Road Trippin'

Hello Halifax! A thick fog muted much of the city noise while we were visiting. Halifax is the next province over, Nova Scotia. It's on the ocean and we enjoyed walking the harbour, looking at the ships, listening to lapping waves, and smelling the tar and salt water from city docks. There was a violinist playing and we just sat and relaxed, listening and in no hurry. I find going slow hard to do in a city, but the violinist was very good so 'being in the moment,' as they say, was easy.

The trip was to see The Dark Knight Returns on Imax with friends. This movie is convincing a lot of people to take the art form of comic books more seriously, which Jace and I find pretty exciting. It's a medium that receives a lot of prejudice, just like any 'new' art form and like all kinds of art there's some that's good and some that's not so good. Our Wednesday ritual is comic book night. We get our weekly deliveries, race home, set up munchies and then read our issue. The rest of the night is for analysing, debating and chewing over the material with each other. Then Jason goes off to write a review. It's amazing how an evening's entertainment can cost less than a movie rental and gives us so much to talk about. Ivory Madison just finished her first series, Huntress: Year One, that I quite enjoyed. Like any good art form she has several layers in her writing so you can choose to read it superficially, or go deeper. The artwork just kept getting better and better as the series progressed. Twilight Guardian by Eisner nominee Troy Hickman is another of those books that topple pre-conceived notions of comics. Some comics have even won Pulitzers and I know of at least one graphic novel that snatched up the prestigious Hugo award.

The next day was for exploring and gallery hopping, of course. The Argyle gallery shown above is in the Historic section. They have such a great attitude. The owner's main goal is to make art accessible to those who wouldn't normally go into a gallery. She's not overbearing, but is happy to explain and chat if you desire. This vibe is working for them. Their last art opening had over two hundred people.

I've been re-reading "Finding Your Visual Voice." For awhile I snubbed it, thinking I'd already developed my visual voice, but I still need to trust my intuition and the exercises are quite helpful with that. The pastel work-in-progress above was from an exercise that encourages you to recall a dream and to capture the emotion of it. This is based on a dream I'd had about Jason returning from a war.

I'm going on holiday for the next two weeks and may not be around a computer very often. Hope you're having a great summer!