Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Well, well, it has been a while hasn’t it. I figure I ought to post so people know I still exist and haven’t kicked the bucket or just given up on blogging. But I do admit it sits low on my priority list and I’ve been spending every day feeling like I spent the last hour being hit by a bus and driven over… and over… and over… But the “good” news is that this is in part because we’ve tried to be as active as possible and so there’s been a decent amount of out and about. This weekend on Caitlin’s suggestion we went down to OCAD to see their end-of-year student art show, taking a few hours to go through all the student galleries in design and advertising, painting and drawing, film, sculpture, and so on. As you may recall, a lifetime ago I was a fine art student at York, and it is funny to see how all student art looks the same, and you can make a pretty good guess at the personality of the artist and more amusingly, what classes they’ve taken recently by the way they express what they’ve learned through their art. I saw the same things when I was at school from the students around me. Lots of talent, but largely predictable. I was happy to see that Nefarious enjoyed it and is old enough now to appreciate art shows and perhaps even be inspired by them.

It was actually the first time that I’ve been up in the big rectangle addition that made waves. It looks great. On the walk there, when you look down McCaul, you see the waving front of the art gallery and its big outdoor Henry Moore that Nefarious climbed on as you can see, OCAD, and then the CN tower straight ahead. I’m looking forward to going to the CN tower and taking a walk around their new open air walkway that doesn’t even have a railing — you get strapped into a harness! Looks wild.

Anyway, back to the student art show. I won’t bore you with a gallery, but one little project that I got a chuckle out of was this forest of cast thumbs being harvested by miniature lumberjacks. Very cute and funny. I hope they are not offended if I run with their idea and create my own pieces in the same vein.

Unfortunately we were not able to find much of the moldmaking or foundry or jewelry work that I was looking forward to looking for as potential inspirations. I will try and post some of my recent work and amusements later, but I made some molds of a couple miniature toys of Nefarious’s — these are only about a half inch tall — with the intent of using them for earrings or broaches. These are just in plain resin straight out of the mold, and I stuck a couple Swarovski crystals over the eyes to see if it would work. I’ll try casting them in pewter next.

As to the title of the entry, that’s from a bread place we walked past on our way home, before stopping at the new boutique ice cream parlor that just opened down the street. I am not exactly sure what it said. Perhaps my assumption is wrong. Boring and clean minds may respond that it is the butter pail. Anyway. Sorry for now posting more. I know this post feels shallow and like uninspired literature but I feel like I have very little left to give and am sad to see how short I’m falling from the past and from where I would rather be.

Oh yeah and I have been taking Nefarious for walks at the park, and there’s lot of new life from spring and all the nice rain we’ve had, so in a swamp exploration journey we got the rare sight of our provincial flower, some perfectly white trilliums. Today in the pond at High Park we brought along a friend’s young son and they had the special surprise of seeing hundreds of small fish in the pond. I’m thinking they must have just stocked it because this is quite a rare sight.