Mega­phone, Van­cou­ver’ street paper, has repub­lished an arti­cle from Sad Mag’s Queer His­tory Issue. The arti­cle, Tough in Tran­sit by Daniel Zom­par­elli, fol­lows Char­l­ize Gor­don and Suzanne Kil­roy as they nav­i­gate gen­der and sex­u­al­ity in one of Vancouver’s tough­est neighbourhoods.

Sean Con­don, Mega­phone’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, had this to say on the magazine’s website:

The Down­town East­side may be home to our city’s most mar­gin­al­ized res­i­dents, but that doesn’t mean it’s always accept­ing of peo­ple who live on the fringes. Just ask Char­l­ize Gor­don and Suzanne Kilroy.

Char­l­ize, a recently-transgendered woman, and Suzanne, who’s two-spirited, have bravely faced down myr­iad chal­lenges rang­ing from sim­ple homo­pho­bia to phys­i­cal abuse while find­ing their places as proud mem­bers of the DTES’s LGBTQ com­mu­nity. The diverse social makeup of today’s DTES owes much to the strug­gles and tri­umphs of peo­ple like Char­l­ize and Suzanne, as uncov­ered in this story from Sad Mag’s Queer His­tory issue.

You can buy the issue now from one of Mega­phone’s ven­dors for a sug­gested dona­tion of $2.

Give the gift of Sad Mag for just $12, and remind your friends and fam­ily of your good taste the whole year through. Or maybe it is time to “treat yo self.”

Order before Decem­ber 17, and a hol­i­day card will be sent to the recip­i­ent that noti­fies them of their new sub­scrip­tion, in time for Christ­mas. Mean­while, gen­er­ous Van­cou­verites that place an order before Decem­ber 17 will also earn an entry into a draw for a $100 gift cer­tifi­cate to Burcu’s Angels vin­tage cloth­ing store. Visions of vin­tage furs and sequins dance in our heads!

Mar­i­anela Ramos Capelo pulls up the leg of her jeans to show her right ankle. “Excuse my hairy leg,” she cau­tions, as she reveals a 3-inch tat­too: one con­tin­u­ous line that forms the out­line of a dog pulled length-wise. “It’s a line draw­ing of a weiner dog. It’s based on a Picasso draw­ing,” she explains. Picasso’s sim­ple sketch was a love let­ter to a Daschund named Lump; Capelo’s ren­di­tion is a trib­ute to her child­hood pet: “He was my best buddy grow­ing up. The best mem­o­ries that I have with my fam­ily are with that dog there. He was amaz­ing. That was the first one.”

Photo: Mar­i­anela Ramos Capelo

Capelo has three tat­toos: she has another on her left wrist, and a third on her left bicep. She tells me the story behind each one, and then reveals that a year ago, she had no tat­toos. It’s pos­si­ble, then, that the year-long art project she just com­pleted might have swayed her to get a lit­tle ink.

Nearly every­day since Sep­tem­ber 2010, Capelo, a 22-year-old com­mu­ni­ca­tion arts stu­dent, has been ask­ing strangers about their tat­toos. In the hopes of over­com­ing and under­stand­ing her shy­ness, she chal­lenged her­self to talk to 365 strangers. Capelo approached peo­ple in cafés, on cam­pus and on Com­mer­cial Drive, where she lives, ask­ing them to show her a tat­too and tell her the story behind it. With an iPhone and a smile, she found 420 peo­ple who let her take a photo of their body art and share the gen­e­sis story on her blog, A Stranger A Day (astrangeraday.tumblr.com).

In July, she cap­tured a vividly coloured por­trait of Karma that stretched from a man’s armpit to his hip (he got it just for art’s sake). Last Octo­ber, she pho­tographed a dot of ink below a woman’s eye (the stranger wanted to remem­ber the tears she had shared with her hus­band). The tat­toos vary, but Capelo dis­cov­ered “some­thing really beau­ti­ful” in the rela­tion­ship all the strangers had with the art on their skin. “It’s hard to get some­one to say some­thing pos­i­tive about their bod­ies,” she says. Not very many peo­ple say, ‘Oh look at my nose! Look at my fin­gers!’ But with tat­toos, it’s very easy.”

On Octo­ber 24, she posted her final photo, and cried. “I was done! I was just really happy. But that was about 30 sec­onds and then it was onto the show.” Less than two weeks later, she and three friends drew about 200 Van­cou­verites to a tiny, nar­row art gallery on East Geor­gia Street to show the com­plete work. It was almost impos­si­ble to walk through the room and take in the images and sto­ries; the gallery was packed with bod­ies. Atten­dees were wait­ing out­side before the show even started at 7 p.m., many of whom were the inked strangers from her web­site. They’d heard about the one-night exhibit on CBC Radio or read about it on the blog Van­cou­ver is Awe­some and came to see their pic­ture on the walls. “It was really cool,” the artist says. “One of my main goals of the show was to reach out to the strangers, and for them to see what they were a part of, because it was all about them.”

Each stranger’s tat­too gave Capelo a doc­u­ment of a mean­ing­ful encounter. “A few strangers came by and I couldn’t remem­ber their faces. But they would show me their tat­too and I would say, ‘I remem­ber every­thing about you now!’ And I would. I would remem­ber where they were and who they were with.” As Capelo has learned, tattoos—or even pic­tures of them—make indeli­ble mem­o­ries and mem­o­ries indeli­ble. When a per­son gets a tat­too, she says, they’re choos­ing to put a story or image on them for the rest of their lives. No mat­ter the cir­cum­stances of get­ting the tat­too, good or bad, “It’s a mem­ory they don’t regret.”

Photo by Jonathan Spooner

Sad Mag: Who are you?

Monika Koch: I’m a puppy tamer and a scor­pion fighter.

SM: What do you do?

MK: I make things. I make things look nice. I ride my bike, usu­ally fast. I sleep when I have no other choice.

SM: How did you become a designer?

MK: I was one of those kids who was con­stantly com­mis­sioned by peers to draw car­toon char­ac­ters in return for snacks in ele­men­tary school. Thank­fully, I am no longer paid in snacks, because the lightning-quick metab­o­lism is gone and I can’t pay rent in snacks. My pur­suit of design as a grownup must have been ignited with my deci­sion not to go to art school.

After about a year of uni­ver­sity, the need to cre­ate became unbear­able. Sadly for my GPA, from then on I com­mit­ted myself to nur­tur­ing my skill in every way I saw fit. Design came as a nat­ural out­let– my dad taught indus­trial design, and I grew up fid­dling with Adobe soft­ware. I free­lanced and stayed sharp with illus­tra­tion and per­sonal projects. Some­how I man­aged to grad­u­ate, and kept at the free­lance thing. My best friend, also a free­lanc­ing designer at the time, saw me through that period and I couldn’t ever thank him enough for his sup­port and the inspi­ra­tion to just do what I love.

SM: Where do you live?

MK: Mount Pleas­ant.

SM: What’s your Hal­loween costume?

MK: I’m not telling. Not because I’m wait­ing for my bril­liance to save me at the last minute.

SM: Favourite mag­a­zines?

MK: ACNE Paper, Cir­cus, S, and Interview.

SM: What are you excited about for fall?

MK: As a New Eng­lan­der, I am excited for colder tem­per­a­tures and any­thing that resem­bles that kind of autumn, even for a day or two. This year’s has been beau­ti­ful, though. Mostly I just want to wear more cloth­ing, look like I dropped out of Sar­to­ri­al­ist and feel cold air on my cheeks.

Sad Mag presents: The Queer Cul­tural Awards and Show

The Cobalt (917 Main St)

8:00PM-1:00AM

Advance tick­ets $6, at the door $8

Full details on Face­book.

Sarah Race is an England-born and Portland-raised pho­tog­ra­pher now based in Van­cou­ver. A con­trib­u­tor to Sad Mag Issue 7/8: The Van­cou­ver Queer His­tory Issue, Sarah’s por­traits, com­mer­cial work and party pho­tog­ra­pher are all imbued with a unique and quirky style. Here she gives us a glimpse into her life and work. You can see more of Sarah’s pho­tog­ra­phy at her web­site.

Sad Mag: What do you do?

Sarah Race: I’m a pho­tog­ra­pher for hire.

SM: What is your favourite sub­ject to photograph?

SR: Quirky peo­ple.

SM: What’s the first thing you remem­ber cap­tur­ing with a camera?

SR: I was prob­a­bly 6 or 7 and I used a lit­tle Polaroid that my par­ents gave me. I took a photo of a blurry rooster.

SM: What are you work­ing on now?

SR: I just fin­ished an exhibit at the Museum of Van­cou­ver that I did with Sarah Buchanan and the Queer Film Fes­ti­val. Cur­rently I’m work­ing on start­ing up a mobile stu­dio busi­ness, The Stu­dio Shack.

SM: Where in Van­cou­ver do you live?

SR: Strath­cona

SM: What are you excited about for fall?

SR: Fall is my favourite sea­son. I like the fash­ion pos­si­bil­i­ties that fall brings. Like the abun­dance of sweaters, vests and hats. I’m also excited to go home for Amer­i­can Thanks­giv­ing and to hang out with my niece.

Sad Mag presents: The Queer Cul­tural Awards and Show

The Cobalt (917 Main St)

8:00PM-1:00AM

Advance tick­ets $6, at the door $8

Full details on Face­book.

Bren­nan Kelly is an illus­tra­tor and ani­ma­tor. You can see his work on Tum­blr here and here! A con­trib­u­tor to Issue 7/8, he has a lengthy list of favourite artists (and that’s just locally). Read on, then come to The Queer Cul­tural Awards and Show on Novem­ber 3rd to see his work in Sad Mag.

Sad Mag: Where are you from?

Bren­nan Kelly: I’m from Calgary.

BK: I stud­ied to become an illus­tra­tor in art school. In hind­sight it seems odd that you can study in a field where you attempt to cre­ate images in exchange for money.

BK: Haven’t made it yet.

BK: In no par­tic­u­lar order: Mark DeLong, Kur­tis Wil­son, Teddy Sturs­berg, Alex Heil­bron, Elise Beneteau, Simon Redekop, Ben­jamin Raymer, Andrea Wan, Chris Von Szom­bathy, Andrew Dad­son, Jes­sica Delorme, Rus­sell Leng, Aaron Moran, Matthew Brown, James Whit­man and all the lovely folks at 221A. There’s lots of other great artists here, but I haven’t met them yet or seen their work. I like them too.

BK: Get­ting a health care card. Getting a new day job. Loop­ing ani­ma­tions. Teach­ing myself how to paint.

Sad Mag presents: The Queer Cul­tural Awards and Show

The Cobalt (917 Main St)

8:00PM-1:00AM

Advance tick­ets $6, at the door $8

Full details on Face­book.

Sad Mag con­trib­u­tor Monique Wells answers our ques­tions about her illus­tra­tions, a style inspired by the kids­books she reads as a nanny that are “blas­phe­mous to fine art peo­ple” but entranc­ing all the same. See her work in the upcom­ing issue of Sad Mag in Novem­ber, illus­trat­ing a piece about ted northe, and catch her group exhibit at the Gam Gallery in November!

Sad Mag: Where are you from?

Monique Wells: I grew up in Idaho.

SM: How did you find your way to Vancouver?

MW: I was a bit of a drifter for four or five years after high school, work­ing at a fish can­nery, care­tak­ing in a com­mu­nity art cen­ter, and the like. I was mov­ing every six to eight months. My quarter-life cri­sis hit, so I decided to use my dual Canadian-US cit­i­zen­ship to fin­ish my under­grad at UBC.

SM: Wat led you to become an illustrator?

MW: I work as a nanny, and as I was read­ing a lot of children’s pic­ture books, I became obsessed with them. So while tak­ing paint­ing and art the­ory courses at UBC last year, I was simul­ta­ne­ously (and some­what secretly) tak­ing a con­tin­u­ing stud­ies course on pic­ture book illus­tra­tion, which is blas­phe­mous to fine art peo­ple. I found some illus­tra­tors and writ­ers of chil­drens’ pic­ture books that I really admired, and became even more obsessed. And through kids­book illus­tra­tion, I became inter­ested in edi­to­r­ial illus­tra­tion. I really like the idea that as an illus­tra­tor I’m set­ting out bait to trap read­ers, so that they invest some time in read­ing an article.

SM: What illus­tra­tion of yours do you love best?

MW: I repainted Sheila McGraw’s illus­tra­tions from Robert Munsch’s Love You For­ever, keep­ing the com­po­si­tions the same but styl­is­ti­cally shift­ing the focus to the strange rela­tion­ship between the mother and son.  I like a lot of Munsch’s books, but I find the themes and images in that book par­tic­u­larly haunt­ing.  Some­how he has made it a uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ence to sit a three-year-old down on one’s lap and have a cry while one tells them about one’s inevitable death and the impor­tance of con­tin­u­ing the lin­eage. The parent/nanny sobs, which con­fuses the kid. It’s con­ven­tion­ally sweet and (who could have known until my gen­er­a­tion grew up?) mildly traumatizing.

The book shows the birth of two gen­er­a­tions and the death of one in 32 pages, so every time you flip the page, five or ten years go by. The illus­trated moments are sup­posed to be these expe­ri­ences that every­one can relate to.  But at some point I started think­ing of the character’s lives in the book as if they hap­pened in real time and were exam­ples of a good life. Like at any given momen in life, one should be either eat­ing pizza doing Elvis imper­son­ations, sneak­ing up on one’s mom in bed, rock­ing one’s son to sleep, or putting a watch down a toi­let. I’ve found life to be quite dif­fer­ent than the snap­shots by McGraw, but they’ve stuck with me.

I’ve heard that to cure a song stuck in the head you can sing it all the way through. I tried to do that with this book. In paint­ing them, I tried to release myself from Sheila McGraw’s illus­tra­tions.  I think it worked. I’m no longer eat­ing pizza and doing Elvis impersonations!

SM: What local artists do you admire?

MW: To name a few– Andy Dixon, Fan-Ling Suen, Geof­frey Farmer, Steven Shearer. Also, Heidi Nagtegaal’s Ham­mock Res­i­dency pro­gram and the Tin Can Stu­dio are phys­i­cally small but con­cep­tu­ally sig­nif­i­cant solu­tions for the prob­lem of artists and space in Vancouver.

SM: What are you work­ing on now?

MW: I’m fin­ish­ing a dummy book, which is the blue­print for a kids­book to send to pub­lish­ers. It’s a mys­tery about smells. I’m also prepar­ing for a group show that I’m tak­ing part in at the Gam Gallery in November.

See more of Monique’s work over at her Tum­blr port­fo­lio.

Sad Mag presents: The Queer Cul­tural Awards and Show

The Cobalt (917 Main St)

8:00PM-1:00AM

Advance tick­ets $6, at the door $8

Full details on Face­book.

Mis­cha Bartkow is pho­tog­ra­pher who con­tributed a piece on the BC Gay and Les­bian Archives for the upcom­ing Issue 7/8 (The Van­cou­ver Queer His­tory Issue, launch­ing at The Cobalt on Novem­ber 3rd). Check out more of his pho­tog­ra­phy at his web­site, and read on to learn more about him.

Sad Mag: Where are you from?
Mis­cha Bartkow: I was born in Van­cou­ver and grew up here and on the Sun­shine Coast. I moved to Ontario when I was 19.

After spend­ing 10 years in Kingston and Toronto it was time to come back to Van­cou­ver.  I knew this is where I needed to be to make my dreams come true, where I needed to share my art from. It’s been a plea­sure falling back in love with this city.

SM: How did you get into photography?

MB: I’ve been shoot­ing ever since I was a small kid.  It’s how I kept in touch with my fam­ily across the ocean.  I’ve always had a visual and spa­tial mem­ory and pho­tos have helped me share the way I expe­ri­ence the world.  It wasn’t until I was older though and work­ing at an adver­tis­ing agency, being inspired by other pro pho­tog­ra­phers, that I real­ized it was my dream to make pho­tog­ra­phy my living.

MB: There’s one image of dozens of light­bulbs hang­ing on a stark back­ground that I made in Hong Kong.  It has come to sym­bol­ize the power of cre­ativ­ity and pos­i­tive think­ing for me.  It ended up being selected as a design for a Scot­ties tis­sue box, you can see it in stores now.  My other favourite is an image I made in the Blue Moun­tains of Jamaica.  It’s of a decay­ing jalopy slowly being swal­lowed up by vines and the green land­scape.  I love mak­ing images of things most peo­ple dis­miss as ugly and shar­ing the beauty that I feel is there.  I like blur­ring the line between ugly and beautiful.

MB: I hope to inspire oth­ers to make our com­mu­ni­ties more car­ing and progressive.

MB: Elisha Clement, Simon Hayter and Shan­nyn Higgins.

MB: I’m work­ing on an excit­ing project as part of the CONTACT Pho­tog­ra­phy Fes­ti­val that’s com­ing to Van­cou­ver in Octo­ber, 2012.  I’m plan­ning build­ing sized pro­jec­tions of pho­tog­ra­phy through­out Van­cou­ver.  We’ll be show­cas­ing local and inter­na­tional pho­tog­ra­phers through­out the city.

Sad Mag presents: The Queer Cul­tural Awards and Show

The Cobalt (917 Main St)

8:00PM-1:00AM

Advance tick­ets $6, at the door $8

Full details on Face­book.

The Sad Mag team has been hard at work on our biggest project of the year: issue 7/8, a spe­cial dou­ble issue com­mem­o­rat­ing Vancouver’s queer his­tory from 1960-today. The new issue launches Thurs­day, Novem­ber 3 at the Cobalt, and we hope you’ll join us to hon­our Vancouver’s incred­i­ble artists, per­form­ers and com­mu­nity leaders.

Sad Mag Queer Cul­ture Awards and Show

Thurs­day, Novem­ber 3
The Cobalt at 917 Main Street
8:00pm — 1:00am
Tick­ets $6 / Door $8
Includes a com­pli­men­tary copy of the magazine.

Join us for an evening of LIVE enter­tain­ment in our queer artists cabaret hosted by funny woman Mor­gan Bray­ton, fea­tur­ing come­dian Dan Dumsha, drag artist Isolde N. Barron…and more to be announced!

Tick­ets avail­able at Red Cat Records and Lit­tle Sister’s Art and Book Empo­rium. See the event on Face­book.

About This Issue

Sad Mag’s first cover star was Isolde N. Bar­ron, East Van’s intre­pid drag queen, so it won’t come as a sur­prise that we’re fas­ci­nated and delighted by Vancouver’s vibrant queer artists. How­ever, what has sur­prised us in the past two years of pub­lish­ing was the pub­lic reac­tion to our queer con­tent. Peo­ple asked, was Sad Mag a queer mag­a­zine, then, by pub­lish­ing arti­cles about queer artists?

Sad Mag’s mis­sion is to cel­e­brate and pro­mote inde­pen­dent, acces­si­ble and community-oriented art and cul­ture in Van­cou­ver, BC. For our edi­to­r­ial team, it would have been a sig­nif­i­cant over­sight as an art mag­a­zine to ignore the force of cre­ativ­ity and expres­sion reflected in Vancouver’s queer com­mu­ni­ties. From drag stars to award-winning play­wrights, dancers to musi­cians, writ­ers, pho­tog­ra­phers and beyond—it has been our priv­i­lege to wit­ness the stun­ning cre­ativ­ity and sheer ambi­tion of our city’s queer artists.

We weren’t try­ing to make a state­ment by pub­lish­ing the sto­ries of queer artists. It would have been a state­ment not to.

In our Queer His­tory Issue, our edi­to­r­ial team and con­trib­u­tors have endeav­ored to explore the theme of queer art and cul­ture in greater depth. Made pos­si­ble by the City of Van­cou­ver as part of its 125th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, the Queer His­tory Issue is a start­ing point: a place from where we can begin to under­stand the impact of the west coast LGBT move­ment on Van­cou­ver, and the impact of Vancouver’s queer com­mu­ni­ties on the world.

Sad Mag is prep­ping for Issue 7, our cel­e­bra­tion of Van­cou­ver Queer His­tory. The issue launches Novem­ber 3rd and we are going through archives, inter­view­ing and shoot­ing the final sto­ries. Lucky for us, our the­atre friends have put together a show on the colour­ful his­tory of Vancouver’s Drag Queens: Tucked and Plucked: Vancouver’s Drag His­tory Live On Stage!

Isolde N. Bar­ron, talk show host­ess with the mostess.

You’ll find out about Vancouver’s rich drag queen his­tory as Sad Mag’s favourite drag queen, Isolde N. Bar­ron becomes our very own Oprah as she hosts a live talk show fea­tur­ing sto­ries and per­for­mances by queens from our glam­ourous past. You’ll find Joan-E, Jay­lene Tyme, Mona Regina Lee and new­comer Peach Cob­blah, which sounds like enough per­son­al­i­ties to rival the squawk­fests on The View.

This Fri­day and Saturday

Sep­tem­ber 23 & 24 — 8PM
PAL Van­cou­ver Stu­dio The­atre (581 Cardero Street @ West Geor­gia)
Tick­ets: $10
BOX OFFICE: 604.684.8028
Tick­ets Online