn’t seem to mind. He himself uses the phrase “intellectual wanking.” On one hand, he says he regularly struggles with the challenge of describing his own work and isn’t a fan of the sort of jargon-filled academic language you so often hear in the artistic community. On the other, he says, “art can and should be sometimes difficult… I don’t have a lot of time for people who are too lazy to really try and understand ideas.” Maybe I shouldn’t have said that thing about it being about smashed up cars.

Regardless, he’s not keen on intellectual wanking, which he blames on French post-conceptualists. Pirrie says, “Sometimes there is no other way to write or think about art.” Particularly since, he says, an artist is a “cultural commodity”. In other words, if an artist or a gallery is going to make a go of it, stuff has got to sell. And, let’s face it, if you’re buying art you’re also buying the idea of yourself as a person who collects art. That doesn’t always come cheap, so emphasizing seriousness can be important.

Pirrie is not one of those artists who seems to be suffering. He is well-known, which you’d think would be a bit of a relief, but he is surprisingly blasé about his own success. In fact, talking to him you’d think becoming an artist wasn’t such a big risk. “I can’t think of a better time to be an artist,” he says, because making a living is actually an attainable goal.

“Today’s contemporary art scene is like nothing ever seen before,” he explains. “Every city now in the western world has to have a major contemporary art institution. Curators must be found, and artists must be found to fill them up. Collectors are snapping up works by artists in their 30s for hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes even millions … This is what I mean as cultural commodity and what is at stake, and why the language of art is becoming so specialized.”

Speaking of specialized language, in our conversations about his work, Pirrie also says he’s interested in “using imagery that floats a tenuous divide between attraction and repulsion. Mortality, illness, geological breakdown, car crashes, all these ideas are in my head as objects of study.” It might sound novel, but in many ways, this isn’t an original idea. A lot of contemporary artists are currently working with the concept of beautifying the terrible. However, Pirrie’s art still feels original and you’re not likely to have seen anything quite like it before.

Born in Montreal, but raised in North Vancouver, Pirrie spent his university years back in Quebec, and had short stints in Paris and Toronto before settling back on the West Coast where he says he’s happy. “Vancouver is very much my city,” he explains. “It’s a quality of life thing … I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

Regardless of where you live, you can get a taste of his art through the Douglas Udell Gallery that displays and sells his work in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary; on his personal website and at Dadabase in Vancouver, where his t-shirts are distributed. He has also shown work in Toronto, Seattle, and Turin, Italy, among other places.

-Jen Selk
Jen Selk’s Website

Currently a teacher at Emily Carr, during an interview at her studio, Achjadi admits she is sometimes mistaken for a student, though this used to happen more when she taught at a State University in Baltimore. She’s no newcomer to the art scene, but her work is only starting to garner recognition in Vancouver. Since moving to the Pacific Coast city about a year ago, she’s only had two shows. The first was an EC faculty affair, the second an installation at Access Artist Run Centre that closed at the beginning of November. Things are only likely to get bigger and better.

Achjadi’s pop art inspired pieces are aggressive and friendly at the same time. On the artist statement portion of her website she says hermost recent work explores “depictions of violence and militarism in news, pop-culture and children’s media.” And it does. From car bombs to guns, her art features graphic references to violence, but in a decidedly girly way. Her works are the sort that would lend themselves well to baby tees and tote bags likely to be coveted by the lovers of Hello Kitty and Emily Strange, but Achjadi says that while she is very interested in working with fabric, she hasn’t looked into making clothes. “I don’t know how,” she explains, adding, “I think the current images are a bit too detailed for that scale and material – though I could easily see them exist as posters, postcards, or picture books.”

As for subject matter, she says her current militaristic work is intended to both seduce and repulse. “I’m interested in the different ways that violence—specifically violence suggesting militaristic activity, involving armies, uniforms and bombs, for instance—is portrayed in various contexts and how these images are perpetuated and transmitted,” she says. She also cites her personal history—being born in Indonesia, living both in Jakarta and in the States, and communicating with her family abroad during times of major upheaval—as major inspirations. “The first body of work I made about militarism and violence directly referred to the events of May 1998 in Indonesia and the aftermath,” she says. “As the political climate changed in North America, with the WTC attacks and the subsequent military actions, my work became more general in its examination of violence.”

Achjadi’s creation process is multi-layered and simple at the same time. She draws, examines photographs, embroiders, scans things into her computer and often reworks or redraws them on screen. The result is art that is hard to classify, as so much contemporary art is in the era of the married digital print. In the end, she says she hopes “that the work will give a viewer something to think about, and create conversation around the socio-political context that we live in. My hope is that the body of work will also contribute to a growing discussion on how we use and consume images and media, and the impact of that activity.”

It’s serious stuff. Pretty too.
Diyan Achjadi’s Website

-Jen Selk
Jen Selk’s Website

You shouldn’t. They’re great. Speaking of which, how did you develop your style? It’s pretty interesting.
I’ve been into comics, cartoons, and nature documentaries since I was old enough to open my eyes, and into drawing since I could pick up a crayon. When I was in high school I caught on to certain artists like Barry McGee, Dalek, Doze Green, Jeff Soto…. and all of a sudden it was like ‘Whoa… You can draw like this and show it in galleries?’ And that’s pretty much what got me making art.

Worst thing anyone’s ever said (to your knowledge) about your work?
Heh. At every show I overhear a few people saying stuff like ‘That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen’ or ‘I wouldn’t hang that on my wall if someone paid me!’ I find that stuff funny though. I’m pretty thick skinned. One time I was walking down the street with a finished canvas, and these two dudes saw me and followed me down the street yelling, ‘Hey, your shit sucks!’ That was a tad embarrassing… I was just relieved they didn’t jump me.

Jerks. They’re everywhere. So what about the best thing? Best compliment.
I’ve had a few moments that felt pretty good, two of my heroes are Dalek and Beck, I had the chance to meet them both over the last year, and it meant a lot to me when they said they appreciated what I was doing. The biggest compliment came two years ago though, on the opening night of my first solo show. My mom and dad drove up to see it, and my dad said it looked pretty good. He’s not much of a talker, so coming from him, that’s a pretty big compliment!

You’re not exactly established, but you’re already starting to get a lot of press. Why do you think that is?
To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. I guess for the same reasons I like the work – because it’s a chance to temporarily step out of reality and into another world. I was going over all of the work that I’ve done over the last few years, and my little biosphere contains over 1000 different species.

Is the whole “in the public eye” thing what you always wanted?
Not exactly. I have no idea what I want out of this… Just the opportunity to keep doing it and getting the chance to show it, I guess. Seeing my stuff in print feels pretty good though. I keep a copy of every review, interview and ad, and when I feel sort of worthless I read over them to cheer up. And they make my parents happy. Sometimes, when my mom reads them, she cries. I think that’s really cute.

Awwww. That is cute. You know, people keep asking how I “found you.” I used to baby-sit for a kid named Nicholas Genova, and I heard he’d become an artist. Then I saw your name somewhere and thought maybe he was you.
Hey, I think I’ve heard about this guy before. Something about a Nick Genova
going to OCAD …

Yeah. I think that’s him. Weird. Last time I saw him, he was into nature documentaries and creature-creatin’ too… Anyway. This story isn’t about me. SO. How do people tend to discover your work?
People seem to find out about my work in all sorts of ways: the web, my merch, a gallery, on the street. Some people have no choice but to see my work, cause I harass them on the Internet with images! Sometimes people find the wheat paste I put up on their store and track me down… that’s not so much fun.

You used to be a street artist?
Five or six years ago I used to be more involved in street art culture. I’d find abandoned furniture and stuff on the street, and draw spirits leaving the objects. For example: a fridge spirit floating away from an old fridge, or plant spirits crawling out of an abandoned garden…

And your web-name “mediumphobic” came out of that, right? That was your tag?
Actually, I used to write the name “medium”. I liked it cause I imagined myself as a sort of spiritual medium connecting our world to the ghost world. Sadly, mediumphobic only exists because medium.com was taken when I went to register for a domain name, and I liked the ring of mediumphobic better than something like mediumart or mediumrulez.

I dunno, mediumrulez sounds good to me. One last question: your work has been said to “speak to the giddy kid in us.” True?
It would be nice if it was… It certainly speaks to the giddy kid in me!

Nichola Di Genova’s Website

-Jen Selk
Jen Selk’s Website

Vancouver-based artist Nicole Sanches has been posting photos of discovered street art from Seattle and Vancouver on Flickr since August 2005. This month, I spoke to her about appropriation, documentation, and yes, her own art as well. Is she stealing? She says she’s just trying to give street art a longer shelf life.

“I put a disclaimer right on the profile page saying none of it is mine,” she says. “I’m just documenting it because it’s so temporal, you know? Because the rain washes it off, or it gets scraped off.” The said disclaimer reads, “None of the street art/ graffiti is of my doing. I just take photos of the things that catch my eye on the street.”

So what about giving the prime artists their due? Sanches says after she started taking the photos she did some detective work and quickly found out who many of them were. “They definitely want to keep their anonymity,” she says. Apparently only one artist had any problem with her posting his work, and he just requested that she ask his permission next time. So what about her own work? Sanches graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 1998 and her pieces are decidedly different from the street art she shoots. At the moment, she is primarily creating 1 x 1 ft. dioramas featuring super-tiny model figures, pieces, and found objects, like, um, severed doll legs, among other things.
“This one day I was in Edmonton and I had just stepped out of my friends car and I looked down at the street and there was this Barbie doll leg, but it was just the knee,” she explains. “The other parts had been chewed off by some animal. So I picked it up and I was like, ‘wow, this is fantastic’. And of course my friends were like, ‘get that out of my car,’ but I eventually used it about a year later in a diorama called Accident.” Sanches likes playing with size and proportion in her work, but says dioramas aren’t her only medium. “I’m a conceptual artist, so whatever idea I have, I try to present it in the best way that it can be expressed,” she says. “Dioramas, right now, are working for me.”
Nicole Sanches Website

-Jen Selk
Jen Selk’s Website

When you say “loosely related” what do you mean?
I mean companies that are owned by the artists who created them. Three of my friends from San Francisco and I came up with the idea because we all have our own small, art-influenced companies, and we were each spending a lot of time managing mail order crap. We figured we’d bring our online shops together so that we could focus more on what we do best - the creative stuff.

Is it just you guys?
We’re taking on other labels as well as our own so we have a bunch of other small brands that our other friends do. There’s rarely a sales person or a CEO type of dude breathing heavy down the necks of their designers and it allows the type of freedom that can really get something special out there. Clothing companies like Stacks, Dark Room and Delphi Collective, magazines like Arkitip, The Drama and Hamburger Eyes. Companies like that.

Is it already online?
We did a soft launch in December and the official launch for it is March 1.

Okay, so what else?
I recently signed on to be represented by the Elliott Louis Gallery here in town. Also, over the past year and a half I’ve been working on a series of photographs similar to the ones that appeared in my book. Beach Glass was shot over a three-year period in LA; this new series will be shot over a three-year period in Vancouver. I’d like to get somebody to publish it when it’s done.

What kind of stuff have you shot for the Van book so far?
I can’t say much but I can say that they definitely won’t be ‘photos of Vancouver,’ just like the works in Beach Glass aren’t really ‘photos of LA.’

Secretive. But it’s sort of a Beach Glass sequel?
I’d call it another chapter. The next one will likely be shot in Paris. My aim is to be able to spend time exploring and dissecting these cities, isolating things that I enjoy shooting that often go overlooked. The work itself is a form of isolation for me. Like any art form, the process is really meditative. It’s therapeutic.

Okay, so will Elliott Louis be displaying some of this stuff?
Yep, right now they’re showing eight from Beach Glass and they’ll have 16 more later this year. They’ll have the Vancouver series when it’s done too.

On to Crownfarmer [Bob’s tee-shirt line. www.crownfarmer.com] What’s new in tee-shirt-town?
Crownfarmer’s been going for about five years now as a t-shirt line, but it feels like it’s gone as far as I can take it. Like, t-shirts are fun but it’s either time to step it up or bow out… so I found the perfect business partner in Paul Higgins from Tenille Clothing. We’re developing a full clothing line right now.

Are you going be sketching dresses like Lagerfeld? Where will it sell?
It’s men’s and women’s street wear, available in skate shops and boutiques. Paul’s in charge of the technical side of the line and he’s a lot better at the business crap than I am so I’m trying to get him to take over that stuff too. He’s also an amazing designer and he’s done the production for a bunch of popular brands that I probably shouldn’t name. A lot of the pieces we’ll be introducing come straight from his head.

Got any other news to share?
I got a dog.

Name?
Frankie Peabody Irving.

That’s kind of a weird name.
My girlfriend and I got him in October. She came up with his first two names and I tacked on his last name in honour of our friend Matt Irving who has been talking about getting a dog for as long as I’ve known him… like a decade. Now I’ve turned into one of those weird dog lovers, it’s like I’ve joined a cult or something. I’m not as bad as Paul though; his nickname is the Puppy Pervert because he’s always checking out dogs while he’s driving. He’s almost crashed a couple of times perving on pugs when he should’ve been watching the road.

You’re more careful?
If you could call having Frankie sit in my lap everywhere that I drive “careful,” then yeah.

Bob Kornbauer’s Website

-Jen Selk
Jen Selk’s Website

“A kid walks into the woods with a man and the kid starts crying. The man looks over to the kid and says ‘what are you crying about? I’m the one who’s gotta walk out of here by myself.’”

Don’t let the anecdote Jason Ainsworth started the interview off with mislead you, he probably isn’t a homicidal maniac. True, he kind of acts how you think one would. And okay, his apartment looks like something out of the movie Seven and you’re far more likely to come across a felt lined box of razor blades than you are a clean glass. But to paraphrase Wednesday Addams, homicidal maniacs look just like everyone else. So by that logic, we’re probably safe.

Ainsworth is a painter though and he paints like someone who at least contemplated torturing animals when he was young. Playful and childlike at times, his paintings look like the end result of a psychologist asking a troubled kid from bible school to paint what’s on his mind. There’s no kitsch or pretentiousness with his work. His paintings are sentimental and touching minus the irony. The right mixture of the gallery scene you’re intimidated by and the art school shows you can’t stand.

If you can fight your way through the all paintings that block the entranceway into Ainsworth’s apartment, you’ll see that bedroom is the studio where he works and the futon mattress on the floor of the living room means it doubles as the bedroom. It’s immediately evident that the mattress doesn’t get slept on much and most nights are spent painting. Also evident is, that aside from being talented, Ainsworth is clever, eccentric and shy, traits that might lead one to mistake him for being one of those “difficult artists.” He dodges questions, lies about his height and doesn’t really feel comfortable chatting until he knocks back a few drinks. Three beers later Ainsworth explains that he hates graffiti, neat paintings, Salvador Dali, left leaning politicos, skateboarding and the thought of teenagers having sex.

After beer four and a little prodding he admits what you might have suspected. He’s the type of artist where every creation is a battle with the canvas. “I don’t punch it or anything but I do sometimes cry. I’ve been in tears over paintings.” A little known fact is that he frequently ends up painting over a lot of his work: equal parts him being unhappy with the work as well as broke. Some of his paintings have upwards of three other paintings underneath them. How’s that for value?

Halfway through beer five, common themes in his work comes up and Ainsworth claims, “I just do religious paintings and sentimental paintings and equestrian portraits.” He also claims he has no influences. Curiously, there are a large amount of dog-eared art books scattered throughout the apartment. The names Chagall, Ingres and Rousseau stand out in particular. There are also two copies of the Bible, a children’s story Bible and a copy of the Koran on the coffee table which might explain the recurring biblical themes in his work. “Well no one else is really doing it and besides, where else am I supposed to steal ideas from,” he jokes.

Asked if there’s a passage he finds particularly inspiring, Ainsworth replies, “Well [in the Koran] they tell you, at the end of the road you get to go up into paradise and be surrounded by women with pert breasts that have been untouched my man or djinni.” Ironically, the evening prior to the interview, a gaggle of females with breasts that had probably been touched by several men named Gene were overheard conspiring to call Ainsworth and see if he was up for partying into the wee hours of the morning. Not only was it Sunday but the activities they were planning didn’t sound particularly pious. When called on it he says, “Well that’s why I like to do religious paintings. Just in case, you know?”