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| The Integral Quartet: (l-r) Peter Cho, Maria Cherwick, Peter Ko and Daniel Fuchs. |
The month of April is proving to be one of those months
where I keep trying to finish projects without much success. It has to do with the various stages of
publishing and the different kind of venues I work with. For example, three years ago I wrote a
book chapter about curatorial strategies.
The editor accepted it with minor revisions collected the other authors'
submissions and went hunting for a publisher in a timely fashion. However, it is only recently gotten to the stage of authors' proofs. Books
are like movies: oodles of research, generating creative ideas, figuring how to
sell them, whom to sell them to, and the large cast of professionals that will
carrying out a staggering variety of tasks.
By contrast when I am a guest writer for an arts festival,
be it the Tuckamore Chamber Festival, The Festival of New Dance, The Sound
Symposium or one of our film festivals, I am expected to attend a performance
one night and be able to have copy on the festival's blog site the next day–the
earlier the better. Writing for a
newspaper has a similar rhythm.
One of the reasons why I'd like to clear my desk of older projects is
because festival season will soon be upon us in Newfoundland. Our short seasons of fair weather seem
to make this more acute.
I became aware of this earlier in April, when Christopher
Reid Flock was a guest artist here in St. John's. His plane managed to thread its way through the storms to
arrive here and he gave a stellar workshop complete with demonstrations, artist
talk and a very memorable Powerpoint presentation. Alexis Templeton Studio hosted the event and even served up
some tasty moose borscht for an authentic Newfoundland experience. Jason Holley worked on the logistics of
equipment and I am sure many others I wasn't aware of contributed to the
success of the weekend. But that's
when Mother Nature got cranky.
Reid was storm stayed for two days beyond his scheduled departure. He took it with good nature and we all
did our bit to entertain him but I am sure it threw his work schedule back in
Ontario into a tizzy.
Back in March I submitted copy to a new magazine that had
approached me: Billie
magazine. I was very happy to
learn that the Atlantic region had a new, glossy publication dedicated to the
visual arts. Like my other
projects this one has been winding its way through copy edits, images, layout
and final production. This article
is about women tattoo artists and the tattoos women choose to wear. I'll share more about that soon.
And all this doesn't touch the show openings I've been to,
concerts or new artists I've gotten to meet. Last week, The Integral Quartet played its final
concert as a group as they will disband to pursue their education far apart
from each other. The concert was
held as a fundraising event for the Young Artist Program of the Tuckamore,
where they all originally met. It
was held downtown at The Fifth Ticket, where patrons could not only soak up the
satisfying music but chow down on a great burger and chocolate cake or raise a
toast with "The Tuckamore" the Festival's new signature cocktail
invented by the creative souls behind the bar and the watchful eyes of bar
manager, Andrew Daw.
To see the Integral in action use this link:
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