The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
When I was a teenager, still living at my parents’ and afterwards in my shared flat in Montreal, I used to have this poster. It was from the 1988 Pink Floyd Canadian tour. It was made by a company/artist called Harron.
It is now completely impossible to find one.
This makes me sad.
In 2004, British composer Peter Maxwell Davies became part of musical history when he accepted the invitation to become Master of the Queen’s Music. Previous holders of the post include Edward Elgar, John Stanley and Arnold Bax – so ‘Max’, as he is called by all who know him, found himself in illustrious company.
His solo piano work Farewell to Stromness isn’t particularly indicative of his music overall, which is often noticeable both for its visceral sound-world and for its avant-garde structures. But Farewell to Stromness is certainly among his most immediately accessible and most enchantingly simple melodies. Its inspiration is unique in classical music: it was written as a protest against a proposed uranium mine on the remote Orkney Islands where the composer lives.
Many people were introduced to the piece when it was performed in a string arrangement by members of the Philharmonia Orchestra at the blessing of the marriage of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 2005.
Pack your bags sweetie, we’re going to London in November.
Portobello Road Gin has announced plans to launch a vast distillery complex on the street which it takes its name from, incorporating a pub, G&T bar, visitor centre and hotel. It will mean that the gin is distilled entirely on the iconic London road for the first time since 2011, when — only months after launching — the company was forced to outsource much of its production in order to keep up with demand.
The four-storey development of a former boozer on the corner of Portobello and Talbot roads will see a 400-litre gin still fitted in the basement, a striking contrast to the 30-litre still at the distillery’s original home above the Portobello Star pub. Alongside this there will be a modern visitor centre called The Ginstitute where guests will be able to learn about the history of gin and try their hand at blending their own.
The ground floor will be turned into a pub called The Resting Room where spirits will be served direct from barrels above the bar. It will have the style of a decadent Victorian gin palace and will also offer craft beers and English wines alongside gastropub-style British food. At the top of the building will be a private dining room as well as a small number of hotel rooms, making it London’s first distillery that you can stay in.
Portobello Road Gin founder Ged Feltham said: “It feels a bit crazy, but for some time we have been determined to bring all our gin production in-house and it is amazing that this will enable us to do that without leaving Portobello Road.”
The distillery is due to open in November.
Jeffrey “Jeff” Koons is an American artist known for working with popular culture subjects and his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania. His works have sold for substantial sums of money, including at least one world record auction price for a work by a living artist. Critics are sharply divided in their views of Koons. Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Others dismiss his work as kitsch, crass, and based on cynical self-merchandising. Koons has stated that there are no hidden meanings in his works, nor any critiques.
Jeff Koons rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of a generation of artists who explored the meaning of art in a media-saturated era. He gained recognition in the 1980s and subsequently set up a factory-like studio in a SoHo loft on the corner of Houston Street and Broadway in New York. Koons started creating sculptures using inflatable toys in the 1970s. Taking a readymade inflatable rabbit Koons cast the object in highly polished stainless steel, resulting in Rabbit (1986), one of his most famous artworks.
The Celebration project consists of a series of large-scale sculptures and paintings of, among others balloon dogs, Valentine hearts, diamonds, and Easter eggs, was conceived in 1994. Some of the pieces are still being fabricated. Each of the 20 different sculptures in the series comes in five differently colored “unique versions” Created in an edition of five versions, his later work Tulips (1995–2004) consists of a bouquet of multicolor balloon flowers blown up to gargantuan proportions. Koons was pushing to finish the series in time for a 1996 exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, but the show was ultimately canceled because of production delays and cost overruns. The artist convinced his primary collectors to invest heavily in the costly fabrication of the Celebration series. The dealers funded the project in part by selling works to collectors before they were fabricated. The series also includes, in addition to sculptures, sixteen oil paintings.
Referring to the ancient Roman marble statue Callipygian Venus, Metallic Venus (2010–2012) was made of high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating and live flowering plants. At the center of each scene in the Antiquity paintings (2009–13) is a famous ancient or classical sculpture, meticulously rendered in oil paint and scaled to the same size as the sculptures.
Bean didn’t like anyone this morning. He didn’t like school. His hair was wet. His bag was heavy. He was too warm. Unnnngh. Not fair. All he wanted was to find a missing bit of lego (*), but nobody would help him. He was walking as fast as he could (**) but his legs were hurting.
And then a switch went click, he started talking about seed potatoes, and he was happy again.
Grief. If he’s like that at 7, we won’t survive 17.
(*) 5 minutes after we should have already left the flat.
(**) he would have been hard-pressed to keep up with a drunken sloth.