Recently, two new murals by Roy Arden were unveiled at the Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project in Coal Harbour, Vancouver. Using historic photo images from the Vancouver Public Library, Arden’s giant collage Big House (2008) depicts events in pre-WWII British Columbia. The focus of Big House is the social and economic struggles, conflicts and realities [...]

I am not one to remember my nocturnal emancipations. Try as I might, I cannot remember much. However, last night was quite the pleasant exception. I have been down with the flu for the past week, and so have not been able to sleep well, if at all. I am just now getting better, and [...]

As a child, I hated mealtimes. I was never interested in eating. Faced with the gargantuan task of feeding myself, I would divert my attention to playing with my food. All the broccoli florets would become a forest, all the mounds of rice would be molded into cliffs, I would pour in all the soup [...]

In this day and age of Flickr and Facebook, I have very few pictures of myself taken. The only ones that surface are ones you see as my avatar. The last time I had a picture taken was during my trip to Malaysia - a year ago. I just do not like the idea of [...]

I overheard a debate yesterday that piqued my interest. The topic was popular music. The young men were going back and forth over the quality of contemporary music. Simplistic in structure, one of them believed that we will never again see the likes of Mozart or Bach - certainly not with the umpteenth recycle of [...]

As a child, I feared darkness. My imagination would run wild, shadows would lurk behind me. I was afraid of ghosts - of the mysterious dead nothingness. I was afraid of being dragged into the bowels of the unknown, never to see the light of day again. But my fears were not warranted, as they [...]

I am lucky to never have experienced the devastation brought on by war, natural disasters or nuclear accidents. I never want to. But I admit I am curious. I am afraid of feeling that eerie emptiness typically left behind in affected areas, yet part of me wonders what it must feel like… And here is [...]

A portrait of a young woman thought to be created by a 19th century German artist and sold two years ago for about $19,000 is now being attributed by art experts to Leonardo da Vinci and valued at more than $150 million. The unsigned chalk, ink and pencil drawing, known as “La Bella Principessa,” was [...]

I am simply not able to understand war. I understand conflict, and I acknowledge that conflict is the sapling that would eventually bloom into war. But why can we not resolve our conflicts in a peaceful manner? Why must we attempt to solve it with salvos of missiles? Why do we think that destruction can [...]

William Sidney Mount was born in Setauket, Long Island, and also died there, but the center of home life for him and his family was the Hawkins farm (now the Hawkins-Mount Homestead) in nearby Stony Brook, which had been in his mother’s family for generations. The property of ninety-some acres provided limitless sources of inspiration [...]