Whether you knew it or not, I’m a member artist at La Petite Mort Gallery in the Byward Market.  It’s a pretty chill space with lots of great art (and some of mine too).  I highly recommend visiting and checking out the multitudes of great (mostly local and totally affordable) art they’ve got for sale.  The gentleman that runs it, Guy, is a great guy and definitely deserves a hefty pat on the back for giving Ottawa such a great venue for all kinds of artists.

The reason for the email… because I’m lucky enough to be a member artist, I get a one night show to display some of my new paintings.  It’s basically a party at the gallery and you’re all invited.  I’m going to be making the trek back to Ottawa to be there and I’m hoping you all can make it too.  They’ll be music and drinks… and more art than you can shake a stick at!

Here’s the info…

http://www.lapetitemortgallery.com/events/StevePalmer2010.html

Friday, March 12th, 2010
7pm to 10pm
La Petite Mort Gallery
306 Cumberland Stree

After almost 2 whole years I figured it was time Quoperative got a facelift.  Technically I figured it was about time for a facelift a year ago and I spent what seemed like months (most likely because it was months) trying to get the blog posts on the home page to lay out like perfectly-formatted newspaper columns.  After fucking around and trying to get it to work about a hundred different ways I gave up and set my sights a bit lower.  The way I see it, why shoot for the stars when you don’t have to?  That’s become my new mantra.

So just so you know… the homepage (cleverly labeled ‘fresh’ in the menu) now includes my blog posts, flickr photos, artwork and tweets — all intertwined chronologically into a continuous river of Steve… wow!

I also updated my work and posted a couple of paintings I did in the summer (photographed horribly by yours truly).

I’m imagining the 67 year old semi-retired guy at Home Depot encountering this… “Son of a gun! The manager’s going to kill me when he sees this!”

SxSW 2009 is over. I’m back to the usual grind of NOT seeing fifty bands and drinking twelve beers a day. Or was it twelve bands and fifty beers? I wish I could remember. Fortunately I was documenting the experience by updating Facebook about every 5 minutes with a blow-by-blow account of the every mundane detail of my time in Texas.  I’m sure those of you that un-friended me for melting down your friend feed know what I’m talking about.

So here’s a quick recap in nature’s most lazy format… list form!

Bands that I had never heard of but discovered were awesome

• The Fresh & Onlys San Francisco, CA
• Blackholicus Austin, TX (listen to this band… and then think that the girl fronting the band is like 4’6″ tall and just SLAYS on bass)
• Capsula Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Thee oh Sees San Francisco, CA

Bands that I either knew or suspected were awesome and verified them as such

• Steel Panther Hollywood, CA (incidentally the best show by far… PS. here’s a video of Justin from the Darkness joining them on stage… PPS. Satchel is one of the most talented guitarists I’ve ever seen)
• Brimstone Howl Omaha, NB
• King Kahn & the Shrines Germany via Montreal
• Telepathic Butterflies Winnipeg, MB

I totally screwed the pooch and missed seeing these bands (despite 2 of them playing 4+ times during the weekend… how did I manage to do that?)

• Glasvegas Glasgow, Scotland
• Black Lips Atlanta, GA
• Priestess Montreal, QC

Some photos that I didn’t take… but I was there!

The Fresh & Onlys at Beer Land

Capsula at Agave

King Kahn & the Shrines at El Sol y La Luna

Priestess at El Sol y La Luna

Yes, you can now buy three of my pieces at the wonderful La Petite Mort Gallery in my hometown of Ottawa, Ontario.  I’m officially a member of the LPM team (not on the site… yet) so you can expect to see a steady stream of new work appearing at the gallery over the next year.  Well, as steadily as inspiration strikes.  It’s an unpredictable beast.

Here’s a shot of the pieces getting packed up.  If you’re in Ottawa please go check out La Petite Mort and while pointing at one of my pieces make a remark to the owner along the lines of “This is possibly the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.” The optional next step would be to lay down a giant wad of cash and tell him you simply MUST have it.

Thanks in advance.

A pretty massive collection of colour photos from Nazi Germany. You’ll notice a lot of them have a LIFE watermark in the bottom corner.  I just discovered that Google has made available a veritable fucktonne of photos from the archives of Time and LIFE magazines.

To search the archives, just do a Google image search and add “source:life” to your query. (e.g. woodstock source:life)

The resolution of the images is actually pretty decent and every single image has a caption, photographer credit, location, date and is fully tagged. Really impressive stuff. You can even buy framed prints right on the image’s page.

If anybody’s listening, I’ll take one of these please.

Aces.

This poster was never officially issued and was really only discovered 50 years later when a copy turned up in a used book store. The uber simple layout with King George’s crown and the slogan: “Keep Calm and Carry On” are a beautiful example of classic graphic design… to communicate a kind of eerily uplifting message.

When I learned about the poster and the history I thought to myself, “I really need to track one down.”

“Brilliant idea, Steve.”

“Thanks man, let’s get on the interweb and find one.”

Fortunately a gentleman in Britian is selling silk-screened reproductions at 10 GBP each.  Aces.

It’s nice to see Governer Palin doing her own part to reduce her campaign to a joke.  Way to pitch in!

Banksy’s latest work is an installation/exhibit set up as a fake pet shop in NYC called the The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill.  It’s open every day until midnight until Halloween and features fish sticks in a fish bowl, animatronic hot dogs fornicating, chicken nuggets sipping on BBQ sauce and a rabbit wearing a pearl necklace in front of a miniature armoire. (Thanks Stephen for the heads up on this one)

Staying on the Bansky tip… during our visit to London last week I accidentally came upon the post office parking lot just off Oxford Street where this piece I blogged about is still sitting on the wall in all it’s 3-storey glory.

Kind of curious as to why it’s still there.  I guess with the prices his other works are fetching it’d be pretty stupid to paint over one.