Life as a full time employee and student

If you get a chance, don’t miss Manufactured Landscapes, a film showing Edward Burtinsky’s photography.

This morning we were driving to my class, and had a bizarre run in with a maniacal pedestrian. We were two blocks from home, and were slowly approaching the cross-walk at Broadway. About halfway between the last ally and the crosswalk, a man, who had been walking along parallel to the sidewalk, randomly veered in the direction of our car, hesitated, then stuck out his umbrella and scraped it along the entire side of our car! It left three deep scratches. It was so strange – we didn’t almost run over him or anything. He wasn’t even obviously planning to J-walk, it just looked like he was going to cross right after we passed. It was just this random aggression. Maybe ICBC will repaint our whole car if we make a claim. Just trying to look at the bright side.

The bright side was East is East for lunch, and seeing Iain Baxter&‘s exhibit as well as Dan Burkholder‘s. I enjoyed seeing Baxter& because of my art class – the whole idea of the photoconceptualist beginnings, Canadian landscape in the context of the roadtrip. Purposefully snapshot-like images. Burkholder’s work was more recent and the opposite look – the look of being crafted carefully. The images showed the aftermath of the flooding in New Orleans, and each image looks surreal. I thought, imagine seeing your former community looking like this! It would be very much like sleepwalking or having a disturbing dream. And I think Burkholder captured that more than an ordinary photo would do. I also revisited the VAG yesterday – I love this steal of a student membership. I was particularly taken by two Gordon Smith paintings – older ones – in the Paint exhibit.

This week is going to be full of painting for me. I’m missing the last class in my Painting – Using Colour course, as well as my last Ethics and Legal Issues in Writing class, so I have to do double homework for each course this week. People keep asking me how I’m able to do all this while working full time. The answer is I get no exercise and am not as limber as the average person in their 20s.