So, after waking up late and therefore missing my first class of the day (New Media Design, basically, a class about flash animator), I felt guilty about not being able to call my ride to tell them not to pick me up from the University and ventured over to the Winnipeg Art Gallery for our date with a Buddhist monk.
I kind of neglected the details of why exactly there was all these Buddhist events going on at the WAG as of late, but I do know that a handful of my classmates had been there since the morning doing meditation and that there is going to be a retreat this weekend. Today what we we did was basically hang around with this monk while he made a sand mandala, apparently one of few (if any) ceremonies that have ever taken place in this city; Kevin, our prof, claimed it was a once in a lifetime chance, and that we'd probably never get to see it again.
I'll admitt that I downed a giant coffee on the walk over expecting to have trouble staying awake, but fortunately this monk was VERY personable; urged us to come closer, gave awesome explanations for his work, answered all our questions (no matter how vague) and even let us try it out! So of course I had to take some pictures, because Kevin is right, I probably never will get another chance to work on a sand mandala with a real monk again in my life.
ALSO! Tonight was Danny's aka Reetbot's opening at the Cre8ry. It was awesome, I'm insanely jealous, it made me want to quit my day job so I could just paint all the time. He definately has a thing going on... millions of little paintings and using all different types of things to work on; canvas, wood, paint can lids, cassette types, records. I definately bought a painting, I'm excited to pick it up.
