As a teenager living up in Thornhill back in the 60's, I would walk up to Yonge & Steeles every Saturday morning, take the bus to Eglinton, the subway to Bloor, the street car to the ROM. It was $0.45 cents to get in, I would spend the rest of the day going through every department in the entire place; it's where I learned about life in the realm. I would start in Entomology, they let me in the back room to clean up the collections, I had stuff they didn't; I shared. Then I went to Ornithology to check out the birds. By lunch I got to Egyptology, sat their looking at their exquisite art. Had an incredible time; it costs too much for a young kid to experience that these days.

Karma can be a bee; here's hoping. If I had three wishes, what would they be?
My good deed for the day helping a bee find its way back to the hive, it just took a moment with an old fashioned country kitchen live bee catcher. This simple act of kindness takes a second and becomes a moral compass when we integrate with nature and our fellow humans to make the world a better place. We have a colony of wild bees nearby, they have been in the same spot forever, never caused a problem; survived a hundred years of farm chemicals. Every summer the hive splits into two separate colonies, a serious eclipse as the sky goes black around the house for about ten minutes. I'd say there are a million bees, they tend to the nature as they were intended to do. I like to stay on their good side and not piss anyone of them off, it just take one angry bee to send a signal to the colony. Harmony in nature, harmony in life, my father taught this to me at an early age; he would often say "harmony" was the central theme to his work as an artist, especially his tribute to ballet series. Suzanne and I will be devoting more of our time to this creative endeavour, we are preparing a show of contemporary Canadian abstract art for presentation in Beijing. The project is called MIND Fyre.

Canadian artist's Jaclyn Howes and 
Val Engen: Mindfire:

"Art is a platform fraught with many complexities." abstract art is art of the imagination, if you can imagine it, it is said to be real. If it is real, it is no longer abstract. Therefore the "art" must be somewhere in between; my view of the creative process.

The individual paintings an artist produces are a record in time of the creative thought process, just a snapshot out of the movie. 

The real art, the "mindfire" happens between the paintings, the poems, the music, the real power to construct a complex yet simple psychological impression of a moment in time and space. The movie is going on in the background and that is what everybody wants to see. That is the prize commodity in the world of art mindfire. Getting to know the artist. You never see it. It is invisible, yet it is the secret soul of the creative spirit needing to get into the light; you only see the result, the "finished work" In that regard, the "work" is never finished. I'm interested in the process in between the works, what happens in the artists mind/life to account for the difference in "style", but there is really much more to this story.

The devil is in the details. The artists ability to lay out a textured template in the unveiling of their concept is the foundation for a great abstract work. Now, you come along and compare your life experience to what you think you see on the canvas. The big rush, the mental high is where your brain analysis and compares every emotion it has ever had to what it thinks it see's and feels in the painting; in an instant. In the blink of an eye, first impressions are everything in art. You can savor it later. If it doesn't knock your socks off when you first see it you are just going to keep on walking; something like that. A sharing of secrets of the artists deep emotions about life, and the nature of the universe; they have to release the immense energy of their mindfire onto the canvas, or their heads will explode. Then you come along, stand in front of this complex psychological template fraught with emotions in the theater of the absurd we call life and see whatever you want to see. Your reaction become part of the art, that eureka moment, the grand vision appears before you like the first time you dawned a pair of 3D glasses. You wonder how is it you didn't see it earlier. Then you ask; Why is it only me that see's it?

Like gazing into a fire, an artist on "fire" is too excited about the discovery process to spent one more second overworking a concept, dwelling on the past. A new song, a new poem, a new painting, a new experience is the theme of an art show I am putting together in Bejiing. I have spent my life loving, looking at, studying "great art" and artists, I know what I like. I am continually amazed at unknown artist popping out of the woodwork with amazing modernistic art. Like Paul Klee I have always had an aquarium on my desk, 60 years later I learn new things about the nature of nature. I am an agent for art of the imagination, I currently represent a small group of brilliant "mindfire" artists, I am looking balance the show with something different. If you creative mind is on fire send me an image, if I hear the music, I will take it to China. I'm betting they will like it as much as I do.
The surge of new millionaires in China has developed a thirst for excellence in modern art, art of the imagination. Especially brilliant new abstract artists from the west who have great energy, great mindfire, and can crank out acres of brilliant paintings at the speed of thought. Abstract art is the only commodities market that never goes down; eternal value. Not a metaphor. Recently an unknown artist a few years ago sold an interesting work for $19,000, two weeks ago it sold for 200 million dollars. The gentlemen purchased the painting as an investment; that's what he saw in it

Real Star Wars fans will only see the last two duds once: Nobody will ever replace Lucas, and nobody should try, but I would be willing to see what Ronnie has to offer. I was deeply disturbed my adult kids liked the last 2 "Disney" movies, I feel I failed them as a parent. Most of my facebook friends know I was an AV producer in Toronto for many years; sequencing static images was my job. I helped design leading edge software at the time. In that regard I worked at Video Art for awhile, I met Dave Geldart a rookie animation artist. Dave and his pal Frank had an IBM XT and were doing their best to make a round wheel for a racing car they were working on. I waltzed in with the mother of all software programs at the time AVX Software, way more elegant than the patchwork program used to make Jurassic Park, a little something our team at Globestock whipped up. Next thing you know Dave steps up, joins the Alias development team, gets good, gets real good. Only one kind of animation artist gets to join the Lucas crew says Dave : "self taught". Dave went on to supervise 240 animation artists at the same time to produce all of the early Star Wars movies. When he finally returned home to TO after the most illustrious career an animation artist could ever have, I contacted him. I asked him; "do you remember you and Frank sitting in front of the XT trying to make a round wheel". We laughed. I called him for a reason, I wanted him to see the first major work by my son Alex and his friend Wesley George did, in his early 20's at the time. Dave asked me: "where did he study?" I told him he is self taught". Dave said: "OK" I will look at it. The lead hand for Lucas reviewing Alexs' work; pretty cool. Dave's comments were; "crude, shows promise". Dave went on to explain, the only artist that ever make it to his level are all self taught. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmMQJ386Jv4&t=11s That was 15 years ago when Alex started that project.

My brother and I have been working on a retrospect art exhibition for my late father Erik Dzenis. In that regard I ran across one of Erik's early paintings (I'm still verifying) it has been 60 years since I have seen the painting. It is a life size oil portrait of Clarence Decatur "C. D." Howe. Briefly CD Howe was the chief bean counter for WWII, when Britain or the USA wanted some war toys, they needed CD's signature on it; he was the bookkeeper. In short he paid for all the bombs and bullets that rained down on the artist painting his portraits many years later. Erik was a teenager, a struggling artist in the Latvian Academy of Art. when WWII broke out. He was trapped, first it was the Russians who invaded then it was the Germans, enslaving the country basically. While all this was going down, the Allies rained bombs on the entire theatre. I recall Erik said jokingly during a sitting , "so you were the guy". CD said "yes it was me". Both men paused to reflect on the irony of the moment as well as the enormity of what they both lived through. It was a positive outcome back on 1958. Erik went on to become a successful international artist, but he always carried his war scars with him; silently. We call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder now, we just called it normal back in the 60's.

Clarence Decatur "C. D." Howe, PC (15 January 1886 – 31 December 1960) was a powerful Canadian Cabinet minister, representing the Liberal Party. Howe served in the governments of Prime Ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent continuously from 1935 to 1957. He is credited with transforming the Canadian economy from agriculture-based to industrial. During the Second World War, his involvement in the war effort was so extensive that he was nicknamed the "Minister of Everything."

With all the excitement of Bornholm on the horizon and our products surging in Scandinavia, many of our new Viking friends are curious about Suzanne's Danish connection. Suzanne's late father Frode was a Danish patriot, this is his story.


http://www.thecommunitypaper.com/archive/2009/12_17/index.php