Make sure to go and support hedonistic child abuse at your local art gallery.





Fay and Fluffy are with the lesbian story teller/child abuser Catherine Hernandez, another AGM invitee, about whom I wrote here.

"...an opportunity to see that things that are different aren't scary"

From Today's Parent
Published on Aug 21, 2017
Meet JP Kane, a kindergarten teacher from Toronto who also performs in drag

The information below is provided on (and through) the Art Gallery of Mississauga Facebook page in preparation for JP Kane's ("Fay's") upcomng "story telling:"

Coming up on Friday, September 21! 🌺👀🌈 Be sure to join us for a not-to-be-missed hour of #storytelling and #FUN with our fab guests Fay and Fluffy's Storytime at AGM Tot Spot! A great time for kids and adults of all ages.[Source: AGM Facebook]

Screenshot from video below: "Meet JP Kane, a kindergarten teacher from Toronto who also performs in drag."

Quotes below of JP Kane's narration in the video:

I'm hoping what the kids get out of coming to story time is an opportunity to see that things that are different aren't scary.That things that are different are amazing.

[...]

When you think about it really, bringing drag performers together with little kids it's kind of a perfect relationship. And it's kind of like, drag performers are clowns, right. Like they really sort of. They play things up. They're over the top. They're, they're like a cartoon come to life?

Video: Meet JP Kane, a kindergarten teacher from Toronto who also performs in drag.

Queer for Canada

Stephanie Wu
[Image Source: Wu_Stephanie Instagram]

The Art Gallery of Mississauga spent Canada Day making "protest posters" with "queer identified" Chinese-"Canadian" community shaker-upper and "artist" Stephanie Wu:

spent today making prints
and posters with families and little ones to
protest for changes we want to see in our
communities. the theme was "what's
consider to be an emergency in your
communities?" and since it was on
canada day, some folks made ones about the
emergency of ongoing colonialism on
turtle island. another favourite includes, "be a
buddy, not a bully" and here are a
few samples made for the workshop. thank u
to the 100+ folks that shared their thoughts and
made relief prints with us and to @agmengage for having me 🌿
nawkadnileb😍😍😍
sabsrizviart❤❤ [Text source: Wu_Stephanie Instagram]

The Art Gallery of Mississauga's (twitter page had the following message with the accompanying image:

@AGMengage
21h21 hours ago

TODAY! See our #summer #exhibitions – the #gallery's open 12-4 AND we'll be making #posters in Passion! Protest! Posters! w/ #artist Stephanie Wu on Princess Royal Dr. 12-6. #mississauga #mississaugaart #communityarts #cdnart #artmaking #artsandculture #artnews #agmfirstnewnext

Wu: Queer Quolor:


Stephanie Wu
Installation view of We Met Online: Finding Each Other,
Exhibited at The Khyber Centre for the Arts, 2017
mage Source: Visual Arts News Canada

WU: The White Ally Gloves is a critique on white folks that claim they are allies but aren’t willing to do the work. The idea of the gloves is that they can take them off whenever they believe they have contributed enough. They have the choice to not do anything while benefiting off of the systems QTPOCs live in. The Chinese character on the glove says “love” and it comments on white allies using “love” as an excuse to silence the urgency and anger of queer, trans, black, indigenous, people of colour experiences. I believe that allyship plays an important role in dismantling the oppressive structures we live in. But often times, I see white queer folks put “ally” on their dating profile or social media as if it’s a badge of honour. These are some things I believe are important in QTPOC allyship:
[Source: Neon Defiance: Wu interview on Visual Arts News Canada]

More on Wu here, here and here.

The Gay Gay Gay Shades of Summer

It's a gay gay gay summer, tell us those stacked chairs where the original four muskokas had more poetry and better design.


The previous Muskoka chairs in summer version of the Holt window display,
removed and replaced when "Pride" started to take over

[All Photos By: KPA]

Now all we see is the promiscuity.

But it is Pride Week after all, and we must CELEBRATE!



About a week ago, I posted the above image as a prelude to summer.

A couple of days ago, I went into the Holt department store and asked about the store designer who put together the window display.

A young woman told me that she did it, although she was following directions from "head office."

"You still have to interpret the guidelines. It looks great!" I encouraged her.

Then I had some kind of brainwave and asked if I could see the store's managers. I wanted to ask if I could somehow be involved in window display designs. That way, I can ask about this particular one without being too "inquisitive."

I went to the "customer service" post and asked the staff there to see a manager, who asked if he could help me.

"Well, I have some questions."

"Could you give me some idea of your question?" persisted the customer service assistant (a Chinese man with bleached blonde hair with dark roots showing - that is the pseudo-appropriation of white identity that is now common amongst non-white youth).

"Well, I have a design background. I would like to know if I could be involved in helping the design of future window displays."

"You can apply online and post your resume."

That was exactly what I was trying to avoid. I didn't want to work at Holt at all. Imagine my altercations with "rich" "foreigners" who have no real idea of the value, cultural specifically, of the goods they're buying.

"Oh yes. But could I still see a manager? It makes it easier to see if I qualify."

The man tapped his fingers somewhat aggressively on the counter. He thought a little. Then dialed a number.

Eventually a woman came down. She was short and stout and in her mid-forties. She also looked half black and half white. She was dressed in a black baggy get-up which did not fit with the colorful designer clothes she walked by.

To make a longer story short(er), the woman was just about to give me the email address of the Head Office honchos who direct the "visual look" of the store. Perhaps my insistence threw her off and she said: "It is better if you give me your phone number." I don't blame her. I would have done the same.

"Oh. OK. But I will give you my email. That is easier for me to communicate." (And I will also have a record of the transactions (or not) - although I didn't say this).

I added: "I have a design and photography background, graphic design, websites. But I also have textile design training and I can visualize things three dimensionally. I think that is helpful for window displays."

"Oh. Yes."

Me: "But could you show me if the theme of bright summer colors are a Canadiana theme with the Muskoka chairs?"

Manageress: "Well you know this has to do wth pride don't you?"

Me: "The whole display concept?"

Manageress: "Well it started off as a prelude to summer. But now it is merging with Pride Week."

Me: "Oh. I see!"

I didn't see that coming!!!

Me: "What exactly is "Pride? Is it to do with Multiculturalism?" I played the innocent.

Manageress: "No. It is Pride Week. There is a big Pride Month going on in Toronto and we wanted to be a part of it."

"Of course! The homosexual parades. Harry Rosen is also doing the same thing with their windows! And Simons too! I asked the young man at Harry Rosen what "Pride" meant and he said he didn't know!"

(I really did ask and he really did say "I don't know," as in "I have nothing to do with this!!!")

Then something clicked. This woman is a lesbian!!! The scorn for feminine beauty was apparent in her dark and shapeless garb; her obesity; her lack of any kind of decoration - no makeup, no jewelry.

And she had a long-developed instinct for potential "homophobia." And was intelligent too, able to gauge things in an instant. I could see why she was a manager.

She laughed at my anecdote. "We have nothing to do with the other stores."

She understood that people don't want to be associated with all this. And hence the clever and subversive ways in which she (they) lure the public.

I thanked her and left. I had given her my full name and my Reclaiming Beauty email address. I do that because it takes too much energy to sort out all my various pseudonyms. And plus my battle is now out in the open.

I haven't heard from anyone at Holts, head office or otherwise. I am sure this manager looked me up and saw my various profiles and my many blog posts, and never sent the communication.

Good!!! I am at least as clever as she is! I found out something I wouldn't have known, which is:

The Canadian landscape, which I blogged about here, was readily converted into a "Pride" canvass. " We're Proud to be Canadian!" they tell us.

And "We're all in it together!"

But no, we're not, all in this together!"

Sunday Post: Smoking Out the Heavy Sinners

1 Corinthians 6:9

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind

OK, it is Sunday and I try to refrain from blogging on matters not related to Sunday.

But who said that humor (or laughter) was not allowed on a Sunday?

Here is Alt Right Duke Richard Spencer in an existential mood, according to MAGA DOG (which of course Spencer promptly "retweeted.")

Maybe it has to do with him moving in with his mother after his fame and wealth whittled away.

Or that his Russian spy "wife" (who COULD be a man given Spencer's history) is not around to console him (either way...). See here for more (Part Dvah).

Or that he owes a lot of money and cannot even come up with the payment for a lawyer to get him out of some situation which could just be a scam for cash.

Here is some moral support on twitter for his Morrissey pose:

BringBalanceNow ⚖️
‏Replying to @MAGA_DOG_2020 @RichardBSpencer
Morrissey.

@SexyCentrist
Replying to @MAGA_DOG_2020 @RichardBSpencer
fat?

Yes, Morrissey is a pretty good resemblance, LOL. He's the homosexual "New Wave" pop star who sang "Girlfriend in a Coma" in the 1980s with his band The Smiths. A comatose girlfriend is perfect for The Gays. That was before I was fine tuned to smoking out homosexuals, and liked his music (I had the cassette).

My Beloved Lion: Ambushed

Bruce Eves
Becoming Visible: The Spirit of Stonewall, 1994
Photo, 22.86 cm x 30.48 cm.
New York Public Library collection

The above image is from the group of selected works on the 2018 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts webpage.

I guess one strategy for getting a chance at selection for a Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts is a "message." Well I would think that my America (Americas) theme aided by my Reclaiming Beaut has it all.

No! You also need the pink triangle. Or any "other" label.

“Bruce Eves has a restless mind. His commitment to the rigor of historical research – whether art history, gay history, or his own personal history – has been at the core of his work across his 40-year career. Through performance, curatorial, installation, archival and photo-based projects, he has produced a remarkably prolific body of work that exhibits a logical growth and development without falling into the trap of easy repetition.

That Eves has been able to wrestle with the challenges and traumas he has encountered, and found within them the seeds of art, illustrates his vitality as an artist and his ability to fashion artistic assertions from his own lived experiences. This echoes what philosopher Mary Warnock would insist ‘operates under perpetual tension: the only way to cope with life is to learn what to forget; the only way to feel one has an identity is to remember.’”

- Lily Eng, performance artist (nominator)

My beloved lion at the New York Public Library, whom I have photographed so many times, gets ambushed by this year's GG Winner.

You pick.


Kidist Paulos Asrat
Fortitude: Lion by the New York Public Library, 2017
Photo

The Lesbian Vs. God and Other Stories

Hernandez (middle) performing Future Folk with her
Sulong Theatre Collective, which is a play based on:
"The experiences of Filipino women who come to Canada to work as nannies.
They send their wages back home, and hope after 24 months of employment
to become citizens and bring their own families to Canada."[Source]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our Neighborhood Filipina Story Teller portrayed in my recent post Catch Them When They're Young has quite a resume writing for "minors":

Kilt Pins

In a Catholic high school in Scarborough, Ontario, amidst low-income housing, difficult race relations, and poverty, a young woman struggles to find her sexual identity. In this sincere portrayal of high-school kids pitting the voice of God and thousands of years of scripture against the voice of their own bodies, Kilt Pins cheekily asks “Is your kilt pin up or down?”

Scarborough

Scarborough is a low-income, culturally diverse neighbourhood east of Toronto, the fourth largest city in North America; like many inner-city communities, it suffers under the weight of poverty, drugs, crime, and urban blight. Scarborough the novel employs a multitude of voices to tell the story of a tight-knit neighbourhood under fire: among them, Victor, a black artist harassed by the police; Winsum, a West Indian restaurant owner struggling to keep it together; and Hina, a Muslim school worker who witnesses first-hand the impact of poverty on education.

And then there are the three kids who work to rise above a system that consistently fails them: Bing, a gay Filipino boy who lives under the shadow of his father’s mental illness; Sylvie, Bing’s best friend, a Native girl whose family struggles to find a permanent home to live in; and Laura, whose history of neglect by her mother is destined to repeat itself with her father.

And more on Arsenal Press

Arsenal Pulp Press is a book publisher in Vancouver, Canada with over 300 titles currently in print, which include literary fiction and nonfiction; cultural and gender studies; LGBT and multicultural literature; cookbooks, including vegan; alternative crafts; graphic novels; visual arts; and books in translation. We are interested in literature that engages and challenges readers, and which asks probing questions about the world around us.

Of course these welfare artists insist that they get their financial sources from tax payers money courtesy of the Canadian Government (don't let the meek word "suggests" deceive you):

Catherine Hernandez suggests several strategies to redress...deep-seated inequities: hiring more diverse teaching staff; educating teaching staff in anti-oppressive values; implementing a “much more aggressive diverse application process to ensure the student body is multicultural”; and diversifying the curriculum beyond the canonical (white) narratives that dominate it [Source].

Here is one such publisher which has produced Hernandez's children's book, that petitioned successfully to get LGBQT children's books into the school curriculum through the Toronto District School Board:

"Flamingo Rampant is a micro-press with a mission – to produce feminist, racially-diverse, LGBTQ positive children’s books. This is an effort to bring visibility and positivity to the reading landscape of children everywhere. We make books kids love that love them right back, bedtime stories for beautiful dreams, and books that make kids of all kinds say with pride : that kid’s just like me!" tells us the publisher

Hernandez has had a lot of practice with her own daughter who is now around thirteen years old. Hernandez appears to have been married to a male from whom she separated soon after her daughter's birth. She writes: "I parented Arden with little to no help from friends, family and my spouse at the time." She says that her children's book M is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book was inspired by her daughter.

"Based on my many marches with my own child during what she called “Rainbow Time”, the book will follow in an ABC format, a small child as she gets ready to march alongside her mama at Pride.“

Previously-married-to-a-male Hernandez has a daughter now thirteen

Just shy of Arden’s 12th birthday, she approaches my partner, Nazbah, in the kitchen. “I’m so glad you’re my stepparent,” she says. Nazbah considers spearing a fork into their own heart in order to stop the tears of joy.[Source]

Catch Them While They're Young

M is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book
Written by Catherine Hernandez
Illustrated By Marisa Firebaugh

The Friendly Neighborhood Lesbian Storyteller is coming to a gallery near you!

The Art Gallery of Mississauga hosts regular "story telling" session for toddlers.

Here is information on the upcoming session at the gallery's website:

AGM TOT SPOT!
with Guest Storyteller Catherine Hernandez
NEXT SESSION: FRIDAY, JUNE 16, 10 - 11 AM
Art Gallery of Mississauga | 300 City Centre Drive | FREE & Open to the Public

Monthly on Fridays, 10 - 11 AM, join us at the gallery for an hour of stories, movement and imagination!

Catherine Hernandez is a proud queer woman of colour, radical mother, activist, theatre practitioner and the Artistic Director of b current performing arts. Her one-woman show, The Femme Playlist, premiered at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as part of the afterRock Play Series, co-produced by b current, Eventual Ashes and Sulong Theatre. Her children’s book, M is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book was published by Flamingo Rampant in 2015.
The AGM recommends 1 parent for every 2 children at Tot Spot!

Below is the accompanying image:



Listen to the animated lesbian-Filipina-Canadian story-teller Catherine Hernandez tell the tale of the girl with the 'stache.



From Hernandez' website:

Catherine Hernandez is a proud queer woman of colour, radical mother, activist, theatre practitioner, burlesque performer, writer, the Artistic Director of Sulong Theatre Company and the owner of Out and About Home Daycare.

Yes: the owner of Out and About Home Daycare.

Here is is Hernandez performing The Boy and the Bindi by "transgender" "artist" Vivek Shraya (also an Art Gallery of Mississauga presenter).

And here she is in her pretty pink dress protesting Charlottetown Junior Public School's last minute cancellation of her book reading for preschoolers. This was her daughter's former school in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto.



But your friendly neighborhood daycare story-teller isn't as pleasant as she looks.

" />
Catherine Hernandez: Ethnic Lesbian
Twitter prole photo

Nor as Canadian as she seems

Dancing at the Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts & Culture

My hubs got permanent residency to Canada today! We are so damn happy. #marriedanamerican #welcome #wantadonut pic.twitter.com/YE99TeMyUU

— Catherine Hernandez (@theloudlady) March 18, 2017

#marriedanamerican should really be #marriedanamercanindian