On May 4th, 2000, the Nanaimo Arts Council opened a show entitled "What's With the Lobster?"

Six objects (or five objects and a window) were given for two weeks in turn to each of eighteen local artists.

The objects were:

• a rubber lobster
• a toaster
• a soda fountain glass with straws
• a watering can
• a pair of binoculars
• a window (I guess it's a storm window)

The artists were:

• Bob Alexander
• Edna Bennett
• Margaret Bonneau
• Keiko Bottomley
• Ron Carwardine
• Rod Corraini
• Mary Ann Fleming
• Pat Holland
• Grant Leier
• Denise MacNeill
• Trish Maguire
• Fred Peters
• Marilyn Risdale
• Wendy Robson
• Julie Sabiston
• Dorothy Sevcov
• Lee Stead
• Eileen Williamson

The results are really pleasing and different.

I thought Eileen Williamson's was a cross between the story "Rocking Horse Winner" and Dali's "Crucifiction". It was great! My life as an art critic, too!

The show continues through the month of May at Harbour Park Mall.

Anyway, I was inspired, so upon returning home came up with my own. It's called mob POLARITY.

Let's see, aside from the fact that the, ah, artist, has no talent, what can we see in mob POLARITY? The soda fountain glass divides the canvas (in fact, it's just paper) in two. That's a kind of polarity. And if you accept the heaven/earth of up and down, that's another kind of polarity. You're looking through the binoculars. The purple on the left and the three purple bars on the right are the cross-hairs (I don't know if the binocs had cross-hairs). As you can see, the magnification of the right barrel is greater than that of the left barrel. That's a sort of polarity. So the window appears quite different in each half. The toaster's plug (another polarity) in the right half is as big as the toaster itself in the left half. The lobster is confusedly reaching into the toaster and for the prongs of its plug. This wouldn't electrocute the lobster in the real world, but the spill from the watering can sets up the expectation of bzzzzzzzt, a real polarity, in the viewer.

I guess really bad art is that which needs to be explained. Anyway, reasoning that art purchasers can't always fork over $600 to $1,500 to follow an interesting idea, I donated mob POLARITY to the Arts Council. For fair market value, perhaps 50 cents, an impoverished art lover could be part of the What's with the Lobster experience. I did not frame mob POLARITY, because I don't believe that the framing should be worth more than the art it presents!

About five times I typed mod instead of mob. Have I my own dylsexic, polar tendencies?

Enjoy!

URL: This web page is:
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Last modified May 7, 2000