Fuschia Slag

It's almost the weekend, and thank god, I say. Rain or no rain, it's still Ghetto Bitch Summer, and GB girls know where to go.





Tonight that would be painter Mark Neufeld's show at Production Studios.

I once was smacked in the face by one of Mark's early paintings. It was at a show at the Dynamo, back in '98. I found I couldn't move: I must have stood in front of the piece, feet nailed to the floor, body vibrating, for twenty minutes. That had only happened to me before in New York and Europe, in museums. Here I was at home, on Hastings Street: I couldn't believe what I was feeling.

At the time, Mark and I were both slaves at the same diner (him, dishwasher, me, waitron). His other job at the time was as a gravestone carver.

He just won the first ever Joe Plaskett Award for his work. It is one of the largest and most prestigious visual-arts awards in Canada.