What’s up: Kathleen Black & Elowen Megan, Prairie Oddities, Bistyek, Kakanacisitacahk, Nutcracker tea, Sam Singer

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/11/2024 (665 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lineal Threads: Kathleen Black & Elowen Megan

• Cr8ery, 125 Adelaide St.
• To Nov. 26, Tuesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In Kathleen Black’s Bunting Lake, Snowy Owl, the face of a snowy owl, created from thread, emerges from a pale blue and white 1960s-era survey map of the Northwest Territories — a tactile reminder of all the life inhabiting land rendered only in mining-department depths and elevations.

Bunting Lake, Snowy Owl is one of the works on view in Lineal Threads, a mother-daughter show featuring Winnipeg fibre artist Black and her daughter and fellow fibre artist, Elowen Megan. Both artists use cotton, wool, silk and other fibres to create painterly landscapes and scenes, many of them Canadian in theme.

Lineal Threads is on view until Nov. 26, and there are a couple of opportunities to meet the artists: Elowen Megan will be in the gallery on Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Black will be in the gallery on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

— Jen Zoratti

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Prairie Oddities book chat

• Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore, 163 Lilac St.
• Friday, 6:30 p.m.
• Free

The weird, wild and wonderful of Winnipeg (and beyond) are collected in Darren Bernhardt’s latest book Prairie Oddities: Punkinhead, Peculiar Gravities, and More Lesser Known Histories.

Published in October, Prairie Oddities is a followup to Bernhardt’s 2020 book, The Lesser Known: A History of Oddities from the Heart of the Continent. Both collections were published by Great Plains Press and feature tantalizing tidbits from Bernhardt about lesser-known historical quirks from our province, as well as photos throughout.

Among the fascinating facts collected in Prairie Oddities is the wide-ranging history of the Winnipeg Auditorium at 200 Vaughan St. (now the Archives of Manitoba), the antics of Percy Moggey, once called “Manitoba’s Jesse James,” the Bergen Cutoff Bridge near Kildonan Park, the lost bells of St. Boniface and the gravitational anomalies around Hudson Bay. The coffee-table-style book is an ideal gift for the holiday season, or for perusing at your leisure.

Bernhardt will launch Prairie Oddities on Friday at Whodunit?, where he’ll be joined in conversation by bookseller Michael Bumsted. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the chat gets underway at 7. Refreshments will be served and admission is free.

— Ben Sigurdson

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Bistyek

• Inside Out
• Katie + Gunner, 102-141 Bannatyne Ave.
• Opens Friday, runs to Dec. 20

Kakanacisitacahk

• Drumming Our Houses Home
• C’cap, 520 Hargrave St.
• To Saturday

Since moving to Winnipeg from the Kurdish village Afrin in northern Syria, the monoymous Bistyek has become one of the city’s most vibrant visual artists, drawing on his experience of displacement to explore what “place” means. Inspired by the colours of home and the whiplash of movement, Bistyek’s previous exhibitions, including 2022’s F*ck War, have mostly shown off his work in flat dimensions. His manga-inspired portraits are still on view in the artist’s latest showcase, Inside Out, but also on display are some of the artist’s experiments in sculpture. Using shoeboxes and markers, Inside Out shows Bistyek’s exploration of a new medium.

As Inside Out begins, consider also catching the tail-end of the Centre for Cultural and Artistic Practices’ exhibit Kakanacisitacahk: Drumming Our Houses Home at C’cap. The exhibit gathers under one roof the materials that drive the work of One House Many Nations, an Indigenous-led initiative focused on improving housing conditions on First Nations reserves and beyond. Led by nēhīyaw scholar and Idle No More co-founder Sylvia McAdam and Alex Wilson, the academic director of the Aboriginal Education Research Centre at the University of Saskatchewan, the exhibit closes Saturday.

— Ben Waldman

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Nutcracker Afternoon Tea

• Now until Dec. 29
• Velvet Glove, The Fairmont Hotel, 2 Lombard Pl.
• Tickets $39-$69 at opentable.ca, velvet.glove@fairmont.com.

‘Teas the season to get steeped in holiday cheer — and what better way to prepare to feel those warm, fuzzy fes-teave feelings than by indulging a classic Yuletide-themed afternoon tea?

The Fairmont Hotel’s annual Nutcracker feast features a selection of sandwiches, cookies cakes, tarts and scones served in tiered platters, as befits tradition.

For grown-ups looking to indulge in something a tad stronger than a cup of tea, there are three-specialtea cocktails — sake, limoncello and gin-based Dancing Fairy; Drosselmeyer, which has Calvados and spiced rum; and Final Dance with creamy Kahlua and vodka — on offer, although you will have to part with an additional $16 for each, as the drinks are not included as part of the package.

Two non-alcoholic “beverage enhancements” — Date with Clara, a mocktail featuring pineapple, lime juice, grenadine and soda, and the more sophisticated Mouse King’s Crown with Peychaud’s Bitters, cranberry juice, passionfruit syrup and lemon — are $7 a pop if you’d rather a long, cool drink than a little hot one.

— AV Kitching

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Sam Singer album release

• West End Cultural Centre
• Friday, 8 p.m.
• Tickets $24-$30 at Showpass

These days, Sam Singer’s croaky croon is pillowed by one of Winnipeg’s lushest bands, the Beautiful Movers Orchestra.

You can hear them soar on Singer’s new debut album, Where the Rivers Do. Mostly live and analogue AF, Rivers seems to exist in some alternative history where klezmer, beat poetry and country happily mingled in a common tradition.

The results share a little in common with western low-fi royalty such as Calgary’s Cindy Lee and Edmonton’s Mac DeMarco. Although the most obvious influence here seems to be Bob Dylan, another Ashkenazi Prairie boy who turned the great songbook on its head, and whom Singer sounds like at times. (A popular rumour also has it that Singer is the nephew of one of Sonic Youth’s members, which we’ll shamelessly put out there without further investigating.)

It’s a lot harder to hear the Beautiful Movers Orchestra and Singer together live. That’s surely because the orchestra counts nine members, making this concert, which features everyone together, pretty rare. Fresh off a three-week tour of Western Canada (he toured with a four-piece), Singer is joined by openers Bush Lotus as well as Sophie and Emma Stevens (as Buglando).

— Conrad Sweatman

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