So last night I attended a party at the Vancouver Art Gallery. A couple times a year they have this thing called FUSE where they party from 6pm - 6am. It's free for Members (Which thanks to a b-day gift, I am one) or $15 for anyone else. I ended up going on my own since it was pricey for others, but I had a good time.
I started the evening by attending the 2-D animation graduation for the school. It was interesting to see the student work. Some of it I liked...mostly because it seemed to have an underlying story. It all seemed a little rough, but I know it's really, really hard to do a short animation film in a short amount of time when you have to draw each second (probably 24 sheets per second of film) yourself.
Anyway, after the graduation, I walked the several blocks over to the art gallery to find that it was also Aboriginal Day...or something. They'd built teepees on the lawn around the gallery and a band was playing, and there were lots of booths (all starting to close up shop) selling native artwork on everything from t-shirts to jewelry. I haven't quite figured out what the differences in the "native" people are here...is it like Native Americans? Well, because it's still North America, sometimes they are called that...but more often they are First Nationers...and then there are the aboriginals, and then some other tribes with names I have a hard time remembering.
So I listened to some music there before proceeding to the Art Gallery's shindig. It was just before 9pm then (and still light, I might add...these days, the sun isn't fully gone until like 10 or 10:30...it's nuts!), and after getting my schedule, I saw that they had Theater Sportz starting shortly outside. For any of you familiar with Improv Comedy, that's what this was. They were pretty funny...and tried to keep everything art themed. After that, I went inside to get a really good look around. There were a few exhibit tours, musicians playing in various rotundas, a lounge with dance music and dark lighting where they sold alcohol (being poor, I passed on this...had it been more of a dance floor than a lounge, I would have hung out a bit more in that room). They also had tap dancers in one of the side rooms...they did a 15 min set every hour, and I could have watched those girls tap dance all night. It was just this cool mellow music with a small band (mostly I loved the big bass!), and you sat on the floor and observed. Too bad they were only 15-20 min. sets.
I didn't take any of the art tours because it was really quite crowded and noisy...with all the music going on, I didn't think I could hear the tour guides very well. I'd seen most of the exhibits before, but toured them again now with all the ambient music. I got to see the impressionists, cubists, and surrealists in the "Monet to Dali" exhibit...gosh I just love Monet's work. Tons of artists covered in that period, and they had a couple paintings from all of them. Nothing too major, but it's a very nice collection. They also had performance artists in this thing called "trapped art". Giant mouse-trap looking devices which were just huge cardboard boxes, soon became populated across the museum..and if you went to talk to the artists, often the box would fall and trap the unsuspecting guest inside! They let them out shortly after...but to get an idea, you could have been trapped with a man painted in white who was playing chess. Performance art is strange sometimes. =)
Oh, and on a very random side note...people were dressed in all kinds of ways...some very formal, some as crazy artists. But I did notice a LOT of 80's style outfits. I have heard that there's sort of a re-visiting of 80's fashion trends, but I hadn't seen too much of it before now. Sometimes I wonder if Canada just got stuck there? ;) hee hee..ok, I only say this because Vivian got me into watching "How I Met Your Mother" on CBS, and one of the friends is Canadian...apparently a former teen singer who said that though her "career" of singing in malls was the early 90's it looked like the 80's because that's when it hit Canada. After last night, I might agree, and it stuck! I saw one guy even wearing a t-shirt made to look like Michael Jackson's red, leather zipper jacket. A t-shirt? flat screen print? really?? There were quite a few Madonna & Cyndi Lauper looks going on with layered skirts over tights...and of course, the boots over top of the jeans or whatever. But that happens every day in Canada, and I still find it bizarre. I don't care how fancy your boots are, they go under the jeans. If you want to show them off, you wear a skirt...and NO leggings! Of course I'm not a fashion person...I'm just a boot person
The last thing I went to before I called it a night was a percussion band playing some of John Cage's music. He's an avante garde composer who's stuff can be pretty strange, but this was sort of normal. Just lots of percussion from regular drums to Xylophones to tin cans! The musicians were amazing in playing it! I didn't stay through all of it because it was 12:30am and i was getting tired. I knew I'd never make it to 6am. But that's ok...I think I got to see the coolest stuff. Now that I know what it is, I'll try to drag some friends next time and then we'll see how late i can stay up!
While far more arty, this thing reminded me of when book 6 of Harry Potter came out and my friends and I stayed up at Barnes & Noble until the sold the book at Midnight. yes, two very different events, but awfully clever, and I wish more art galleries, books stores, and probably libraries did cool things like this!
Hooray for Art!
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