2012 an Inviting Year!

( * many of the hyperlinks lead to blogposts and photo albums of the events ( : enjoy!)

2012 began with my being invited by Director Betsy Warland, along with a handful of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University alumni from different years, to speak to the 2012 students on their orientation day. About our experience with TWS, writing careers goals and plans for the future. That was fun!

In March and June I completed my elective paper for th TWS course, by attending Betsy Warland’s SFU classes The Reluctant Memoirist and Memoir of Inquiry. Both I found very liberating, and developed a better understanding of creative-nonfiction. If you don’t know things because you weren’t there, writing from another characters point of view, were too young, or weren’t born etc, use your imagination! This led me on some wild and interesting tangents!

June also saw the launch of chapbooks by members of The Independents (The Poetry and Lyric Prose TWS alumni 2011) at a wonderful reading we had at (the alas now closed) Cafe Montmartre, with Jen Currin being a great MC! A manuscript for my poetry chapbook Transit of Venus – about love, public transit, and life transitions, was short-listed for the Doire Press prize. A good time was had by all, lots of photos here.

I participated in 6 anthology book launches and/or readings throughout the year. Including in January an Exhibition of Caregivers Creativity. Leaf Press The Wild Weathers chocolatey love poem anthology launch in February at Historic Joy Kogawa House. March the lively Enpipe Line book launch of opposition to the Endbridge oil pipeline proposal. August I was invited by Poetry is Dead to represent them at a reading for MagScence on Main on a hot summer evening. The the standing room only Queer Issue of Poetry is Dead Magazine in November with a lively interactive launch. I was invited by curator Aileen Penner to participate in The Science of Poetry Vol. 1. An amazing collaboration between 5 poets and 5 scientists, resulting in 10 new poems and beautiful limited edition chapbook. A barely standing room only reading at which my working partner and I, Adrienne Drobnies read our work to the accompaniment of an audio mashup I designed, photos from my Views from Cancer Town series, and an installation of illuminated body casts used to immobilize people during radiation ‘treatment’.

 On the audio-visual front I was invited to present my water photography based new media installations aqwai, tiarika and going coastal in the July mixed media Homecoming Exhibition at Gibsons Public Art Gallery. In August I completed the video poems Jest or Malice and Freedom, which have been languishing on my hard drive for a number of years, without music and titles, and posted them online!

September I was invited to fly to Canmore, Alberta  as one of two professional artists representing the province of BC, at the BeyondAccess2012 gathering of 14 artists from across Canada who work inside and outside disability and arts and culture. Had a great time amongst my peers, worked really hard, met great artists across disciplines. We resolved to form DACAC – Disability Arts and Culture Canada. In preparation for this event and next 2013’s Retrospective Exhibition in NZ ( see below) I created a 90 slide power point presentation tracing my development across artistic disciplines in the past 20 + years. Using the themes of my arts practice: - collaboration, cross-cultural, mentorship, and interdisciplinary. It is interesting to observe your own work in that way and see how things and people come back around in different forms years later. 

The year was completed by my graduating from SFU, along with about 10 of my fellow 2011 graduates, our certificates presented by new TWS Director Wayde Compton. I especially enjoyed the speech by writer and publisher Mary Schendlinger whose very informative SFU course Getting Published: From Manuscript to Book I recently completed. She talked about the need for both amateurs and professionals in writing, the 10, 000 hours it takes to become a good writer, the importance to language to children’s development, and some very humorous asides!

2013 is already shaping up to be a good year! I applied to and was accepted into Betsy Warlands VMI program - Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. I will be working with her in the Creative Nonfiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Mixed-genre group, (with fellow TWS Poetry and Lyric Prose alumni Yaana Dancer). Yay! On a manuscript of 33 plus auto-biographical stories in a girl called brian, (because my life is far stranger than anything I could make up!) Below an excerpt from a flash fiction opening premise. I am very much looking forward to shaping this manuscript with Betsy, especially given her current Oscar of Between project.

  “Black and White: A photo you will find when you are twenty-five years old. Two older women with babies on their knees’, everyone is laughing. It will defi(n)e everything you have been told. This is what you need to know: you will grow into something beautiful. Something in-between. When you are six your older sister will call this something, Brian. Even though your birth certificate says you are a girl.....”

I have been commissioned to complete a number of Video Poems for Stage Left’s 2013 performance festivals. I will likely work on 2-3 of my Views from Cancer Town video poems.

 The ultimate event for me in 2013, which I have been working on all this year in terms of logistics, funding, press, with curators Elizabeth Kerekere and Treason Seditio is Re-Tern: Hokinga Mahara – A Meg Torwl Retrospective. In association with the New Zealand Fringe Festival 2013 Wellington, and LAGANZ present an interdisciplinary exhibition of my video, new media, performance, photography, audio, writing. Thistle Hall Gallery March 5-10. It’s going to be a great experience, I hope to attend! I also received support with this project from the NZ Mix and Mash competition. Through which I applied for and received a Mentor for 2012, Elizabeth Vaneveld, ED of  The Big Idea, Aotearoa/NZ’s online arts community 

Let me know how your 2012 went and your plans for 2013?

Dec 14, 2013 Poetry and Science Reading Vol 1.

    

Meg Torwl photo. Views from Cancer Town series.

What happens when you have 5 scientists, and 5 poets, and ask them to write poems together? Creative chaos! Come and see! I have been having so much fun working on this project with my writing partner genome scientist and accomplished poet Adrienne Drobnies! We may collaborate in the future, so many possibilities! The project was facilitated by Aileen Penner, scientists, poet, environmental communications specialist. There will be a limited edition handmade chapbooks available at the event with a poem by each of the 10 scientists and poets, as well a a collaboratively written poem. We each wrote poems in response to discussion we had, and we will read them together verse for verse, they comment on each other in an interesting way. Adrienne Drobnies will read her new poem day in the lab, night in the cemetery, and I will be reading a new poem enviro-mental, part of a suite of poems I am working on in my Views from Cancer Town series. (see a sample poem below) We plan an audio mashup, a installation with body casts, and photos from my Views from Cancer Town series - photos taken from West 10th, and West Broadway. (see sample photo above) My poem enviro-mental explores health and the environment, references, Rachel Carson, and the movies Karate Kid, and Eat, Pray, Love! There is humor involved! Come check it out! It's gonna be one rockin evening!   Facebook Invite:

It was a GREEEAAAT evening! Checkout photos of the event on Facebook: Integrial Media

     Gallery 1965 Main St, Vancouver, BC. Wheelchair Accessible

    6:30pm doors open.

    7:30 pm – Welcome by Vancouver Poet Laureate Evelyn Lau

    7:35 pm – Introduction By Aileen Penner – Curator

    7:40 pm – Readings by first two poet-scientist pairings

stem cell researcher + poet & novelist
              Ben Paylor + Leanne Dunic

landscape architect + Métis/Icelandic poet
    Kelty McKinnon + Jonina Kirton

    * 10 min break *

    8:10 pm- Readings by last three poet-scientist pairings

          chemist-poet + poet & artist
Adrienne Drobnies + Meg Torwl

biochemist researcher + poet & personal coach
       (Pamela  Lincez) + Olive Dempsey

microbiologist + poet & anthropologist
Lynne Quarmby + Carol Shillibeer

  8:40 – Reception with DJ and Cash Bar

POEM: VIEWS FROM CANCER TOWN: 1

you think you know

the view from cancer town

fluorescent lit rooms

surgical scars

bald chemo heads

bodies

lie on a slab

people

live in cancer town

there are cigarette butts

and hand-knitted blankets

autumn leaves

sunshine

snow

the view from cancer town

 - the best in the city

north shore mountains

with their snow and wind turbine

burrard inlet

anchored oil tankers

compassed

by the tide. 

Meg Torwl.

2011 A Great CREATIVE Year!

Meg Torwl reading July 2011 at the SFU Writing and Publishing Graduation with Trish Webb, Karen Lee

2011 was a good year for me creatively! I got to work or exhibit in several disciplines - writing, performance, audio, video, new media and curate.

I wrote an audio Podplay in a workshop with Jan Derbyshire with Neworld Theatre. About dealing with cancer while going to university. How depression holds hands with illness behind your back and tries to convince you every day is the same. Meanwhile your creativity tries to see the sun and remember everyday is new and full of possibility - even as Fukushima burns.

Two of my films screened. Act Your Age!? with the Generations Project Local Docs Series. Where have all the lesbians gone? with an Out On Screen Retrospective Vancouver Visionaries screening.

I curated and exhibited a new media exhibition in Sechelt for  a month - PORTAL/PORTAGE. A wonderful collaboration with meditations on nature with three other women artists whose work I admire very much, Claudia Medina-Culos, Lilianna Kleiner and Diane Tanchak. With the Sunshine Coast Arts Council.

I completed The Writers Studio 2011 at Simon Fraser University, with the wonderful Poetry and Lyric Prose mentor Jen Currin. Such a great group of fellow students too! My work grew and expanded so much in the fecund environment! I submitted 60+ pages for work-shopping and polished  and shaped my final manuscript of 25 pages for deadline, with the help of Betsy Warland’s excellent Minding Your Manuscript class. My final poetry manuscript is a narrative arc through an intimate relationship, illness, to life transitions of all types. There are three inter-related sections 1. The Synesthete and the Kinesthete (intimate relationships, aging, illness). 2. The Autistic Rheumatologist (disability, illness) 3. Transit of Venus (things thought while traveling – family, disability, spirituality, bliss, happiness, mortality).

I took a fabulous elective paper at SFU - The Poems Story and Silence – with Betsy Warland, the out-going Program Director of the Writers Studio. I wanted to write about a magical childhood encounter with a flock of moths, and ended up writing a new suite of 13 poems on the joys and tensions of the great NZ extended family summer holiday! The diversity and talent of the other women in the class was inspiring when we all gave a 10 minute presentation at the last class, each of us with visual elements to our work. It is always wondrous as a mentor what Betsy is able to draw out of us.

I read my poetry at 5 public reading events, and had 9 poems accepted for publication. With Emerge, The Writers Caravan, Enpipe and The Wild Weathers.

I am looking forward to what 2012 brings, so far in the works seeking a publisher for a poetry book, a collaborative performance commission from Calgary, a Mentorship from NZ, and possibly a retrospective exhibition.

Namaste and gratitude.

PORTAL/PORTAGE OPENING AUGUST 3 2011

 The Installation and Opening of the new media exhibition PORTAL/PORTAGE went off without a hitch! Exhausting but work it! Thanks to a lot of help from A, S and P. I have to admit, given in the past year I have fractured my spine, arm, shoulder, ribs, pelvis and had to take preventive measures to avoid fractures to my neck, thigh and hip, I was kind of worried I was going to fracture something installing the show! But I got away with only a  carpet burn on my foot while duct taping down all those wires.

There was a good turn out to the Opening with friends and strangers coming from near and far. What with the great equipment provided by photographer Paul Clancy, a warm welcome from Sunshine Coast Arts Council Chairman musician Steve Wright, and artist Anna Banana serving wine, and the many volunteers helping out what could make for a better evening? People really interacted with the exhibition!

Highlights of the trip to the coast were rattling down the steep road to Roberts Creek in the electric wheelchair in the dark at 10pm having been dropped off by the bus, after the opening with my friends in a car in front of me guiding me slowly down the hill. Having gelato with S at Davis bay on a hot coast evening. Swimming with D, H, T, and A at Roberts creek beach. Meeting a woman on the bus who was visiting the coast and raving about a great art exhibition she had been to, turned out it was mine! Choice!

Check out the photos of the Opening and the Installation on Integrial Media Facebook.

You can check out the exhibition in Sechelt until August 28 2011. 

Below is a video (thanks Carol!) of me reading my poem called 'bear', a dedication to the earth, at the Opening.

August 3 to 28 PORTAL/PORTAGE in Sechelt

PORTAL/PORTAGE meditative nature installations in Sechelt, Sunshine Coast BC, new work by Meg Torwl, Claudia Medina-Culos, Liliana Kleiner, Diane Tanchak

August 3 - 28, 2011, with the Sunshine Coast Arts Council,

Doris Crowston Gallery, 5714 Medusa St, Sechelt, BC, Canada.

Reception August 3 2011, 7pm to 9pm.

Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 11:00 am - 4:00 pm

Sunday 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Wheelchair accessible.

PORTAL/PORTAGE is a collaboration between four artists who are each currently exploring in our work, humans as part of nature. PORTAL/PORTAGE combines Meg Torwl’s work in photo based video installations; Claudia Medina-Culos video installations and sound-scapes; Liliana Kleiner video work drawing on her photography, painting, and mixed media work; and Diane Tanchak abstract-realist style paintings. Each artist explores the nuance of location and the universality of story, cycles of growth and decay while negotiating our bi-national, or tri-national cultural identities and/or art practices, in places we each understand as home. These are the stories we collect, create, and carry from LAN (Local Area Network – an internet term) to LAND, to LANGUAGE; or images as a language bypassing spoken language all together. The exhibition is designed to be experienced as a rest, an emptying of the mind, a walk in the woods, a swim in the ocean.

Each artist has based part of their work on the Sunshine Coast or Gulf Islands of BC. Meg Torwl’s works Going Coastal (7mins, 2010), TIARIKA (11 mins, 2008), and AQWAI (14 mins, 2006) cover Roberts Creek to Rarotonga. Alongside work by Liliana Kleiner, her LUMINOZA INANNA (5 mins, 2010) draws from Galiano Island to the Gulf of Mexico. Claudia Medina-Culos’ Powell River based work, On the Trail (33 mins, 2010) and Heron Study (3 mins, 2010) was completed as part of a Masters in Media from Barcelona. Diane Tanchak's paintings A Dream of Trees (3mins, 2011) range from the Okeover Inlet to New York.

Audiences can negotiate the exhibition by way of 4 TV/DVD stations, each screening a different artists work, and listen to the soundtrack music or audio through headphones. Alternately the complete 90 minutes of work is projected into the gallery with audio coming through gallery speakers.

For more information about PORTAL/PORTAGE, artist bios, photos and videos.

Great article about PORTAL/PORTAGE in the Sunshine Coast Reporter by arts reporter Jan DeGrass. 

PS: Read about the Opening or check out photos of the exhibition opening.

For Technical Support thanks to VIVO Media Arts Centre, Paul Clancy, EnMedia Productions. 

PrideNZ - Photography Profile

Pride NZ is featuring a profile of me in their Visual Arts section, with a portfolio of my photography! Yay!

photo of yellow frangipani flower by Meg Torwl

It is a great website with many audio programs on just about every topic you can imagine - Arts and Culture, Community Profiles, Education, Health and Wellbeing, History, Identity, Media, Organisations, Relationships, Sport and Recreation, and Youth. PrideNZ aims to present positive stories and images by and about LGBTQI community. There is lots of current stuff online, as well as history and herstory, they provide transcripts of their audio files. A recent feature is Rainbow Touchstones, 6 people from LGBTQI community talk about their mental health journey's in 5 minute videos. Gareth Watkins, Hannah Ho and Roger Smith do a great job supporting and hosting the website, creating content.

PORTAL / PORTAGE media exhibition

PORTAL/PORTAGE a collaboration I am curating between four artists who are known to one another, and who are each currently exploring in our work, humans as part of nature. PORTAL/PORTAGE combines my own work in photo based video installations; Claudia Medina-Culos video installations and sound-scapes; Liliana Kleiner video work drawing on her photography, painting, and mixed media work; and Diane Tanchak abstract-realist style paintings. Each artist explores the nuance of location and the universality of story, while negotiating our bi-national, or tri-national cultural identities and/or art practices, in places we each understand as home. These are the stories we collect, create, and carry from LAN (Local Area Network – an internet term) to LAND, to LANGUAGE; or images as a language bypassing spoken language all together.

I are currently submitting the work to places we call home West Coast – Canada, New York - USA, Jerusalem -Israel/Palestine, Mexico, Aotearoa/New Zealand. This will also mean some or all of the artists will be available in each location for installation and to be present for the exhibition. This provides the option of adding components in each location, to make it a unique local experience, for example inviting local artists we know to exhibit also. In the essence of creating an eco-friendly exhibition, a primarily digital based work makes for ease of shipping and installation around the globe.

UPDATE: Our first confirmed show is for August 3 - 28, 2011, with the Sunshine Coast Arts Council, Doris Crowston Gallery, 5714 Medusa St, Sechelt, BC, Canada. Reception August 3 2011, 7pm to 9pm. Wheelchair accessible.

ART WORKS

Claudia Medina-Culos

On the Trail: Nature Inside and Out and Heron Study

A multimedia exploration of how humans connect or disconnect with the natural world through the imagery we see and create. With the participation of the local community of Powell River, BC, Canada this installation aims to create a focused space for reflection on how our senses interact with the natural world.

Liliana Kleiner

LUMINOZA INANNA is the first in a series of 8 videos, a collaboration of IMAGE and MUSIC, based on the ancient Sumerian myth of the Goddess Inanna. Luminosa Inanna is the first in the series: "The 8 Doors of Inanna" an ongoing public art piece collaboration between Liliana and Gabriela, at La Duna Ecology Center, Southern Baja California peninsula, La Paz, Mexico

Diane Tanchak

A Dream of Trees is a series of paintings in a hybrid abstract-realist style. Contrasting the darkness – night and winter in urban New York, and the light of Pacific West coast – arbutus, cedar trees, - cycle of life and rebirth each promise. 

Meg Torwl

TIARIKA; AQWAI; GOING COASTAL

Matching ambient music - featuring the sounds of water, chimes; with mind relaxing visuals – colors, water, fish, flowers; Meg Torwl's computer installations traverse the south pacific and Pacific North west shorelines and waterways.

 

ARTISTS

CLAUDIA MEDINA-CULOS

Claudia Medina-Culos, of Mexican, and Italian ancestry, grew up in the small mill town of Powell River BC, Canada. Eleven years ago Claudia Medina began her career as a filmmaker working with acclaimed Canadian director Nettie Wild on her feature documentary "A Place Called Chiapas" Since then she has worked alongside a number of respected Canadian filmmakers as an editor, production coordinator, field producer and shooter. Most recently she worked alongside director Velcrow Ripper as he was shooting his latest award winning feature documentary, "Fierce Light", filmed in several countries, including Aotearoa/New Zealand. Claudia has been the recipient of numerous awards from the Canada Council of the Arts for her short dramatic films she has written, produced and directed – such as, Entre el Medio, Si Muero Lejos de Ti, and Finding Lloronna. For the past two years she has also been collaborating with artists of different disciplines to create visual projections for performances, and live vj-ing for electronic musicians throughout Canada and in Barcelona. She also develops and implements curriculum for workshops that combine community development and conflict resolution through filmmaking to diverse groups nationally and internationally. Claudia is currently living in Barcelona, where she is completing a masters in Visual Culture as well as developing a feature documentary project about alternative economics called Growing Growing Gone. She has completed the production of her latest fiction film, "Animal Blessings" in the Friuli region of Italy and a video installation series On the Trail: Nature Inside and Out.

http://www.enmedia.ca/

LILIANA KLEINER

Liliana Kleiner, of Jewish ancestry, was born and raised in Buenos Aires Argentina, completed her schooling in Israel - a B.A in Fine Art and PhD in psychology, specializing in Dream Analysis. She has been based in Canada - Montreal and the Pacific coast, for the past 30 years, on Galiano Island for the past 10 years. In Argentina she learnt the art of painting in oils in the tradition of the old European masters. She works with painting, drawing, printmaking, hand made paper from organic materials, collage, artist's books, public art, film, performance art, and dance. Works include independent short art films - "Lilith and the Tree " 1993, (16mm, - shown in festivals around the world) and "Las 8 puertas de Inanna " ( "the 8 Doors of Inanna") or Luminosa Inanna, a collaboration with musicians in La Paz, mexico. Based on the Sumerian myth of Inanna. Recent works and exhibitions include The song of Lilith, and Song of Songs. Her work seamlessly combines, photography, painting, mixed media, and video. Since 1995 she has channeled all her creativity into visual arts coming back full circle to her first love - the art of oil painting, with a focus on west coast nature – arbutus trees, rocks, seals, birds, and traditional Mexican mythology. Liliana's paintings have been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout Canada and are in private collections in Canada, Israel, Argentina and the United States.

http://www.lilianakleiner.com/begin.html

DIANE TANCHAK

Diane Tanchak of Ukranian ancestry, grew up in Buffalo, NY. Her interest in drawing and painting began in early childhood. She moved to New York City to study with artist Nell Blaine, receiving a scholarship to Southern Illinois University where she completed an MFA in drawing. She has worked as a muralist, graphic artist, illustrator, and pursued her own vision in drawing and painting urban and rural landscapes in a hybrid abstract-realist style. She has had many exhibitions in New York in group and solos shows. She is currently drawn in her work to the darkness – night and winter in urban New York, and the light of Pacific West coast – arbutus, cedar trees, - cycle of life and rebirth each promise.

http://www.dianetanchak.com/home.html

MEG TORWL

Meg Torwl, of Celtic ancestry, grew up rurally in Aoteroa/New Zealand, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the south pacific and has been residing in the Pacific Northwest for the past decade - creating work in and from both locales. Meg Torwl is an interdisciplinary artist, working in New Media, Video, Radio,Writing/Performance, and Arts Administration. Her work has been screened, broadcast, exhibited,published, and performed in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada, USA, UK. She has produced 4 new media projects; and 4 documentaries, which are distributed by Video Out. She has worked in radio, producing and presenting 50 half hour programs for Radio New Zealand National, including 16 with an arts focus. She was commissioned by Balancing Acts 09 to create and perform a solo interdisciplinary show with spoken word, poetry, new media, video, slides, and audio soundscape. Her writing and performance examine identity across communities; her documentaries consider intersecting political issues; her new media installations offer an opportunity to empty the mind. She received her training in media through VIVO media arts centre in 2000, and a BC Film associate producers internship 2002. She has also worked for the NFB and CBC. She has been a curator of visual and video art, in all her work she specializes in bringing diverse communities together.

http://integrialmedia.blogspot.com/p/meg-torwl-new-media.html

A Starfish in the Snow

Just back from performing my interdisciplinary show in Calgary at the Big Secret Theatre. Wow, the lovely people at Balancing Acts sure know how to take care of you and put on a great festival with a diversity of happenings! All went well a part from one touch and go moment when the city coping with day 3 of a howling horizontal snowstorm slid to a sleeting stand still! Getting to the theater for my first performance was a challenge!

The show must go on, and it did! Got some great feedback, people love my Identity Quotients Calculator - a tool for the multiply marginalized, it made them laugh a lot in recognition. Many found the show thought provoking. Others loved the hand-bound books with the poems and stories, wanting to know all about their origins. People were warmed by the purple star fish story and slides - and told me of their guardian animals, raven, horse, tiger. The performance inspired some to tell their own stories; others to write poetry or make films again; to embark on multimedia projects.

‘Your ability to weave so many different artistic mediums and issues connected to being ‘other’ is unprecedented. Thank you for your honesty, risk taking, and your original work. It’s a true pleasure to have you perform'.
- Nicole Dunbar. Balancing Acts Festival Producer 2009

Of a preview performance at VIVO:

'It was WONDERFUL to be there Meg. You are SUCH a performance artist, you were so natural up there, your courage is amazing! Loved the seamless flow of music, video, performance, colours. Beautiful weave of humour and pain, goofiness and insightfulness. Your writing is a gift, wise, evocative, truthful. Thank-you for all of it'.
- Mo Simpson

A big THANK YOU to the good people at Balancing Acts, Stage Left Productions, One Yellow Rabbit/Big Secret Theatre; Carousel Theatre, and VIVO Media Arts, for supporting me and my show. Thanks to T, N, and M for the beautiful handmade books. G for taking wonderful photos. Jan for being a great director.

Fibre-Glass: Art in Calgary

I was humbled when after my second performance, Eleanor Boyden, who won both the Peoples Choice, and the Jury award for her fibre art at a Balancing Acts Exhibition, gave me some fantastic pieces of her fabric jewelry. See image above.

I returned to Prince’s Island Park on my last day as I was completely enamored with the marble sculpture of flower, leaf, dragonfly, fish, particularly the way the sun shone through the different colored marbles, and that the marbles can be rotated in their sockets by rubbing your hand across them to reveal different facets of color. It was minus 29 degrees with the wind chill factor. It completely drained the 2 hour battery on my video camera in 8 minutes! But I managed to get a few stills in before it died, see above.

Sculpture by: Lori Sobkowich. “Four pixilated images created with approximately 15,000 glass marbles which are captured in perforated and riveted steel framing. These images of flora and fauna are elevated to eye level on four simple concrete forms which are situated at right angles to each other. The theme encompasses the ecological aspects a visitor to Prince’s Island might encounter—water, air and land. The images themselves are a contemporary version of the traditional stained glass panel, making the changing direction and quality of the natural light as much an element of the sculpture as the glass, metal and stone”. To quote the Calgary public art media package.

The snow and bare tree trunks seemed to have turned even the creatures to white and black. I met three cute white birds who flew all around my walking stick and bear-eared hat, considering alighting. Two black squirrels met high on a tree, communed for awhile nose to nose. Another perched in a cleft trying to open an acorn it had retrieved from it's winter stash, with no success, as the acorn was clearly frozen. I thought how much harder a squirrel's life may be than mine, but then again I don't have fur for frozen temperatures, so maybe we are much the same...?

I was excited to discover while I was there not one but two Judy Chicago Exhibitions were on in Calgary! She has been and still is at 70 such a leader for women in art. I was particularly inspired by some of her recent glass works (see image above from her website), as well as the sheer size of her tapestries, and that one project took several years and 150 women sewing to complete! Now that’s visionary! An accompanying exhibition of fibre art by local women artists was equally as intriguing - She Will Always Be Younger Than Us.

Also on while I was there an exhibition by Paul Wong, one of VIVO Media Arts founders, called 2 Hot 2 Handle at the Glenbow Museum. An interesting take on Alberta’s cowboy/cowgirl culture drawing on historical bronze statues and new video work. He has some innovative installations coming up in Vancouver in February/March 2010.

Balancing Acts Commission

Meg Torwl has been commissioned by Balancing Acts Annual Disability Arts Festival in Calgary, Alberta, December 2009, to do a solo spoken word show of poetry and storytelling. Entitled ‘That’s so gay!’ - about solidarity across lines of gender, sexuality, disability, race; and species - in the case of purple star fish! It's about being the only one, not being the only one, times when you wish someone would drop from the sky and help you in the fight against oppression, - sometimes they do! What do the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, brand new blue boots, influential Maori women, grrls in men’s 3 piece suits, and purple star fish have in common? All will be revealed in ‘That’s so gay! Writer and performer Meg Torwl will be directed in 'That's so gay!' by the fantabulous Director Jan Derbyshire

Creative Momentum Interview Online Sept 2009

Meg Torwl will be CREATIVE MOMENTUM'S FEATURED CREATIVE for the month of September 2009 with a 2 part audio interview about her artistic practice in media – film, radio, new media. Visuals accompanying the audio interview include stills from the making of the film “Towards the day…we are all free” - with refugee and Aboriginal women. Photos from her meditative underwater and color based computer installations – AQWAI, TIARIKA, SINGING BOWLS; and video footage from an experimental film in development, “9 Lives 6 months” – about disability, art, poverty, dreams, craziness and wonder, in the lives of 4 women.

NZ based "Creative Momentum is a virtual movement around creative diversity. Through this international website and local events we aim to create awareness of creativity and diversity through dialogue and exploration. We want to know what creative diversity means to diverse creatives. Comedian, consultant and entrepreneur Philip Patston describes diversity as the synergy of similarity and difference. Here at Creative Momentum, we think of creative diversity as the ultimate expression of human uniqueness."