Author: Josef Jacobson

  • Comic books in the 21st century

    Comic books in the 21st century

    Alison Williams glances at her blank easel. Using a stick of charcoal, she draws a large circle on her canvas, and then divides the circle into four equal quadrants. “From here we’re going to build a face,” she says. “I’m going to give my character a pair of glasses, and I’ll bring the eyebrows way…

  • Celebrating 30 years of Inuit art

    Celebrating 30 years of Inuit art

    Gabriel Beaulieu is hunched over his medicine man. Leaning in, he gently presses his scalpel into his subject’s eye and slowly scrapes away at its socket. He exhales, and a small cloud of rock fragments lifts off the medicine man’s pale, unblinking face. “This could take me a month or so with all the details,”…

  • Arab cinema comes to Western

    Arab cinema comes to Western

    The lights go down in the quiet screening room in the basement of the University College building at Western University. The room is empty except for Sam Khalil, a friend of hers, and a curious journalism student. “Maybe we should wait five minutes,” said Khalil, teaching assistant for Arabic 1030: Arabic for Beginners. But nobody…

  • Druidry alive and well in London

    Druidry alive and well in London

    As the night falls and the snow swirls in a suburban London backyard, the Druids are gathering for their ritual. They form a circle around the fire pit. “Gatekeeper, accept my sacrifice. Open the gates, part the mists and show us the way,” intones chief liturgist Kevin Silverstag. “May the well open as a gate.…