Warhol: Supernova and the Madness of Ikea

Thanks to Ernesto, it's been a wet Labour Day weekend so far. I haven't been up to much aside from running around town on my neverending quest to source things for the equally neverending renovation. The one piece of good news yesterday was the phone call I received from Living Lighting telling me that my square fixtures had arrived and were ready for pick-up. Yay!

Yesterday morning was all about errands: I renewed my driver's license and drove around town sourcing additional crystals and findings for a necklace I'm making for a girlfriend. While out and about, I stopped by the site for my condo and the hole is deeper. I'm anxious to see something besides a big hole though...like maybe foundation being poured! Now that would be exciting!

I met up with S today to check out the Andy Warhol exhibit at the AGO. I wouldn't call myself a Warhol fan, nor a fan of David Cronenberg since he guest-curated the exhibit, but I had filled out an online survey for the AGO and received free admission for 2 in return, so figured, why not?

It was a small exhibit of about 30 pieces. I normally eschew audio-guides, partly because I'm cheap, and partly because I prefer just experiencing the art on my own, but we were given free audio-guides narrated by Cronenberg which I found really interesting and helpful in understanding the personality that is Warhol.

My knowledge of Warhol prior to this exhibit pretty much starts and ends with the iconic pop cultural images of the Campbell's soup can and the colourful screen prints of Marilyn Monroe. I didn't know he did a whole series of disaster pieces. The most bizarrely funny one was Tunafish Disaster (pictured below), in which he silkscreened a can of tuna fish that was recalled and juxtaposes it with pictures of the two housewives that were poisoned by said can.

(Via)

I learnt that he wore a wig and never took it off, not even to sleep, and that he was painfully shy; all of which I'm sure will come in handy when next I play Trivial Pursuit.

We followed up our gallery visit with a trip to Ikea, which, duh, was a bad move on our part given that it took us a good half hour just to make the left turn off Sheppard Ave. S needed to pick up some stuff for her apartment and I wanted to get the Tanja Brodyr quilt cover in purple, so off we went without even thinking about the zoo that is Ikea on the weekend, let alone the weekend before everyone heads back to school.

Luck was on my side though as I managed to find a parking spot in short order. We breezed through pretty quickly, checking in and out in about an hour. We stopped off at the Tim Horton's on the way home since S was craving a donut, a rare delicacy in London, where she'd been living for the last year.

That's it of my gloomy, wet weekend so far. Sunshine is expected tomorrow and I have plans to meet an old friend who's in town from Denver for lunch. I have an interview(!) this coming Friday afternoon to prep for, so it looks like this last long weekend of the summer will be a productive one...