Yesterday was a good day to be a Canadian, but beyond that, it was a good day to be a Canadian artist.
Posts Tagged ‘work-life balance’
Resurfacing
Posted By Alida on September 28th, 2009
Well, these last two weeks have been a rather unintentional mini-hiatus — I suppose I just wasn’t quite as on-the-ball as I should have been about getting entries ready for what I knew would be a busy few weeks! (more…)
Posted in Uncategorized
More than Sunday School
Posted By Alida on September 13th, 2009
I think that most people who grow up in a particular church and remain there as adults can relate to the process of breaking away from the image of the kid in Sunday School and starting to be seen as an adult. It can be even more pronounced when a) your family is involved in ministry and/or leadership throughout your life, and b) you end up in leadership roles within the church yourself. It may be the worst for PKs (Pastors’ Kids), but even for those of us whose families are in lay ministry, it gets kind of complicated at times.
That process is something that I’ve gone through, with varying degrees of angst, since I was in high school. There are people there who remember when my mom was pregnant with me, and there have been times, when I’ve been in a leadership role over certain people, that have been kind of difficult, but it’s part of the life cycle of ministry, and we all work through it in one way or another. We find our place, and in 20 years or so, the cycle will repeat itself.
Parading through tradition
Posted By Alida on July 2nd, 2009
The Stampede parade is tomorrow, kicking off 10 days of free pancakes, fireworks, and free concerts. And, of course, we’re going to the parade on Friday morning and to the grounds. Twice.
A lot of Calgarians have a love-hate relationship with the Stampede, but we love it, cowboy cliches and all. Colin and I are both third-generation Calgarians, which is increasingly rare in this booming, diverse city, and my great-grandfather was at the first Stampede in 1912. We’re looking forward to the 2012 Stampede — I’m not sure if there has been a member of either of our families at every single Stampede in the last 100 years, but I’m sure it’s close, and barring any extreme circumstances, we’ll be well-represented at the centennial.
Culture gets personal
Posted By Alida on July 1st, 2009
On the surface, I’m a Canadian who moved to the U.S. in August, 2005 and has been splitting my time between both countries since then — about 18 months (plus vacations) of the last 4 years have been spent in Canada. Culturally and definitively, I’m Canadian, having spent the first 24 years of my life north of the 49th parallel in a time when Canadian identity was going through phases of being defined as, “Well, I’m not sure what we are, but we’re not American!”, but it’s still a bit more complicated than just being an ex-pat or an immigrant. (Side note: As a kid, I always thought it was so funny that my mom was an immigrant, because to me, immigrants came on ships in the 1800s and early 1900s, had to learn a new language, and travelled in steerage.) Growing up with a dual citizenship and choosing to relocate as an adult have put me somewhere on the scale of Canadian-ish and American-ish, and where I fit on the scale completely depends on the day.
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It’s a dance
Posted By Alida on June 18th, 2009
Man, it’s been quite the week around here. Changes, opportunities, losses, gains, answered prayers, an inconsistent internet connection at home (putting at least three entries on hold while I contemplated throwing my laptop across the room to see if that would speed things up), and a fainting spell on the train, and it’s not even the weekend yet! There’ll be a post coming about all of that eventually (except the fainting; that was just a Monday morning anomaly), but in the meantime, it’s been on the forefront of my mind.
There are few posts coming down the line that relate to it in some way, but for the moment, I want to re-post something that was on my other blog a few months ago. For reasons that are related to everything I mentioned above (except maybe the internet connection), I’ve been thinking about the way that Colin and I work together, and the fact that in the very early months of our relationship, we each placed ourselves in situations where we were under the artistic direction and ministry leadership of the other.
That decision has set the tone for our professional relationship, but it also allowed each of us a glimpse into the other’s character as a leader, which was so important when we were making those early decisions in our relationship.
This post isn’t as much about the arts as most of this blog is and will be, but it’s one of the foundational ways that my faith has manifested itself in the way I work and live, and because of that, it impacts my art and the choices I make. If nothing else, it’s something that still makes me think — and I wrote it! Seriously, though, this is something that I live in the midst of every day, and it’s on my mind right now, so if you don’t mind a re-run (if you happen to be one of those who reads my other blog), here it goes:
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This is why we do it
Posted By Alida on June 12th, 2009
I don’t think I’ve ever not had an understanding of producing. There are some artists who don’t know or understand what it takes to actually put on a show (or an exhibit, or whatever), but that’s never been me. Yes, I have training as an actor and director, but I also have always put in the production work to make it happen, even when that wasn’t my primary role.
One of my jobs at CalArts is Resident Producer in the Coffeehouse Theater, which is an interdisciplinary space open to students to present non-curricular work. The committee acts in a curatorial capacity, as the Coffeehouse is primarily a presenting, not a producing, entity. That means that we work with a lot of artists who want to show their work, but have no idea what goes into producing it. Our job is to walk them through the process, step-by-step, and teach them how to work with a presenting organization, because those basic producing skills are things that every artist should know.
In any case, that side of things has always been, to me, an integral part of the art-making process, and I started doing it simply because no one else was. I needed to have a place to do work, and, like many artists who begin producing, it began with that simple need.
