What does the future hold?

Angela Grossmann has a few ideas. It’s been seven years since the Emily Carr grad-turned-instructor held her last solo exhibit in Vancouver. On April 4th, she’ll unveil her latest works in an exhibit entitled The Future is Female at South Granville’s Winsor Gallery.  “It takes being female to articulate what it’s like,” says Grossmann. “As though I’m dealing with glass, but I can still see through it.” Using paint and collage in a manner that has earned Grossmann a place amongst Canada’s greatest artists, the exhibit explores the feminine struggle for empowerment amidst prescribed notions of beauty and behaviour (read: girl power).

We predict it’s going to be a powerhouse of a show. —Kelsey Dundon

Angela Grossmann – The Future is Female runs April 4 to May 6, 2012, Winsor Gallery, 3025 Granville St., Vancouver, 604-681-4870, www.winsorgallery.com

It’s time to take a dip in the city’s past, take a visual history lesson, and imagine Vancouver life as it once was.

No other artist has captured the evolution of our city like Fred Herzog. The beloved photographer’s work is the subject of Equinox Gallery’s inaugural exhibition in it's new 12,000 square foot Project Space. With over one hundred works on display, most mesmerizing ones capture Vancouver vibrant street life in the late 1950s and early ’60. Vivid locales like Hastings, Robson and Main are forever encapsulated in a time—much like the semblance of the streets themselves—that is long past. Fred Herzog, Vancouver’s time capsule. — Anya Georgijevic

Equinox Gallery’s Project Space, 525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver, 604-736-2405, www.equinoxgallery.com

Sometimes it is good to be bad, especially as interpreted through the artistic eye of Mandy Stobo.

The Calgary-based painter’s Bad Portrait Project has her busting out her watercolours to whip up a rendering of anyone who is interested. Send a photo of your face to Stobo and she’ll interpret it into a bright and blurry portrait that looks a little like you and a lot like art. She posts the pics on Twitter and Facebook and you can buy your original for $100.

Bad can be beautiful. —Jaelyn Molyneux

www.badportraitproject.com

Hold on to your black turtlenecks and horn-rimmed glasses, friends. It’s about to get all artsy-fartsy up in here.

If you’ve seen District 9 or the Chronicles of Narnia, you’re already familiar with his work. Now Vancouver-based sculptor James Stewart, whose pieces are so realistic they veer towards the grotesque, will be exhibiting his latest works Sept. 8th - Oct. 2nd at 5 W. Pender St., Vancouver. —Kelsey Dundon

The Contemporary Art Gallery is celebrating 40 years with an exhibition featuring the work of three artists rarely exhibited in Canada. Corita Kent’s '60s pop art silkscreen prints (pictured) and Thomas Bewick’s wood engraved vignettes will fill the downtown space, while Federico Herrero’s Vibrantes is an outside commission featuring sheets of coloured adhesive vinyl on the front of the building.  Contemporary Art Gallery, 555 Nelson St., Vancouver, www.contemporaryartgallery.ca. Sept. 9th - Oct. 30th. —Alexandra Suhner Isenberg

Dougal Graham’s solo show Only at Night at the Trench Gallery will please the eyes of art and fashion lovers alike. His work, which includes paintings and jewelry, are an investigation into society’s never ending obsession with fashion, the body and the transient material world. Check out our editor’s blog for more images of his paintings and jewelry. Trench Gallery, 102-148 Alexander St., Vancouver, www.trenchgallery.com, Sept 16th - Oct 15th. —Alexandra Suhner Isenberg

You’ve gleaned all the inspiration you can from the sound of silence. Now tap into the “Sound of Conversation.” 

Wednesday night at the new Satellite Gallery, a 3-in-1 space shared by the Belkin Art Gallery, Museum of Anthropology at UBC and Presentation House Gallery, artists, curators and even a Feng Shui practitioner gather to share seven minute stories from their careers.

The event is in conjunction with their latest exhibit No Windows, which challenged graduate students with achieving the Trading Spaces of art shows—they had two months and a small budget to open an exhibition.

And if that isn’t inspiring, we don’t know what is.

“Sound of Conversation”, 7 p.m.-9 p.m. (view exhibition 6 p.m.-7 p.m.), Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at Satellite Gallery, 560 Seymour St. (2nd floor), Vancouver, 604-681-8425, www.satellitegallery.ca

The strapping September issues have just hit newsstands and while we’re fond of trend-packed tomes, we also crave clean, timeless fare.

For the latter our favourite is Corduroy, named for the sartorial staple of History and English professors. Inside are crisp photographs, no-nonsense profiles of interesting people and selections of art from the likes of Guy Bourdin and Robert Longo. Helmed by two Torontonians and printed in Winnipeg, the international mag is Canadian to boot.

Thanks to a recent design refresh, the pages look good enough to frame. Now that’s an idea.

Available at Chapters or online at www.corduroymag.com

You could wear your Vancouver pride on your sleeve, or you could pour it in your glass.

With its graphic, pop art label designed by artist Douglas Fraser, Absolut Vancouver pays tribute to our city’s biggest assets: sea, sky and snow-capped mountains. The limited-edition bottle is first of its kind in Canada and available exclusively in B.C., making it a less ubiquitous souvenir to gift out-of-towners.

There’s also an artistic after-effect of taking one home—a dollar from every bottle goes towards a local arts project that you vote for.

That’s the spirit!

$25.95 at B.C. Liquor Stores.

If it looks like a black and white photograph of a young, leather and denim clad gent captured from behind, it could be just one of Brian Boulton’s drawings.

A guru of graphite and pastel pencil, the Vancouver artist first captures on film, then renders with photorealistic precision by hand the fabrics, folds and features of young men standing unaware on the street. While his treatment of the subject matter feels very "right now", with its street fashion and paparazzi undertones, Boulton found his inspiration, his own youth and trips to the skate park, years ago.

The art is all at once simple and complicated—just like some boys we know.

Brian Boulton exhibit, November 5-29, 2009 at Winsor Gallery, 3025 Granville St., Vancouver, 604-681-4870, www.winsorgallery.com

One woman’s treasure is another man’s canvas.

Brent Ray Fraser convinced a few friends to forfeit their prized Fendi bags and Armani suits for his exhibit, Prêt-A-Porter, opening Friday. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s iconic treatment of the Campbell’s Soup can, the Lower Mainland artist and Emily Carr grad created his pop art by painting on big name designer fashions and imprinting them on canvases.

With more than 140 pieces hung on garment racks and price tagged, the show looks more like a clothing store than your standard exhibition. Pieces range in price from $399 to $2,000, with one piece, “4 Louis Vuitton Purses” (pictured), auctioned off to benefit the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

Now we can have our Chanel and mount it too.

Prêt-A-Porter by Brent Ray Fraser, September 18-October 2, Eastwood Onley Gallery, 2075 Alberta St., Vancouver, 604-739-0429, www.brentrayfraser.com

Audrina Patridge shooting off a dazed gaze, Spencer Pratt shrugging off responsibility with a raised brow and Kelly Cutrone with mouth agape giving what for—all moments from The Hills, all immortalized by Karin Bubaš as chalk pastel portraits.

Seeing an inspiring exhibition of pastels at the Musée d’Orsay followed by watching copious amounts of MTV are what led the Vancouver artist to create 20 drawings that capture with life-like perfection the less than perfect (yet still charmed) lives of Lauren Conrad and company.

Entitled With Friends Like These…, the show is both pretty and witty. If only the lovely ladies of La-la Land themselves possessed more of the latter.

With Friends Like These… runs until September 13, 2009 at the Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr University, 1399 Johnston St., Vancouver, 604-844-3809, chscott.ecuad.ca

For snippets from our interview with Karin (like who she loves and hates on The Hills), check out today’s Editors’ Diary.