On a bender? Not exactly --

Maybe it was the title I chose for the fifth in my "Flash Mob" Series -- "Bent Out of Shape" -- that set things into a wonky spin over the last couple of months.

I started "Bent" with this drawing in January and took overly long to get paint on paper, thanks to my second semester art class and its extra hours of homework. (And that's a sincere thanks, too -- it was wonderful). In any case, there's been a lot of stuff bent out of shape during this winter that lingered on and on.

For one thing:-- What kind of no-name-brand art exhibit could merit an enormous advertising blitz almost daily in every Vancouver paper for almost three months straight?

When I finally checked it out, I found that it was essentially a huge promotional campaign for architect Kenzo Kuma who designed a bent-out-of-shape tower now under construction in Vancouver's downtown. Here's the glass-cased model that was on display:

I took a scenic byway on my route to the site of this exhibit and made several interesting discoveries when I reached there. Check out my adventure here and see if you agree on my choice for "Best of Show."

In late March, I continued an adventure I began last fall -- taking in a noon-time performance at The Dance Centre.

These are rather informal one-hour shows, and I took my sketchbook along, planning to get in some quick figure drawing. Well....."quick" doesn't begin to describe one of the qualities needed. Another quality is the ability to work in the dark. The November show featured "The Response," a young and vigourous company founded and choreographed by an amazing dancer named Amber Funk Barton. This link gives a sample of the kind of action I was trying to sketch....without being able to see my pen on the paper.

Result?

The March show by another young Vancouver company "Aeriosa" was even more startling. Their specialty is "vertical dance" -- challenging the perceptions of what dance is and the audience's perceptions of things like perspective. They dance in the air -- supported by the full rig that mountain climbers wear (most of them have a background in mountain climbing). View this link to get an idea of what the heck I'm talking about.

I was so excited about a second "Dance Centre" performance that I forgot about the whole business of .........the lights going out during the performance. In any case, doing this kind of quick sketching is good training for eye and hand, whether or not it's at all recognizable when the lights come up.

Now, coming full circle, I determined to finish "Bent Out of Shape" once my art class ended in mid-March. Again, I worked over an old painting -- and the early stages look almost like some of that indecipherable sketching from the Dance Centre.

And here's the finished piece (which you can see in its progression here).

Whew! Enough of the bends. Time to straighten out and relax........

...maybe slip off into another dimension...

Now that I have your attention...

Let's head for March's scene of the crime -- or rather, scene of great excitement as I headed back to the Roundhouse Community Centre for free noontime figure drawing sessions in connection with the annual International Dance Festival.

I managed to take in one session a week during the Festival's three week run and was the first to arrive on Day One. In the small theatre where the sessions took place, the floor was strewn with massive woodprints and linoprints waiting to be hung.

And a sculptor was putting the finishing touches on his 12-foot high woven cedar sculpture.

I was elated when our first model arrived. A repeat from last year's sessions, she's a professional clown who can do *anything* -- even make and hold for five minutes the grimace that titles this post. We had a good chat before anyone else arrived, and she told me she was just back from an international clown conference in Patagonia. Who knew?

She's a fabulous model, who knows how to warm up a drawing session and hold poses of various lengths -- both of these are desirable skills.

 

 Many of her poses showed her clown background:

 And unbelievable, but true -- considering that she had moaned audibly to me that she would soon be 73 years old -- she even stood on her head.

The following week, I arrived to find that the lino- and woodprints had been hung. They'd been produced on a special oversized printing bed in Chinatown.

And the cedar weaving sculptor had contributed another fine piece.

That day's session featured a fine-featured young model who I came to think of as the Tormented Zombie Princess. She arrived in traditional mime's white face and a hooded flowing lacy gown which left only a few body parts visible: part of her face, her wrists and hands below the gown's long cuffs, and sometimes her legs below the knees. Not exactly promising terrain for a figure drawing session.  (If those look like praying hands in the upper left, that's how I felt 15 minutes into the session:  "Please let this end soon.")

To the accompaniment of new age-type music, she did an endless mime routine that was probably unique, amazing, and awesome for the right audience but just didn't work for this one. I was not the only one who found the painstakingly slow but continuous movement to be almost maddening. I first tried cheerfully to do a continuous line drawing, which is a typical art school exercise:--

And then I tried focusing on one body part as she moved -- here, legs...

...and then head and hands.

 And finally, as the hour ended, I packed up my bags and escaped to take photos of the old structural elements of the Roundhouse lobby and a photo account of the Roundhouse history from its Heritage Gallery (which you can view here).

My third and final drawing session featured another young dancer as the model.

But she was fabulous. She worked from her own dance routine, but she intelligently selected poses to hold and warned us in advance how long she would hold them.

She did a terrific finale and when it was over, confessed to some of us that she'd never modelled before.

Thanks to her, my personal finale for this year's Roundhouse sessions ended on a happy note -- and I'll watch for this event again next March.