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an exhibition blog Squid Truck
April,
2013
Here is the Squid Truck,
photographed in installation at my show at he the Hornby Island Co-op. It
somehow seems to fit with the pineapples, and especially with the sign that
says Bag of Lemons. It was inspired by a trip to
the Saskatoon Exhibition over twenty years ago, where, among the stalls for Dukhobor bread and spudnuts,
the sheep-dog trials and the carnival rides, were still side-shows in
semi-trailers. On the windshield of the Squid Truck is a photograph I took of
one side-show I could have entered, where I
supposedly could have viewed the still living body of the
Marilyn-Monroe-wannabe and sadly decapitated Jane Mansfield. Decapitated, unfortunately,
by driving under a semi-trailer
truck. I wonder if the exhibitors
noted this irony. I acknowledge the
whimsicality of the side-show Squid Truck, but itÕs
surely less weird than the side-show that inspired it. After finding the cab at the
Salvation Army toy section, after twenty years, IÕm still looking for back
wheels -- then it would actually be a working toy. As an art object it seems to
hold its own with the fruit and vegetables, which are brightly coloured and in classic form. Maybe, like there are rules
about never being on screen beside kids or animals -- because they always
upstage you -- there should be rules about never exhibiting art-works beside
bananas. What could compete with the silliness, whimsicality, form, colour and sheer cultural baggage of the banana? Most of us have much less
connection with the giant squid. And fortunately, the
semi-trailer truck. Books: The PeopleÕs Act of Love, James Meek. Brilliant. IÕm reading it again. Moral Disorder, Margaret Atwood. For more Revisionary go to
the Revisionary BlogrollÉ
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Toronto Globe and Mail, Jim Bartley: ÒirresistibleÓ Òbeastly goodÓ ÒBernice FriesenÕs art is finely
honed and gracefully wielded, her darkly beautiful images inseparable from
her thematic purpose.Ó ÒItÕs said of some novels that they
beg to be filmed. The pictures Friesen makes are a cinematographerÕs dream.Ó The Winnipeg Free Press, Ariel Gordon: Òimmensely pleasurableÓ Òwholly convincing leaps of the
imaginationÓ Òa great
successÓ Pages and Patches Devin Pacholik ÒFriesen is a master.Ó http://pagesandpatches.blogspot.ca/2012/03/book-of-beasts-bernice-friesen.html See Reviews: http://coteaubooks.com/index.php?p=Reviews
Book of Beasts Buy From Coteau
Books http://coteaubooks.com/index.php?p=Shop And The Book of Beasts is now in
French Translation from QuŽbec Amerique: Le Bestiaire
des anges Translated by Lori Saint-Martin and
Paul GagnŽ, 2011. http://www.quebec-amerique.com/livre-details.php?id=1225
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God was a little black-haired bastard named Charlie with
wet sheet skin, bleeding gums, and fists full of iron oxide pebbles which he flung
in JamesÕs face, each sting becoming a freckle. His mother told him it was
God whoÕd given him the freckles, and it was true because he couldnÕt
remember having freckles before Charlie started throwing stones. If freckles
were so bad, at least they werenÕt his fault. He convinced himself they were
caused by wounds, like the blood he saw on JesusÕ side, flowing down the
plaster of his motherÕs crucifix like bubbled spit. It was easier to look at
JesusÕ blood than at his own, and after he realized freckles were ugly --
except on his beautiful mother -- it wasnÕt easy to look at himself at all. Skinny, big ears, red hair messed like the knots of hay
sticking out of a cowÕs mouth. These were the things he heard about himself
after he got into the habit of listening, when being seen and not heard
became too boring. He told himself he didnÕt care, began scratching his face.
Get rid of the spots. Even if his mother said she liked them, that they were
delicious, especially when she was a dog, and licked them off his nose -- see
the freckles on her tongue? They tasted salty, she said, were delicate and
crunchy like little potato crisps. Sometimes he was a dog, too, and so he
scratched anyway. And then his father told him to stop that scratching, sit
still, and he would, almost, until every adult eye was averted, and then his
hand would strike like the tongue of a frog, and he would stuff another jaffa cake in his mouth. Everything was alive to him. Not just the neighbor's cat
and his grandfather's King-Charles' spaniel, not just the ladybirds and
dragonflies and earthworms, but the turnips wincing as they were pulled from
the ground in his mother's garden. He made little playful screams whenever
his mother tore lettuce apart for a salad, said ouch, ouch, when she chopped
onions, misinterpreting her tears as sympathy for the poor vegetables. He
refused to eat the tiniest grape from the vine, even though his father told
him it would perish anyway. He kept it in a little baby-food jar in the
fridge, and took it out to hold it in the palm of his hand and pet it like a
kitten. His first word, as a baby, had been meow, and he
was a cat-sneak behind doors and beneath the tablecloth. His grandfather
called his father a senseless dreamer -- that acting, way back then,
for GodÕs sake -- who should never have married a child who was such a harpy,
whatever that meant. It seemed to mean an Irish woman who wore her red hair
too loose, her blouses too tight, and who didnÕt care what she said in polite
company -- and Oxford was nothing if not polite in the late 1950Õs.... Awards -Fiction Award, Saskatchewan
Book Awards
-Globe and MailÕs top 100 and top 5 first fictions
-Longlisted, Rogers Writers Trust of Canada
Fiction Prize |
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Prairie
Fire, Tom Schmidt: Òreads
like a freight train bearing down on youÓ Òferocious feminist verse that chews
up the patriarchs of western civilization from Freud to Plato to
the Pope and spits them out.Ó CV2,
Tanis MacDonald: Òintelligent
and hilariousÓ Ònot for anyone who wishes to keep
their dogma chained up in their mental backyard.Ó Wireweed: ÒsplendidÓ ÒFriesen
is a stand-up comicÓ Òuproariously,
ribaldly funnyÓ Òshe
has merged with the goddess KaliÓ |
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Canadian Author: from ÒBernice
Friesen, Winner of the Vicky Metcalf Award for Best Young Adult Short Story
in Canada:Ó ÒBernice Friesen calls it luck, but anyone
whoÕs read her work could only call it talent.Ó Òclear, pared down, yet richly
expressive prose.Ó http://www.canauthors.org/awards/metcalf.html Quill and Quire, Maria
Campbell: ÒI thoroughly enjoyed and applaudÓ Òthere are no cheap shots here, no
easy observations, nothing that appears in uncrystallized
form.Ó ÒFriesen writes with the confidence
of someone who knows sheÕs taken full advantage of hindsight, yet her narratives
read as thought theyÕve been written from Ôthe inside,Õ from the confines of
a high schoolÕs narrow halls.Ó Purchase
from Thistledown Press: http://www.thistledownpress.com/cgi-bin/thistle/thistle.cgi?function=dispbook&bkid=59&nf= |
It sits on my desk in a sour cream container, in a nest of
white and pink Kleenex. On it is a happy face, slightly screwy, and a
squiggle of yellow marker on top for hair. The assignment is to carry an egg
around for a week, pretending itÕs your kid. Dad could hardly believe it when
I told him Mrs. Bowman makes the Family Life class do this every year. He
told me to do what I want - even scramble it and lose the ten marks if it
would make me feel better. I donÕt know why IÕm taking this stupid class
anyway. Just because StephanieÕs here and everyone else is
doing it, I guess. Ò...and at this point, the sperm meets the egg.Ó Mrs. BowmanÕs flabby cheeks get redder and splotchy.
Reproduction embarrasses her almost as much as it embarrasses Stephanie.
StephanieÕs only 16 like me, so itÕs forgivable. Mrs. Bowman has three kids,
so itÕs not. ÒCan you imagine Mrs. B. having sex?Ó I whisper, and point
out Mrs. B.Õs bulgy panty line. Stephanie once told me I was the funniest
person in the world. SheÕs weird with jokes. She laughs the hardest at the
dirty ones, but wonÕt tell them ; she absorbs them but then wonÕt let them
escape. ÒShh, Lori,Ó Stephanie always
blushes when she laughs. ÒOur next topic is motherhood, the most important part of
the Home Economics course,Ó Mrs. Bowman says, right after she skims over the
pregnancy handouts with us. SheÕd been sick, so we were way behind in our
notes. I think she got sick on purpose, just so she could skip over the sex
part. I squash the new heading under the scrawled notes on my
last page, and wish I hadnÕt been late for class so I could have gotten paper
from my locker. IÕd seen Stephanie, Lill and Faith
whispering at the locked door, and when IÕd got there, theyÕd stopped, guilty
looks on their faces, especially Stephanie. At first IÕd thought they were
talking about me, but Mrs. Bowman was walking right behind me jangling her
keys, so I couldnÕt be sure.... Awards:
The
Vicky Metcalf Award for Best Young Adult Short Story in Canada.
(Title Story, The Seasons Are Horses, won, from the Book of the same
name) |
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Press Kit
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BERNICE FRIESEN was born in Rosthern,
Sask. The life of her grandmotherÕs family has been
published in The Mulberry Tree by Victor Carl Friesen and Anna Friesen.
She trained as a printmaker at the University of
Saskatchewan, ending up with a B.F.A in visual art and a B.Ed. by 1990. She
took creative writing courses with Elizabeth Brewster, Guy Vanderhaegue and Tim Lilburn, and attended the Banff
Writing Studio. She has been an art studio lab assistant, art gallery
educator, and has taught Sage Hill Writing Experience for teens, and Fiction Freefall through the Saskatoon Writers Coop. Her writing and art has been published in Canada and
Europe, and has twice been short-listed for the CBC Radio Literary Awards.
Her writing has been included in two League of Canadian Poets winners anthologies, and Best Short Stories, 2002,
(Oberon). She has lived in England, New Zealand and British
Columbia, has taught herself to read French and Italian, and is currently
trying to understand quantum physics. Blame her for the art and design of
this website. She is the girl at the blackboard.
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View the
Shaw Cable interview of Bernice Friesen at |
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