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Arts Briefs

Exploring the artistic side of TWSSF 2011

Organizers of the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival are stepping up their artistic game up in a big way to mark the festival's 16 th anniversary, offering bigger prizes and new competitions to keep local art lovers on their toes.

This year, there are five key artistic components included in the multifaceted festival: the Olympus Pro Photographer Showdown, 3PO (formerly dubbed ThreePointOh), Filmmaker Showdown, State of the Art and the brand-new Intersection. Here's a quick rundown for anyone who needs a refresher:

The Pro Photographer Showdown and Filmmaker Showdown are always sold-out affairs, and this year, Watermark Communications (the team behind the ten-day festival), are upping the ante for both of these crowd favourites. The prize pool for the Pro Photographer Showdown has reached $17,000, and Event Director Lilli Clark adds, "the call for entries has been released for the preliminary submissions deadline of March 1st and this year is sure to maintain the extraordinarily impressive lineup of photographic submissions." To mark the 10th anniversary of the Filmmaker Showdown, organizers have doubled the prize money, offering $10,000 cash for Best in Show, with additional prizing for People's Choice. They'll also be holding a special 10-year anniversary screening with an awards ceremony to showcase some of the gems the competition has produced over the last decade.

A relatively new addition to the TWSSF line-up, the digital showcase known as ThreePointOh, is being re-launched for 2011 as 3PO. Presented as a celebration of innovation, technology and culture, the event asks artists for three to five-minute digital shorts that morph film, photo, graphics and animation, visual art, and other media into a visual spectacle, with $3,500 up for grabs.

For those who appreciate the static visual art experience, TWSSF is once again playing host to State of the Art, a nine-day gallery show that features invited artists who work in a wide range of mediums, from paint and photo to woodwork, sketch and more. A call for entries for State of the Art has already been issued, and the deadline (Feb. 15) is quickly approaching, so any artists interested in participating should apply soon!

Last but not least is a brand-new competition that's been created to celebrate Toss's Sweet Sixteen: Intersection will amalgamate the festival's most popular flagship elements (ski, snowboard, film and photo). With $10,000 in prizing up for grabs, organizers are expecting the best of the best in the film and photo world, plus world-class skiers and boarders, to be part of this groundbreaking opportunity.

If you're interested in participating in any of the artistic competitions included in the 2011 TWSSF, head to www.wssf.com for more info.

 

Wearing Chili on your chest

Whistler's favourite artist (seriously, he's been voted the favourite artist for seven years straight in Pique 's Best of Whistler awards) will be coming to a Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC) near you this spring.

Chili Thom recently wrapped up a commercial design project for the Canadian mega sporting goods retailer, creating four t-shirt designs for their spring/summer climbing collection - two for men and two for women. The shirts feature iconic climbing objects: two have graphical versions of Chili's infamous summertime trees, one features the Bugaboos, and the others all have climbers.

"I only got to use four colours, so it was challenging," Chili said during a recent interview.

"They're way more graphical, which is kind of neat because back in high school, before I started doing all my landscapes and everything, I was way more into the graphical design side of things.

"It was really neat because I was like, 'Oh, I want to do some tattoos or change my style up a little bit and just experiment,' and all of a sudden, all of these opportunities just fell into my lap as soon as I decided to do that."

The designs for MEC are a definite departure for the artist, whose signature, stylized landscapes are very popular within the community of Whistler. Chili says fans of his work would actually be a bit surprised to find that these are his designs.

The project also posed a technical challenge for the artist, who had to take things a step further and figure out how to "vectorize" his paintings in Illustrator.

"I've actually sort of wanted to trend a little bit more to graphical images so I could do things like t-shirts and stuff with them," he said.

"Now that I know how to vectorize all my files really well, I can do some pieces, vectorize them so I can blow them up huge, and I was thinking of doing wall decals so you could have a giant cluster of trees in the corner of your room."

On top of this design project for MEC, Chili also recently completed his fourth top-sheet graphic for Prior Snowboards' skis and snowboards, which is currently in production and will be available this season. It features another graphical design, a self-contained image of "swirly snow," snowflakes and the iconic Inukshuk.

 

Squamish talks trash

A team of Vancouver-based filmmakers is making a special appearance in Squamish this week to talk trash with local residents.

For one entire year, partners Grant Baldwin and Jenny Rustemeyer bought nothing new and threw away nothing as part of a household competition to see who could produce the least amount of garbage. But what started out as a personal challenge has morphed into a feature-length documentary, The Clean Bin Project .

The film follows the couple on their quest to answer the question "Is it possible to live completely waste free?" The partners go head-to-head in a battle to see who can swear off consumerism and produce the least landfill garbage in an entire year. The end result is a film that combines their light-hearted competition to "refuse", reduce and recycle with a much darker examination of the large-scale environmental impacts of our "throw-away society."

"We had watched a lot of environmental documentaries that ended up making us feel overwhelmed by the scale of our current problems," Baldwin said in a recent release.

"We wanted to make a film that would be entertaining and leave people feeling inspired to change something in their own lives."

The film won the 2010 MOBI award for excellence in media and journalism, and received rave reviews at community screenings across Canada this past summer.

"We just started as a personal challenge, but it turns out that people are really intrigued by how we managed to produce so little garbage," Rustemeyer added. "The response has been great; people say they have been really inspired to make changes in their own lives."

Rustemeyer and Baldwin spent last summer cycling across Canada, screening the film. Now, The Clean Bin Project is headed to Squamish, with a screening in Quest University's Multipurpose Room on Friday, Jan. 28 at 7 p.m. This event is free for all students, and admission is by donation for everyone else, with proceeds going directly to support this independent film.

To learn more about their project, visit www.cleanbinmovie.com or www.cleanbinproject.com , or follow them on Twitter (@CleanBinProject).

 

Game-on, for literacy!

Did you know that today (Thursday, Jan. 27) is Family Literacy Day? To help raise awareness and show your support for the literary community on a local level, head to the Whistler Public Library (WPL), where the Friends of the Whistler Library are hosting a Scrabble For Literacy Tournament.

All ages are welcome, and there are prizes up for grabs, as well! Registration isn't required, so just show up between the hours of 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. at the Community Room of the WPL.