The show runs until April 22, 2010 and includes works by Les Klassen, Patrick Ross, Barry Gibson, Shawn Coates, Brian Longfield, Leif Norman, Greg Hanec, Carmen Ponto, Kelly [...]]]> Photos from the March 18th opening of 13 Who Knew, an art show showcasing works of thirteen artists at the Graffiti Gallery, 109 Higgins Ave, Winnipeg.

The show runs until April 22, 2010 and includes works by Les Klassen, Patrick Ross, Barry Gibson, Shawn Coates, Brian Longfield, Leif Norman, Greg Hanec, Carmen Ponto, Kelly Ruth, Tyler Funk, Andrew Milne, Leslie Supnet, and Doreen Girard.

Wooden sculptures: Andrew Milne.

Mixed Media: Doreen Girard.

Illustration: Leslie Supnet.

Photography: Tyler Funk

Painting: Kelly Ruth

Painting: Brian Longfield

13 Who Knew on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=345174202300&ref=ss

Hooked on Heroes!

13 Who Knew was shown in conjunction with the Hooked on Heroes! exhibit in the William Feldman Memorial Gallery, on the Graffiti Gallery’s second floor.

In Hooked on Heroes!, children invented their own person super-heroes, made capes, drew comics, and created character profiles.

The Winnipeg Graffiti Gallery: http://www.graffitigallery.ca/
More photos of 13 Who Knew & Hooked on Heroes! : IT³ on Flickr

Langer’s life-like sculptural works of resin, fibreglass, styrofoam, string, and oil paint depicted birds and other animals atop glinting false snow, hanging on thin wire from the ceiling, or [...]]]> Christy Langer’s Reprise exhibit ran from October 17 – November 14, 2009 at Christopher Cutts Gallery, 21 Morrow Avenue, in Toronto’s Roncesvalles / Dundas West neighbourhood.

Langer’s life-like sculptural works of resin, fibreglass, styrofoam, string, and oil paint depicted birds and other animals atop glinting false snow, hanging on thin wire from the ceiling, or affixed to the wall with metal rods or string and horseshoe nails.

Langer’s Reprise installation was shown in conjunction with Insurrectos (Rebels), a collection of Matias Sanchez paintings.

For more information & to see more works by Christy Langer and Matias Sanchez, visit the Christopher Cutts Gallery at http://www.cuttsgallery.com/
Christy Langer: http://www.cuttsgallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=53
Matias Sanchez: http://www.cuttsgallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=41

Performer Kram Ran, newly back in Winnipeg, tagged along.

Reetbot’s upcoming show, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the [...]]]> IT³ caught up with Winnipeg’s Reetbot, one of this country’s most hard working new artists, in a church at a Christmas craft fair. He spoke about his upcoming Santa themed show, his city, music, feelings, and pizza.

Performer Kram Ran, newly back in Winnipeg, tagged along.

Reetbot’s upcoming show, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year…, opens in Winnipeg on Thursday, December 10th.

IT³: How are the fans, Reetbot?

Reetbot: What fans? I have no fans, unfortunately. I have this one crazy stalker girl who basically rips off everything I do. I have some fans in my apartment actually, but I have to crank them to get them to work… and then they make this crazy noise like, durrrrrrrrrrrrr…

What’s the show all about?

Santa’s struggle to cope with the debt that Christmas brings each year. He pays slave wages to the elves, but the cost of gas…

What about the reindeer?

They’re a myth.
Really I just painted Santa because he’s creepy. But it could also be interpreted as my love for pizza.

In what way?

I always eat pizza while painting. It makes me feel like I’m on heroin, it surges through my body and sometimes I can’t remember what’s happening. It’s my comfort mechanism. When I was 20 I found out Santa wasn’t real. Now I fill the void with pizza… and paintings of Santa Clause.

Who the fuck is Reetbot?

Reetbot is a group of ten people. They’re all sailors. No, he’s just some stupid kid and he paints these little characters. Honestly he’s not even real. Basically, I found a Reetbot well and I pull these things out of it. It’s an endless well of crappy paintings, and I just pull these out of it… I don’t know.

Why is the well in Winnipeg?

Because we’re the center shit hole of Canada. No, there’s so much good stuff coming out of Winnipeg right now; there needs to be really TERRIBLE art to contrast it. It’s like an ego booster. “If Reetbot can do it, anyone can!” Plus, it’s the best place in the world.

Are you the guy who spray painted my garage the other night?

No no, that’s Re-boot. Reetbot doesn’t paint houses or cars, only children in strollers. And breasts.

Will you paint a deer in a forest for my grandpa’s living room?

I have like 10 deers in forests already. But if he wants a custom made one, totally. Still lives are my speciality, but I love nature paintings too.

What is the nicest thing a stranger’s ever said to you?

I got a call after my show last year saying great things. This guy called me Shitbot, and said the gallery shouldn’t have Reetbot shows because the neighbourhood gets plastered every time with graffiti up and down the block like a plague. I thought that was a big compliment – it must take a pretty special person to accomplish that. It’s like being in the mob, but I’m a white kid from the suburbs. It all comes back to pizza. I had another show where I played that message on a tape player, and people could listen on headphones.

They left a message?

Yeah, on the gallery’s machine.

What’s going on artistically in Canada right now?

Oh man. This is the first time I’ve left my apartment in a month. Graffiti everywhere, it never sleeps. Yesterday I was waiting for the bus, and a guy asked me to buy one of his portraits. It was awesome, but I had no money. So that’s happening. People are hustlin’. Oh, and Reetbot shows.

How does graffiti cope with Winnipeg winters?

It thins the herd. Graffiti loves Winnipeg winters. Reetbot only paints graffiti in the winter. But I don’t know anything about it.

What are your thoughts on this craft sale?

I love the caroller. Lots of cute girls. Some sweet treats over there. I saw a kid sneezing on them earlier, and I’m thinking I might buy one so I can get sick and miss work on Monday. Sales are good, I actually sold something. So that’s a step forward.

What gets Reetbot out of the house?

If my internet connection goes down then I have to go to the library. I can’t order pizza on the phone, because I’m scared of the phone. I need to order pizza online.

So just pizza?

Whenever City Champs play a show. Oh, and craft sales. At churches.

Top five albums of the decade?

What?

Just wing it.

Alright… Matching Socks, Missing Feet by the The Bonaduces. The Get Up Kids: Something to Write Home About. American Football’s self titled… Dog Disco by Leatherface, and, um…. wait, let me think for a minute.

Sure.

My Downtrodden Smile – My Downtrodden Smile

My Downtrodden Smile? Are you in that band?

I wish. I was 15 when they played their last show at the Albert, and I wasn’t sneaky enough to sneak in yet.

What do you say to bands or artists who pass over Winnipeg because it’s a frozen shithole?

I say, I stole your music on the internet and I never want to see your art again. Also, any band that has come through and stayed with me can attest that I make the best grilled cheese sandwiches and have the cuddliest cats, so they’re missing out.

Kram Ran: I make the best grilled cheese sandwiches.

Reetbot: I don’t know… we’ll see. We’ll have a cook off.

IT³: What does this city need the most?

It doesn’t need anything – it’s perfect. It needs more youth oriented programs. And more pizza places. I want pizza with sesame seed crusts.

Last time you cried?

Last night. I cry every day. Life is hard. I listen to too much Dashboard Confessional, also I write too much poetry for my own good. But seriously I hate life. I get really depressed and I cry. Some days I cry twice a day. Or three times. There’s no limit. No one’s ever caught me though.

Does your art come from the place of secret tears?

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes I’m so upset that I throw something, rip a canvas, and make my art even better. One canvas I ripped and had to sew back together. I was like, oh man, this is awesome. But mostly my tears are self serving. I’m wasting time when I should be painting. One day I’ll learn to multitask.

What’s next post Santa show?

Go explore the world in a canoe; disappear. Write the greatest musical anyone has ever seen – all disco trance music with a hint of soul. About a fox who lost his hole, so he grows up into a bitter old fox man. I’m still working out the kinks.

So this is the farewell show?

Yeah, in this life.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year… runs from December 10th-19th at the Cre8ery gallery in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Opening night is the evening of Thursday, December 10th.

The Cre8ery: http://cre8ery.com/
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year… on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#/event.php?eid=223466048792&ref=mf

The five houses slated for demolition, 9, 11, 15, 17 and 19 Leona Drive, were transformed and open to the public free [...]]]> Running from October 22-31 in Toronto as part of the Toronto International Art Fair, The Leona Drive Project took place on five properties in Willowdale, a northern suburb adjoined with Sheppard Station.

The five houses slated for demolition, 9, 11, 15, 17 and 19 Leona Drive, were transformed and open to the public free of charge for one week. The exhibit also included a public forum on urban planning, film projections, and daily artist talks.

The Leona Drive Project featured a life-sized green ‘Monopoly’ house, a car smashed through the window of 17 Leona Drive, make-shift shelters in the backyards, red lipstick coating every surface of an upstairs bathroom, a room of white pennies nailed to the wall (after the saying ‘a penny saved is a penny earned’), and more.

For more information, see the Leona Drive Project’s brochure:

or visit http://www.leonadrive.ca/

It is re-posted here in its original form, with some additional notes on behalf of our editors, [...]]]> The following interview was conducted by Joseph Stella, in Los Angeles, California, for ICMTTP’s zine Typewriters on Screens. This interview first appeared in print on October 8, 2008, and was first posted online at syphmag.net on October 17th, 2008.

Our thanks to Joseph Stella for his generosity in allowing us to re-post this interview.

Interview with Nic Van Roon, editor of Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine, about the nerdier aspects of running an online magazine.

Syphmag (or SM², in abbreviated form) first caught my attention for their unique design, which can be seen at www.syphmag.net.

Nic, thanks for coming. Let’s get started on the geeky questions right away. What do you think about Web 2.0?

Geeky questions, alright. I think it’s fine. I prefer it to that time when you had to visit Geocities sites to find information; I prefer there being a blog or a wiki for everything, rather than a fan page.

The internet has become a reliable source.

I don’t know if it’s more accurate, but it’s more believable – and a lot less annoying.

You’ve accused yourself of falling behind the times, design-wise. Do you feel that the fact you haven’t conformed to Web 2.0 standards (for whatever reason) holds you back?

I don’t think our design is behind the times so much as our programming is. I think our design is fine for what we do, but right now it’s difficult, if not impossible, to read Syphgmag from an iPhone, and obviously this is a drawback for us, because we loose those readers who do read a lot of their internet content through their phones. And I imagine that the number of people who do this will be increasing. So yes, we are behind on our Web 2.0, and yes, in a way it’s holding us back.

Would you say you’re making a conscious decision to forgo that advanced programming in favour of aesthetic? Your site has gone through a few incarnations now, but the design has always been very stylized and unique.

No, I don’t think it’s been a conscious choice: SBK [interviewer's note: SM²'s web designer] and I have the desire to use whatever advanced programming is possible, and I know that we would if we had the time. We’re behind the learning curve, and I think we feel that it’s going to be a struggle, to catch up.

The truth is that we aren’t programmers, and as far as I know, no one has programmed the kind of software that we would need for what we do. Nothing that would satisfy us, anyhow. There was the possibility of putting SM² into some kind of preconceived format, so that we didn’t have to figure these things out ourselves…

The whole site in a blog?

Yeah, something like that. We could do that. We’ve talked about it, but, I’d hope, only in a joking manner. We don’t want to do that; that isn’t what we set out to do.

I see. So in that way, your aesthetic is taking priority.

In a way, yes. Some people do still read things online with a monitor – most people do. So, would we like readers to be able to access our content on the subway, or the lobby of the doctor’s office? Yes, of course we would. Are we panicking because they can’t? A little bit, but right now, okay, we’re using this basically antiquated style. It functions, but it annoys and embarrasses (web designer) SBK. Yet, obviously, we prefer this state of affairs to some kind of white background, multi-column blog.

Ah, the resentment surfaces.

I’d rather think of it as an only slightly biased observation…

It’s true though, every site looks the same right now.

I don’t know about that. I don’t go to a lot of new websites right now. I’ve seen some interesting things, sometimes with Flash, even – some examples where the designers use restraint, but managed to pull off something attractive that’s also original. Some band sites, e-zines, or artist portfolios… I haven’t come across anything that was too memorable in a while, but I imagine they’re still out there.

I know what you mean. It seems like now, I go to the few same news sites or blogs for news and entertainment, and to MySpace for bands, Facebook for events…

Exactly. So does that homogeny mean there’s less demand for a well designed – or, rather, interestingly designed – site? Probably. They can be inconvenient: they’re sometimes hard to update, and they can confuse or turn off new readers. We’re all in a hurry.

Is SM² inconvenient?

No. Yes. It could be. I’d hope that people find our design simple enough, especially the new design – though I think the old layout was fairly intuitive as well. We try to be innovative but straight forward. I know we’re not as easy to process as a standard blog, or say, a site like The New York Times, or Pitchfork Media; though they’re obviously trying to accomplish different goals than we are.

We do use a blog for our updates, though. We have a RSS feed available through MySpace[see note]. That’s a priority for us right now, actually: to set up a better newsfeed system.

[Note: this new RSS feed is now up at http://imtrying.net/?feed=rss2]

Let’s get back to your criticisms of 2.0 for a minute.

I only have a few, so a minute sounds good.

Ha. What do you think: is convenience making the internet aesthetically sterile?

In a way, it’s made the internet bland, but as I said before, it’s an improvement on early HTML. It’s clean, it’s structured, it gets the job done. I completely agree that sites ought to prioritize universal usability. What we’d love to do is figure out a way to make the design of SM² both functional and original – assuming we’re original doing what we’re doing now, which I’m reluctant to believe. Other sites will probably get this right before we do: interesting design concepts, plus maximum, universal function. It’s probably happening already and I just haven’t come across it.

But you can say you thought of it first.

Dreamed of it first, maybe. Then again, no, definitely not. We’re amateurs at this.

For someone who’s managed to accomplish so much, it’s hard to believe you can be so diffident.

That’s an art in and of itself.

Will there be a way to view your old layout, in the future? The new one is great, but there’s a part of me that misses the old fridge, and the personalized pages.

You’d have to ask SBK, as that’s her jurisdiction. Though I think for the next while we may be too focused on moving forward to worry about the past.

[Note: Nic was correct. -via SBK]

What do you have planned for SM², design/programming wise?

We’re still putting all our old content onto our new layout. After that, we’ll want to fix all the bugs, and make everything more intuitive: links between pages, access to the news feeds, etc. Maximize accessibility and ease of function as best we can, and make it easier for readers to comment and contact us. After that, well. We have plans to make plans.

You’re my kind of man, Nic.

I’ll keep that between us.

Ladies and gentlemen, Nic Van Roon.

Photos by SBK.
Typewriters on Screen is a print only, anti-everything magazine, available in a basement near you. Go outside.
Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine: syphmag.net