Photo by Kris “Cookie” Fortune via his FB: Colbert rocking the Canadiana! Cookie also told me about a cool mod you can do to Canon DSLRs to play with autofocus functionality — cheers!

Yuri, the curator at the gallery, is a master printmaker. His latest series is called Red Tent 212282010, and is a relatively-involved Olympic protest.

[The Pivot Legal Society in Vancouver] will be using red tents to visually bring awareness to the issue to the world media in Vancouver from Feb 12 – 28, 2010. A very important time to be doing this. Visit their website and learn more about what great work they are doing. www.pivotlegal.org

So I decided to make this limited edition piece of art to raise awareness and money to support this cause, plus a little more. First, I hope to do is raise enough money to give a $500 donation to the Pivot Legal Society’s Red Tent campaign. Second, to buy $1,000 worth of art supplies and distribute it directly to artists in my community who are homeless or have experienced homelessness.

For just $25, you can help me achieve this and get a piece of my art as well!

Artwork information:
Title: Red Tent 212282010
Medium: Two color silk screen, grease crayon, ink
Paper size: 8.5″ x 11″
Edition size: 125, Signed and numbered
Price: $25 US or CAN
Shipping $5 Anywhere in US or Canada

They’re available via his website and at the gallery.

There have been some serious home-invasion style crimes in Victoria in the last few days. Reciprocating saws and sledgehammers used to cut through security gates and barred windows and smash thick glass.

My source tells me it’s a pre-Olympic crime wave that is one of the undesired, unpublicized effects of the event. International gangs move in, loot, and disappear in the confusion.

We just did a complete refresher and best-practices review of the gallery’s security policy. Please take appropriate steps to protect yourself.

I’m torn: I don’t think protesting actually does any good, but Michael Franti’s “Yell Fire” is fucking badass:

The torch relay starts tomorrow down by the legislature at some undivulged time. Or at least that’s when it officially starts — maybe. Whether it’s already started is unknowable. Somehow the CBC has footage of the relay already in progress, but the kickoff is tomorrow. Who can tell?

Anyway, I’ll head down with the camera to take snaps of the protest — see if I can get something good. Actually, tonight at 4am is probably the key moment: People kinda ruin the Olympics. I’ll see if I can get a picture of something empty. Then again the best light occurs at dawn and dusk, so maybe some snaps at 7:57 would be appropriate (fun fact: we’re losing about 20 minutes of daylight per week at the moment).

Ahh, the protest: The designated free speech zone is Centennial Square, far from the media and surrounded by cops and buildings. There’re no plans to intercept the torch, etc. One of my friends was actually shushed by a fellow protester for making too much noise earlier in the month. “Excessive volume doesn’t help our cause.” Yes, because authority unperturbed totally cares about your opinion.