ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Svitlana Dovganych

My name is Svitlana Dovganych. I was born and grew up in Ukraine. As a child I liked to create things with my hands, which is why my parents encouraged me to enter the Art College which I did. There for the first time in my life, I was immersed in an artistic environment. I was so happy to meet famous artists who readily shared their experience with us students. While trying different media I realized that most of all I like to work with ceramic clay. I like the way you can easily shape it, creating anything you can imagine. I was (and I’m still) fascinated by the metamorphosis of the piece, when it comes out of kiln completely changing its structure and colour. After graduating from college, I decided to continue my education so I spent a couple more years at the Art Institute in my hometown, which enhanced my love to beauty. During and after my study I was lucky to work in a little handmade gift store, where I met many interesting and creative people, who definitely expanded my artistic outlook.

In 2019 I moved with my husband to Canada, namely to Fernie, which started a completely new page of my life. From day one I fell in love with the majestic Rocky Mountains, which remind me of a bigger scale of the Ukrainian Carpathians I was surrounded by in my childhood.

Here in Fernie I have met many talented artists who use a variety of materials to reveal their creativity. Observing their art pieces in the Fernie Arts Co-op and other local galleries inspired me to start creating something myself. I did some research and was pleasantly surprised by the variety of ceramic supplies available in Canada. Soon I was happy to get a small kiln, a box of the whitest porcelain I could imagine, and everything a starting ceramist might need. I thought about how to combine picturesque local landscapes with my ceramic skills. That’s how the golden mountains on porcelain jewelry was born.

I should also mention, that being a very emotional person I found that making my pieces has a significant tranquilizing effect on me. While working, I’m so focused on what I do that I can completely forget for a while about all of the troubles in the world.

As any artist, I’m very happy when I see that other people enjoy my work. I know that what I make is just a faint glare of majestic beauty that surrounds us, still I want to do my part in glorifying the reflection of all of this splendor.

Svitlana’s work is available at the Fernie Arts Co-op, and can also be viewed on Instagram at @heatgust.

The Griz Pork Shoulder aka Clairenitas

by CLAIRE SMALLWOOD

The Year of the Rabbit in Chinese astrology symbolizes patience and luck. The pork shoulder is patient while you sleep or ski powder (should you need to leave it unattended) and preparing it will bring you the good fortune of a versatile protein that can be used many different ways. Hopefully the pork shoulder will summon the good graces of the Griz with more powder days this winter!

If I can impart any cooking wisdom that ventures beyond a specific recipe, it would be to have versatile options at your disposal for when the going gets hectic. Winter is a time when it feels like there’s never enough time to get things done. The nights are long and cold, and when you’ve been out in the cold all day, you want to make something satisfying. If we lack the patience to think through our evening dinner plans (or even lunch options) it’s easy to feel drawn toward fast food. Especially if you’re warm, toasty, and buzzy-wuzzy from the Griz Bar (and you might have a few friends in tow), your future self will thank you for busting out one of these recipes the night before. You’ll reach legendary Griz status with your Highway 210 Pork shoulder.

Start with a pork shoulder (sometimes this can be listed as a pork butt or blade shoulder roast). Size doesn’t really matter, although smaller will definitely overall take less time to cook.

Generously season the pork shoulder in a baking dish with kosher salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper, and whole fennel seed. Pop it in the oven at 210 degrees, uncovered, for at least 10 hours (overnight is perfect). If it’s a larger pork shoulder, you’ll want at least 12 hours. I prefer pork shoulder without the bone, but work with whatever you’ve got. I sometimes cook it for up to 14-15 hours.

When the pork shoulder comes out of the oven, you will need to exercise restraint and possibly hide the pork shoulder from other people or else it might get picked apart due to its delicious nature. It will have a thick crust where the fat has rendered. It may also seem a little dry on the sides, but that’s where the Clairenitas come in!

Here are three options for serving the pork shoulder:

1. Enjoy right out of the oven: Serve with dijon mustard, apple-fennel jelly (or something similar), a crusty warm baguette, and a salad. Let people serve themselves!

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2. Classic Carnitas (my friends call

these Clairenitas): Let the pork cool and then pull the meat apart using your hands.

In a skillet, heat a very small amount of oil with 1 large yellow onion, sliced julienne style (google it!). Let the onions start to become translucent, and then add the pork to the skillet. Depending on how much meat you’re working with, you may need to do this in small batches. Keep an eye to make sure the fat from the pork continues to render. If your pork is more lean, you’ll need to add more oil to the pan. Add a healthy amount of lime juice and taste. Adjust additional seasonings as needed. Optional to add diced jalapeños for heat. Finish with 1 cup of chopped cilantro.

Serve on warm tortillas with shredded cabbage, cheese, a cilantro crema sauce, salsa, or hot sauce of your choice.

3. Asian-style Carnitas: Follow the recipe above with two important tweaks: in addition to onion, add 1 tablespoon of finely diced ginger and 1 teaspoon of fine chopped garlic before adding the meat. As the shredded pork gets added and starts to re-heat, add ¼ - ½ cup of fish sauce in addition to lime juice. This will help to carmelize the pork. Careful on testing for salt before you add too much fish sauce. Finishing with optional jalapenos and 1 cup of chopped cilantro.

In addition to serving as tacos, I’d recommend rolling into small burritos with flour tortillas, and then returning them to the pan to crisp up. This will make an asian-style taquito and you can serve it with a peanut dipping sauce or thai sweetchili sauce.

Thanks for following along for another column of Everyone Eats! Next month I’ll share all my favourite sauce recipes, including a peanut dipping sauce and the cilantro crema.

Happy powder skiing, friends!

2023 FEATURE FILM LINEUP!

5 FEATURE FILMS • SHORTS • OPENING AND CLOSING RECEPTIONS

Weekend Passes: $75 Individual Night Tickets: $35 (On sale January 15 depending on availability)

January 27-29, 2023 Tickets are only available online through Eventbrite. fernielovesfilm.ca To purchase tickets visit:

Artistic Intelligence and Artificial Intellect

by MICHAEL HEPHER

It’s become our habit to use the turning of the year as a time to reflect, to appraise the past trip around the sun, and attempt to implement changes we feel need to happen in our lives. I often find myself ready for a new outlook, and—even though we are typically heading into the coldest part of winter—something to look forward to in my life.

The last few years have left us all a bit offkilter in our lives. I feel like we’ve almost seen too much newness. Perhaps it’s time for some good old-fashioned normalcy, but that’s not how humans work: we like the newer, shinier thing, and so we press forward regardless.

About a year ago I started seeing some friends on Facebook posting strange images on their social media. It was expressionistic art I’d never seen before, but there was something oddly familiar about it, and also something underlying it that felt unnerving—as if it was made by extraterrestrials. Turns out that feeling was not too far off the mark. On closer inspection I discovered that the artwork was generated by a new generation of Artificial Intelligence that scoured the internet for images and codified them into databases based on style, subject matter, and a host of other data. From there, a simple query field could spit out a piece of ‘art’ based on, for example; banjo player on a horse in the style of Pablo Picasso. Something we’ve all been lacking in our lives, right?

At about the same time, I started seeing ads online for AI bots that can ‘write effective blog posts in minutes.’ It’s clear that AI has hit the mainstream and is now at the point where it can be monetized to help us produce the truckloads of ‘content’ that the modern algorithm has decided we need.

There are many problems with this new situation; not the least of which is that our computers are generating content so that a different computer can now decide who to show this computer-generated content to, all while we humans stand waiting to be fed a stream of vaguely disconcerting automatically generated images and text that pick the right words based on the analysis of the ‘average’ found crawling around the internet. The fact that it takes the ‘average’ from the internet should terrify us; it’s algorithmic mediocrity at best. Submitted Photo

Banjo player on a horse in the style of Pablo Picasso. This is AI generated art.

“Artists are important to our society, full stop.”

The next problem is that these AI generators are taking work away from real creatives, writers, and illustrators who understand the unique complexities of being human and can address them in subtle and poetic ways that a computer cannot. Artists are important to our society, full stop.

The largest problem, however, is that all of these AIs are using databases filled with images and writing in the unique styles of artists living and dead, and they are using that information without permission from the artists to generate work in their style. In Canada, intellectual property law is clear: our work is protected upon creation, and you cannot legally hire an artist to make a work in another artist’s proprietary style. These bloated databases cannot generate new styles—all they can do is mash up the styles of existing artists into something ‘original’ but derivative, and every one of them is patently illegal. The ongoing use of commercial ‘artistic’ AIs devalues the work of an already undervalued and underpaid segment of our society whose role in our culture is to remind us of the unique and complex qualities of being human, connecting with one another, and understanding the existential moments of life. How can a computer possibly fill that role adequately?

Is there an argument for an ethically sourced art-generating AI? Sure, the process itself is interesting, and there are creative possibilities that these different tools could give us, but these AI tools need to be sourced from databases of artists who have had a chance to opt in and are compensated adequately for doing so. Underlying all of this, however, is the bigger question of the kind of future we want for ourselves, because we have to choose now to stop AI from becoming the primary tool we use to write our songs, compile our news articles, and fill our visual world with mediocre alien work that feels vaguely familiar.

In the meantime, I’m going to head into my studio like I normally do and create something new and hopeful—and uniquely human. Won’t you join me?

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Painted Smile

by Sadie Rosgen

I met Ghaith Sabri while he was working on an organic farm in Selma, Nova Scotia, Canada. I was struck by his intriguing accent, his wild black curly hair, and his general enthusiasm for all things alive or dead. He sees the world through a cornucopia of lenses, and I wanted to be part of how he saw the world, even if it was just for a moment. He taught me about Palestine, his birthplace. He taught me about the true value of kindness. He taught me that luck is relative and that if you really engage with life, it will make you wealthy beyond measure.

10 years later, as I anticipated my valued friend arriving on my snowy Fernie sidewalk, I was reminded of how bright this guy really is. So full. Such a source of light and luck for me and my family. My affirmation for 2023 is to surround myself with these sources of light. Beacons that light the path for the next up and coming year.

Happy New Year, the year of the rabbit.

Painted Smile

By Sadie Rosgen

source light

the melody of his voice is put to music lyrical hypnosis the experience is consuming transported by history and time

source light

the tide brought him in sweeping the beach with ornamental sand from another place from here from everywhere source light

his beacon lights up the ocean radiating off the water wrapping his energy everywhere he stands forgiving patience and luck

BUSINESS, LIFESTYLE AND LEISURE

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Roger Eugene Ailes (1940 – 2017) was an American television executive and media consultant. He was the chairman and CEO of Fox News, Fox Television Stations and 20th Television, and he was a media consultant for Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, and for Rudy Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign.

In July 2016, he resigned from Fox News after being accused of sexual harassment by several female Fox employees, including on-air hosts Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Andrea Tantaros. Shortly afterward, he became an adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, in which he assisted with debate preparation.

Bombshell focuses not only on the sexual harassment scandals that swirled around Ailes for decades, but also his downfall and departure from Fox News. The film’s story focuses mainly on Megan Kelly, and the experiences which ultimately led her to tell the world her story of workplace sexual harassment and abuse.

This is a good movie, and features Charlize Theron as Megan Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, and. John Lithgow as Roger Ailes.

Nicole Kidman is one of Australia’s biggest Hollywood success stories. An incredibly accomplished actress and producer, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of writerVirginia Woolf in the drama film The Hours (2002). She received additional Academy Award nominations for her roles in the musical Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Being the Ricardos (2021).

Charlize Theron is a South African and American actress and producer, who received an Academy Award for her role in Monster (2003), a nomination for her role as a sexually abused woman seeking justice in North Country (2005) and a third nomination for her role in Bombshell.

John Lithgow is an American actor who has been prolific in films, television and on stage. He is best known for his television role as Dick Solomon in the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996–2001) winning three Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Actor in a Comedy Series for his performance. Lithgow also won great acclaim for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in Peter Morgan’s historical drama The Crown (2016–2019) on Netflix. On screen he received Academy Award nominations for his performances in The World According to Garp (1982) and Terms of Endearment (1983).

Director Jay Roach, probably best known for directing all of the Austin Powers movies, and the wonderful bio-pic Trumbo, a film of very high quality indeed.

While Bombshell is technically excellent, I have a tremendous amount of difficulty recommending it. The film presents Megyn Kelly as a hero, but I have great difficulty sympathizing with her. This is a person who has spent decades acting as a mouthpiece for the American right, who has made a career out of putting forward extremely xenophobic ideas and has arguably made the United States worse during her tenure at Fox news. What happened to her was terrible, yes, but that does not change the fact that my politics get in the way of an empathic response to her. I sincerely wish that this film had centered around a fictional woman at a fictional news organization, it would have made things much easier for me.

However, not everyone shares my social democratic values, and if you really do want to watch this finely crafted film, it is currently on Netflix for all the world to see.

One and a half thumbs up.

Bombshell

by ANDREW VALLANCE