Hi all. Thanks for putting up with my odes to tricoloured cookies. My time at Broken Pencil is up. I know this because all my pencils have suddenly fused themselves back together again. One has even jumped into my hand and is now beseeching me to leave my computer and make haste for an all-inclusive in my notebook. So this is g’bye. It’s been fun, and if you ever want to hear me wax weird about breakfast, I do so erratically at SarahL.com. Thanks also to BP for inviting me!… Read more.
April 16, 2009
It’s a ballsy statement but I’m going to go ahead and throw it out there: Blingee Art is the art for our time. It mixes animation, bad clip art, neon, and social commentary in the service of art that is as goofy as it is beautiful. While some read Best Week Ever for the latest Zac Efron effrontery, I visit said site on Blingee Fridays, where one can oggle MOMA-worthy GIFs of Blingee Beauty. Where else can you see Angela Landsbury glittered up as Paul McCartney? Where else can you see Angela Landsbury at all, for that matter? Oh yes, Broadway. Too far for me at present though, which is why, given my ballsy assertion of sentences yore, I’ll go out on yet another limb (I have four so it’s really not that much of a hardship) and say there really ought to be more Murder She Wrote in syndication. This show, about a nosy detectess in a small, idyllic Maine town, has one of the greatest theme songs of all time. I often find it stuck in my head for days on end and am forced to sing it while wor… Read more.
March 12, 2009
My husband thinks there should be a city subsidy for brightly coloured house paint. In the drab light of a stalled winter, I can sort of see why. Big discounts on the bright stuff for anyone who will take the time to paint a gray or brown house something fresh and cheerful. Sure, painted brick quickly turns to peeled, painted brick, but imagine what some fluorescent green siding could do for the urban condition. It’s no wonder one of my favourite procrastinatory activities is painting walls of my house bright colours. In a similar vein, I love this blowsy attempt to jump time. So pretty. So useful. Like this other piece that I’ve also purloined from The Wooster Collective. A little dainty goes a long way, especially where rubbish is concerned. I’m on a Wooster kick today, but my last Wooster link flows into a grand trend theory that I hope you’ll find really ties this post together. The trend is Guess Who, that delightfully useless game that I so enjoyed as a child. It’s having …Read more.
March 5, 2009
Shameless Painless Portrait Plug
As Indie artist here at the Illustrious BP I am abusing my privileges as much as I possibly can. I’m taking my perks and eating them too. I’m writing myself bonus checks and doling out free subscriptions. I’m using my title to crash red carpet shindigs and swill free wine. I’ve even talked my way into the press gallery at Queen’s Park. I ask for discounts at art stores and tell small children that I am famous. I asked the mayor for a key to the city. It should be here any day. In this spirit of gross malfeasance, I will now endorse my own event and invite your company at said function. The Montrose Portrait Gallery’s Cold Comfort show opens this Saturday at 4 p.m. Directions and info here. Off to steal some office supplies. Ta!… Read more.
March 4, 2009
Just when you think every surface has been trampled, every technique explored, every avenue pursued…Just when my florid phrases are about to gag you…something new comes along. Something you, in hindsight, could never have imagined. Indeed, thirty hinds you could never have imagined, at The Cameron House, as part of I Know That Butt. I’m bummed that I didn’t take part. I wasn’t assked. That’s cool. You can check it out until March 28th. Next topic. I wish I lived in Montreal so I could attend Kid Koala’s ‘Music to Draw to’ events. You bring your drawing materials, and Kid Koala and his wife, an aspiring baker, serve up music and cupcakes. I can think of nothing more fantastic. Okay, maybe world peace, a cure for cancer. Which would put ‘music to draw to’ at number three. Who wants to start a similar iniative here in Toronto with me? … Read more.
February 24, 2009
I like the idea of the free store, but it’d be neater if it could be narrowed down to niche freebies. How about a free store where we’d all bring our old magazines and comix instead of lampshades and mugs? The idea of the pop-up shop is mostly tiresome in its present get-it-now-or-lose-out luxury goods incarnation, but what about pop up indie craft shops, with vacant storefronts given over to such purposes whenever possible? Other things: I think I’m late to the party, but I love the site booooooom.com. Is it curious that I discovered it on the same day that I discovered Ffffound.com? Are there other gratuitously-lettttttered sites that I should be aware of? … Read more.
February 16, 2009
It’s family day here in Ontario, but if you’re a freelancer, it’s just another work day, one where you’re crushingly unproductive because you’re jealous of the salaried folk out feeling that 3-day weekend bliss. When I say you I mean me. I’ve railed against this balmy family day by getting very little done. A few days ago I gave in to the Dadaist pull of microblogging and nothing has been the same since. I log on every hour or two in search of pith. In doing so, I am never alone. Except on this family day, where everyone is out playing hopscotch, eating brunch and basking in that aforementioned ‘not working on a monday’ sun. Of course they’re still microblogging smugly from their mobile devices. If you, like me, are at your computer on this work day, why not look at these unfathomably beautiful and clever drawings by Rachel Goodyear. Or this recipe for how to make bacon bourbon. … Read more.
February 9, 2009
For a while I wanted to write a thesis on ‘stuff.’ Then I realized I had neither the zitsfleisch nor the deep conviction to put together a few hundred pages on the importance of the chock-full games closet in The Royal Tenenbaums. But my fascination with ‘stuff’ lingers, and I tend to eat up books on the subject. Nowhere is stuff catalogued more beautifully than in Leanne Shapton’s new book, Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. It’s a smart, visual catalogue of a relationship’s material leftovers, starring Sheila Heti and Paul Sahre as two doomed lovers who give each other a lot of elegant and thoughtful things. I’m not entirely sure why Lenore (the gal) must part with some of the objects bequeathed her by her grandmother, but perhaps everything one uses in a relationship is in some way tainted after its demise. Of course, the book’s meant to be more than just an artsy Nei… Read more.
February 4, 2009
I think we should bring the Art Shanty festival to Canada. We’ve got the cold, we’ve got the ice, we’ve got the will. Artists and researchers adapt the idea of the fishing hole hut to create galleries, theatres and even a post office on ice. Come to think of it, maybe that’s the next ice capades spectacle – Canada Post on ice. Mail carriers double lutzing their way around the rink, envelopes flying through the air. (Thanks to Eyebeam for the link) I can’t think of a good segue, so can we all just pretend I did? Check out this extensive dictionary of comics grammar from Blambot. I particularly like the example for wavy balloons. Problem is, I rarely have comic scenarios where characters are fading away and would warrant such poetic dialogue bubbles. That said, my time and this post must now fade away… … Read more.
January 29, 2009
I like this article about art slowly abandoning the rarefied air of the gallery for the boutique, even if it’s the weakened economy that is mostly responsible for this relaxation of boundaries. Sure it’s sad to see galleries close, but it’s nice that artists can find myriad places to hang their wares (or wears, really). Plus, they should feel right at home: Are gallerinas and shop clerks really all that different? Both wear lots of black and project an air of calculated indifference. The only worry is what the shop clerk will say when a shopper asks if your painting comes in petite? … Read more.
January 27, 2009
Sometimes I have days where I can’t get warm. It starts with me running home from the pool in -75 degree weather and finding my hair frozen into a wet bun when I get there. Hard to believe, but it’s difficult to regain your body warmth after starting the day as an icehead. Should you ever find yourself in a similar situation, I recommend a hot shower, followed by putting every single toque you own on, one atop the other, until your head becomes a giant, sound-proof ball. Alternately, you can look at pictures of warm places on the internet, and imagine yourself reclining poolside in St. Lucia, shooting the breeze with Amy Winehouse, or European royalty. You can also look at amazing travel posters from the 1920s and 30s. I particularly like this one, which makes me both want to go somewhere warm, and to do so wearing a yellow, belted swimsuit. Other things that may generate heat on these cold, cold days: The Federal budget, Barack Obama’s Speechwriter’s Girlfriend and this guy. … Read more.
January 22, 2009
It’s my first post as your new indie artist-in-residence. My biggest fear: meat withdrawal. McGimpsey’s been meating it up all month so I thought posting some beef was the least I could do to wean Broken Pencilists off the gyros. Here’s some brisket I made. It was my first, possibly my last. Which is not to say these tender strips of striated meat weren’t tasty, just very time consuming, just I-could-have-completed-the-three-day-novel-challenge-in-the-time-it-took-to-make-this-brisket time consuming. But enough about meat, I’m here to impart facts, indie ones I am told. And yet, after staring at that photo, the only facts in my brain right now are brisket-related. So let’s start with that. Fact #1: Onion soup mix is your secret weapon. It makes brisket (and potatoes) approximately 12.7% tastier. Fact #2: I’m out of facts. Fact #3: I thought of something. My beef, or brisket if you like, with the Chia Obama that my RSS reader has recently alighted me to is not that a Chia O… Read more.
Sarah Lazarovic
Sarah Lazarovic usually goes in for the ironic bio, the kind where she reveals very little about herself, attempts to turn a few phrases and sums up with a twee universality, something like, “Sarah Lazarovic really likes cookies.”
But enough is enough. Change has come to (North) America. Lobbyists are running for the hills. And in this spirit of openness and full disclosure Sarah Lazarovic wants to be frank with you, dear reader of Broken Pencil. If Sarah Lazarovic is to be your Indie Artist in Residence she ought to be able to level with you, to reveal her biases, to lay it all out on the line, to reveal her personal truths, be they unexciting, unuseful or even untrue.
Sarah Lazarovic is a cartoonist/illustrator/filmmaker. She is embarrassed by all the slashes and knows they are a typographical substitute for being really, fantastically good at one thing, but that’s who she is–a person who is getting a bit long in the tooth to remain noncommittal but just can’t help it: She has long teeth. Sarah Lazarovic draws a weekly cartoon for the Ottawa Citizen in which her alter ego is portrayed as having oversized glasses, short hair and a very cute nose. Sarah Lazarovic wears contacts, has grown her hair out and wishes her nose were cuter.
Sarah Lazarovic has made many short, animated films, most of which are about old people. Sometimes Sarah Lazarovic frets that old people might mind being referred to as old people, but she refuses to refer to them as “senior citizens.”
Sarah Lazarovic’s movies about old people have played at lots of festivals and on CBC Television, but usually late at night, so you probably haven’t seen them. Who watches TV anymore, anyway? A few years ago Sarah Lazarovic was so frustrated by the lack of a National Portrait Gallery, she decided to build one in her garage, which is cold, leaky and also serves as a home for wayward mice. The Montrose Portrait Gallery of Toronto has yearly group shows and Sarah Lazarovic would love it if you wanted to be a part of one, Broken Pencil reader. (theportraitgallery.ca)
What else should you know in case someone throws a Sarah Lazarovic pop quiz at you? You should know that Sarah Lazarovic is painting a portrait a day in an effort to get better at likenesses, but isn’t sure she’s getting better. You can see them at SarahL. com/portrait.
What is Sarah working on now? She’s editing a feature film that she shot with three friends. She is already sketching out her Oscar dress. This might be premature.
Sarah Lazarovic is also wrestling with long-form comics. She’s at work on a graphic memoir about her childhood in Florida. The tentative title is The Sunshine Hate. Yes, she knows this is a crappy title. Please send her a better one.
Sarah Lazarovic hates endings. Her desultory voice pitches and cracks as she bemoans the end of anything, so she’d rather keep this clippy. Thanks for reading. Visit SarahL.com for more Sarah. Sarah Lazarovic really likes cookies.