Big News! Conor started walking on Sunday! We just put a favourite book on a chair and to get it, he walked several feet from the couch that he was cruising along .

I may not have time to take part in Illustration Friday this week as we’ll be busy with Conor’s baptism. I have to piece together another outfit for him: Doug quipped that our pearly knitted number with ribbons (inherited from an uncertain source) would be far better suited for the Ice Capades. It wouldn’t be so comical if it weren’t such an apt description. It is pretty cute, though…. Will he resent me later if I take a picture of him in it?

We’ve waited till Conor was a little older because I very much wanted to take him back to the old family church that generations of his family had built and maintained. I feel closer to my grandparents there. The original building had been moved from Fair Island, a small island in Bonavista Bay, across a sheet of ice during the Great Newfoundland Resettlement.

Kembrew McLeod sounds like a hero’s name, and in a way he is one. I’m not sure how many of you know about Leo Stoller. When I first heard he was claiming to own a trademark on a number of expressions including “freedom of expression,” my first question was, “Is he a conceptual artist?”

But no, Leo Stoller is a greedy man who has been giving the legal system a bad name. (The New York Times recently ran an article confirming as much.) The way he has been registering everyday expressions and making people pay him for their usage is even worse than the act of putting patents on colours. Enter Kembrew McLeod, prankster and copyfighter, to beat him at his own game.

I have to admit that I don’t have much time to surf the web, so I appreciate that boing boing goes to the trouble for me. It is often a good source of new art links. While ear wax sculpture, nazi sex dolls, and the $18, 000 bar of soap make me want to turn off the computer, and take my baby out for fresh air and a very long walk, it’s the rare gem that makes the site worth a visit now and then. Among my favourite finds this month are:

Art or Crap? Take the quiz. I scored 11 our of 16. I felt a little bad about the plaster cast, but if you have a minute it’s a fun thing to do.

An interview on NPR with children’s author and illustrator, Maurice Sendak.

The work of Dave Devries whose paintings are based on kids’ drawings of monsters and superheroes. (I like the bird face bordering this piece.)

And speaking of monsters, Jill Miller is one brave cookie. She is waiting for big foot.

I was also glad to find the-artists.org, a good source with useful search engines for all things relating to major modern and contemporary visual artists.

Comedian Rick Mercer has started a blog this June, and he is as entertaining and contentious as ever. If you haven’t seen any of his work, Rick would be Canada’s more cynical version of Jon Stewart.

Today he writes:

It’s too damned hot! 34 degrees in Toronto yesterday, and they say today it will be 41 with the humidity. This is no place for a Newfoundlander; I’m part seal pup. I melt when it gets past 25.

I’m on my way to Newfoundland on Monday for the opening of The Rooms. (www.therooms.ca) Not a moment too soon. If you are sitting in Toronto dying of the heat and smog grab the kids and go to Newfoundland. They will be able to breath there.