"Badass Faerie of Rock & Roll"

We were joking around.... When my model looked at me right after I had been using the glitter, my face was covered & she was laughing, because of a few factors, she suddenly declared I was like the rock'n'roller of the art world, then changed that to, "Wait! You are a rock'n'roller of the faerie world!" and then she elaborated (clearly sleep dep was kicking in LOL) with, "Wait! We both are the rock'n'rollers of the faerie world!!!"; which is what lead to this miniature photoshoot in the middle of the stop-motion animation shoot. 

I am working on three new different stop-motion animation, collaborative, ongoing photoshoots right now, while also thinking about the editing on old projects I have to complete (they are almost finished, bit of this is A.D.D.). I have realized that I love producing the material alot more then I love editing it (ok, editing can be a bit of a drag but once I am finished editing then it is very exciting, I push myself through the post production by remembering how good it will feel to have a finish product). I am not saying too  much about any of these new projects until they are done but two are with local musicians; one being for Projet Æolia and the other for Kyra Shaughnessy .

Aftermath

I made friends with a young woman who was here visiting from the French region of Switzerland, she came from a very tiny village (an actual village that is thousands of years old, which I find interesting); she originally approached me because she wished to learn how to do henna. But quickly we became friends. I found it interesting to learn that when she left her village, the 20 minute drive it used to take to get to the nearest city she thought was a very long time to spend in a car travelling anywhere but since spending four months in Canada and experiencing how we live, how far cities & towns are spread from each other, or even how long it takes to get from one end of Montreal to the other (as cities in the world at large goes, this is not really that big; I was stunned when I saw first hand how big Hong-Kong was for example; it's all relative); now she is going back to her village with a very new perspective on everything. She said now the idea of travelling to the countries around her country seems very close; she has the travel bug now. 

I really enjoyed talking with her, we took her out to the woods at one point and she asked me about the 1st Nations People in Canada because she said that she noticed this was a taboo subject that no one would talk about to her and she felt it was very hypocritical since she noticed that people didn't have a problem using 1st Nations People as a selling feature to tourists. So we talked for two  hours on this subject and I told her about the residential schools & other important subjects. She said that she didn't understand why the native languages as well as the real history, the genocides et cetera were not talked about or taught in school; she felt that it was wrong because everyone talks about the Holocaust & what happened with Hitler & the Jewish but no one talks about what happened to the native people. She was horrified when she learned about what happened. I have done alot of research on again off again, took a few anthropology classes related to the subject, and I was part of an experimental social studies class in high school that focused on 1st Nations history; this in addition to growing up surrounded by several large reservations (age 10-19) & other cultures but we were living close to the Cold Water Reserve. She also did not understand why the Quebec people were worried about language loss when they were making no effort to learn the local 1st Nations languages or culture; she commented about why are the local languages not taught in the public school systems. My response was that this has been my thinking since I was a teenager, I never understood why we don't teach the local languages and that there is no import placed upon Canadians to learn the 1st Nations languages and culture.

We talked about how you go to India & even though it was colonized, it's very obvious that the dominant culture is still Indian (even if there was a certain amount of cultural exchange or assimilation, depending on your perspective) but yet here in Canada, you don't see the influence of Native culture on mainstream society or mainstream culture, and this is wrong that it is hidden, taboo. She pointed out that so many cities & towns names are in the local languages (such as Kelowna means Bear). I have tried to bring up these types of subjects with white Canadians to just initiate dialogue, get people thinking and people automatically get defensive and annoyed with me for bringing it up, they dont' understand why we should be talking about these subjects. I found it refreshing that an outsider from Europe saw the problem, saw the issue, saw why we need to be talking about it, and embracing the 1st Nations people, start honoring them. 

Kyra Shaughnessy - Singer Songwriter

So since I had such a strong synergy with my Swiss friend (she has gone back home now), I needed to reshoot one section (not the whole thing, only a certain portion) of one of the stopmotion shoots from the week before but I needed a body double since my original model was not available to reshoot that particular scene. Lucky for me my young friend had time & patience. As she said, "It's never a good idea to frustrate the artist." I thought this was very funny. Our shoot took 18 hours, she allowed me to be very nit-picky with details, which was really awesome. Of course I wanted to do more details & make it even more fine art but I needed to be realistic to my model's energy levels (as well as my own). We had alot of fun together, as our teaser photos from that project make clear.

Be sure to check out my new website at: www.aprilanna.com

Studio Cat - The Sphynx