Amber Thorpe stares—absorbed—at the work of another tattoo artist on a monitor in her Quinpool Road tattoo studio. “As an artist, I feed off other people’s ideas,” she says. Professional tattoo artists such as Thorpe look closely at each other’s work, something that will happen a lot during the first Maritime Tattoo Festival, a Halifax […]
Sean Flinn
Posted inArts + Music
Year of the dog
Listen to “Oh Dead Life” off the new album Night Group. True to its name, Area 52 hides itself well—in plain sight, as it goes. The average passerby likely never considers the massive space, with all its various compartments, lying just beyond the banal, barely marked entrance off Gottingen Street. Unless they’re hauling gear—an amp, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Young guns
Mary Walsh and Fred Ewanuick sit beside each other on the hotel room couch. She’s the actor/co-writer/director of Young Triffie and he is the film’s star. But their rapport suggests another relationship. In a black outfit, including impressively long boots, that contrasts with her auburn hair and tanned skin, Walsh appears the taller, worldly, still-a-little-bit-wild […]
Posted inArts + Music
Body break
The obesity epidemic is one powerful bit of news media shorthand. Use it in relation to young people and its potency intensifies. Premiering on CBC TV tonight at 8pm, Teresa MacInnes’ film Generation XXL challenges the knee-jerks. She follows four participants from a group of 12 who participated in the Fit Intervention Program last March. […]
Posted inArts + Music
Myles above
Listen to “Love Again” by David Myles David Myles demonstrates well the principle of rapid immersion—the brilliant experience of diving in fast and deep and coming up with golden, artistic expression. Growing up in Fredericton, he studied trumpet intensely, loving jazz in particular. A few years ago this musical mind was studying political science, with […]
Posted inLifestyle
A league apart
Professional sports often spawn breakaway leagues intent on going it alone and serving underserved markets. Hockey had the World Hockey Association, which ran from 1972 to ’79. As for football, some would place the CFL in this category. While that league limps along, other failed fraternities—the USFL, XFL and a flurry of indoor iterations—have risen […]
Posted inLifestyle
Home version
Wet white bombs fell from the trees, making craters in the soft snow below. The sun heated up the icy wires, sending glassy chunks to the pavement, fragmenting with sharp reports. Linda and Bill Borkus sat silent in their minivan idling on the street. A very large shard hit the ground with a stiff slap. […]
Posted inArts + Music
Alpha’s flight
And at Christmas, one brother, the older, shall give the younger a Fender Squire bass guitar and unto him he will speak: “Here you go, we have a gig in three weeks.” That’s how 26-year-old Rhys Bevan-John, bassist in Ceti Alpha, recalls being invited to join the band of his 30-year-old brother—and singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist—Nick. Though he’d […]
Posted inArts + Music
Ready, made, go!
The 13th Floor Pottery Lisa-Marie Campbell’s wares—toasting glasses, teapots and mugs, trays and bowls—draw on distant celebrations such as Day of the Dead, which she witnessed on trips south. “They had those incredible shrines all over the place and those absolutely bizarre little skeletons done up with flowers and hats,” Campbell says of sights and […]
Posted inArts + Music
Economy of scale
Scale works both ways on peoples’ awareness and experience of their surroundings: the small fascinates, the large looms. Cape Breton artist Carl Zimmerman uses both directions in scale in Landmarks of Industrial Britain, running until January 7 at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. His photographs of seemingly massive abandoned buildings from 19th century northern […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Sign here
Search Halifax on one of several online petition sites operating today and some interesting windows into the state of the city’s soul and its democracy emerge. One asks for signatures to help “Bring Dances Back to Halifax, 2006/07.” Last month, St. Patrick’s High School on Quinpool Road, for example, banned school dances, citing teachers’ stress […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Body double
Among other messages, the media reminds us that the population is aging. A critical mass is bearing down upon all of us, its full weight yet to settle and make its full impact. From medical professionals to automakers, corporations are reacting to the generational juggernaut in their own way—how to make better medicines and cars […]