This week is a triple treat for gallery goers which is exciting after a summer of group shows and re-runs. First up, is photographer Rachael Ashe's solo show, Trees I Have Dreamed that opened this week at Radha Yoga and Eatery on Main Street. She has taken a series of Holga photographs and hand-printed them on sheets of aluminum. I haven't been by to see the metal-printed pieces yet, but Rachael is a technically sophisticated photographer whose mastery of the Holga is definitely enviable. Combined with an eye for whimsical and thoughtful themes makes her an artist whose pieces have great depth and beauty.

The exhibit is comprised of 16 photographs of trees and largely because of the experimental nature of Holga photography, they do appear ethereal and dream-like. The image above, 'Night in the Orchard' feels like something out of my own dreams to me, or perhaps a long ago memory. With its bare branches and filmy, diffused light, these are the perfect pieces to welcome the coming of fall.

I always look forward to going to Word on the Street in the fall. It seems like the bookish and back-to-schooly thing to do and it's always a lot of fun. It always sneaks up on me though, and this year was no different. So now here we are just a few days away from when the library square should be filling up with tents full of books and publishers and authors... AND the space is still filled with strikers.

So what's a considerate festival to do? They will move to the Canada Post parking lot, across the street from the library. The Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts has apparently also offered the space in front of their building, so some things may be set up there as well.

I love hearing about laughable crimes gone awry - the guy that robbed a bank at gunpoint then returned later that day to deposit the money into his account, for instance. So imagine my delight when I read this morning about a theft at local office space WorkSpace. Some computers were stolen with Flickrbooth installed on them and some time after the theft the photo above appeared in the WorkSpace flickr stream!

Of course I'm sorry to hear that Workspace was broken into, but the hilarity of the thief taking photos of himself with their computers and not realizing they were being uploaded to the internet more than makes up for it.

It's funny, I just interviewed artist Kelly Haigh the other day, about her art and her taxidermy collection, then I checked in at the the Bjornson Kajiwara Gallery and was confronted with a taxidermied coyote, a small deer and several other woodland creatures in various states of experimental construction. I hope the universe is not trying to tell me something, because I'm really not sure I like the message. The art, however, is worth noting.

The woodland creatures at the the Bjornson Kajiwara Gallery are part of George Vergette's new show, The Waning Light. It opened September 6th, but is still going strong with several pieces already sold, and will continue until September 29th.

It's well worth checking out if you can get there this week. The installation contains several taxidermied animals as mentioned, but in the case of the coyote, juxtaposed with neon lighting or in the case of the deer, split apart with miniature architectural models inside. Several ptarmigans, a pigeon and a weasel have Vergette's trademark lacquer hardened over them, suggesting a cruel drowning.

September 14th marked the launch of Eat BC's campaign to encourage consumers to question where their food is coming from and choose local fare. With the growing popularity of the 100 Mile Diet and local farmers markets, the seed has been planted, the buzz is happening and people are starting to ask the questions, but all the while there have been small businesses putting this idea into practice without fanfare. Nyala African Cuisine on Main Street, for example.

Yesterday I went to Nyala, one of the 150 participating restaurants across B.C, to meet with chef and owner Assefa Kebede; one of his suppliers Mark Hills of Hills Foods Ltd; and Ian Tostenson of the B.C. Restaurant & Food Services Association (BCRFA), to talk about the campaign and the intricacies of supplying and serving local food in an African restaurant.

Assefa served up a delicious spread of Lamb Kebabs, Chicken with Curry sauce, Potato and Beet salad, Tabouleh, all made with B.C. ingredients and paired with Okanagan wines. The kicker is that Assefa, also a potter, even makes the tagine dishes himself and uses clay from the Fraser Valley!

Two different comic-book style artists, Camilla d'Errico and Lani Imre will be opening a show tonight at the Ayden Gallery. Sea to Sky will feature new works by both artists and this will be something of a "last chance" opportunity to see d'Errico's stuff (at least for a while), as she's going to be focusing her energies on US and Italian galleries for the next few years.

Her style is whimsical, part robotic and part mythological with a little bit on anime thrown in. Girls feature prominently, as do helmets and octopusses. Lani Imre is a Canadian artist working out of San Francisco. She has a refined, multi-layered style that switches easily from line drawings to colourful characters.