The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 61

Section Editor Kathryn Maloney, 596-3728 Artsthecitizen.southam.ca THE OTTAWA CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1997 Richler wins Giller for Barney's Version The other candidates were: The Projectionist by Michael Helm (Douglas Mcln-tyre), Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo (Press Gang Publishers), Where She has Gone by Nino Ricci (Mc Governor General's Literary Awards. Also on the Governor General's short list are Ottawa writer Elizabeth Hay's collection of short stories, Small Change; Sandra Birdsell of Regina for The Two-Headed Calf (McClelland and Stewart); last Seen (Alfred A. Knopf) by Matt Cohen of Toronto; and First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (Viking Penguin Books) by Eric Mc-Cormack of Waterloo, Ont. Winners of the Governor General's awards will be announced Nov. 18 in Ottawa, with the awards presented that afternoon in a ceremony at Rideau Hall.

Each winner receives $10,000. favourite at 9-4 and Barney's Version running third at 5-2. Where She Has Gone was given 5-1 The Projectionist 6-L The Giller Award was founded in 1994 by Toronto businessman Jack Ra-binovitch in memory of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller, to highlight excellence in creative writing. With a $25,000 purse, it's the richest annual prize in Canada for a novel or collection of short stories in English. To the surprise of much of the literary establishment, Jane Urquhart did not make the Giller list for her novel 'The Underpainter (McClelland and Stewart).

But she will undoubtedly be considered the one to beat for the and Bonnie Bernard, said the jury found the book, published by Knopf, "a belligerent confession told in the first person which gave (Barney) absolute freedom to he, to tell the truth, to regret, to refuse to regret. There's a kind of love in these pages, the hard kind." When the award was announced, Richler took the podium, his black tie long gone, shirt collar undone, drink in hand, and his boutoniere pinned on upside down. He told the group of 450 of Canada's most notable literary figures: "This is a lottery, a literary crapshoot, and any one of the shortlist would have been an honorable winner." by Jenny Jackson The Ottawa Citizen -TORONTO Mordecai Richler won the $25,000 Giller prize for his hovel Barney's Version at a glittering black tie dinner in Toronto last night. The novel, Richler's first in eight years, is the tale of the larger-than-life Barney Panofsky, a fuming, forgetful and frightened man, who wants to set the record straight about his own wasted life. In an effort to enlighten his doubters, he reveals himself to be everything friends say he is: a skirt-chasing liar.

Peter Gzoswki, who judged the competition with authors Mavis Gallant RICHLER Clelland and Stewart), and Larry's Party by Carol Shields (Random House). Ladbroke's bookmakers in Britain had predicted Mootoo's first novel would be the favourite, at 7-4 odds, Larry's Party the second Painter's memorabilia on display it I a. ft aw 1 1 it PHOTOS BY LYNN BALL, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN Nepean's Matt Ficner is the creative power behind Rusty the Tin Clown, one of the characters in new TV show to air on PBS, CBC and TVO. the mod. Getting BYPAULGESSELL The Ottawa Citizen You've seen his paintings, heard his acerbic comments and now you can read his mail and, in a manner of speaking, rummage in his drawers.

Harold Town was one of Canada's most prolific, versatile and best known artists in the post-war era. Frequently described as the enfant terrible of contemporary Canadian artists, he could be tart-tongued, especially when it came to critics, museum curators, pop artists, cultural bureaucrats, politicians and others whose egos, he believed, outdistanced their talent. Town died in 1990 at age 66 and many of his private papers, including some of his early works, were donated to the National Archives of Canada. The archives has decided to mount an exhibition, beginning today, of Town memorabilia taken from its collection, which was valued, for tax purposes, at more than $500,000. The show, which runs to Nov.

30, is entitled Drawing on the Harold Town Archives and was assembled from Town papers related to sales and exhibitions, writing and publishing, personal and professional relationships. As well, there are papers tied to Town's involvement with Painters Eleven, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, the Art Directors Club and other art societies. The archives exhibition includes some childhood report cards (teachers felt he talked too much), sketchbooks from his student days at the Ontario College of Art, invoices which tffilp show the miserly side of Town, a Chatelaine to recover dryclean-ing costs incurred when Town spilled drinks on himself following a photo shoot with the magazine, preliminary idrawings for covers of May fair magazine, self portraits and so-called failed" works, never meant by the artist to be exhibited. The exhibition begins a day before a retrospective of Town's opens in Toronto at the Moore Gallery. Magnificent Decade, Harold Town 1955-65 contains more than 60 paintings, collages, prints and drawings by Town and covers the artist's most creative tiecade, spanning his involvement With Painters Eleven in the mid-'5os through to his abstracts of the 1960s.

The Toronto-born Town, a life-long Bohemian, came to national and international prominence in the 1950s as a 0f the Painters Eleven, a group of artists who challenged artistic orthodoxy of the day, including Group of Seven landscapes, by stressing individuality and abstraction. Town was perhaps best known for Jys drawings and paintings but he also Created sculptures, etchings, lithographs and collages. He was also known for his biting criticism, once referring to the Senate as Canada's "only jjqcent home for the aged and And then there was his reaction to actions by a Roman Catholic cardinal to ban his nude drawings from the 1964 Venice Biennale. "It's ironic that the pictures were removed on the gbmplaint of a cardinal," Town said. "I regard censorship as a cardinal sin." Local puppeteer has hands-on role in new TV show for children Catalyst then held auditions for puppeteers at Young's Almonte studio, and ended up giving three roles to their creator Ficner.

He plays Rusty, the Tin Clown adorable dunce a root-beer stein that looks and talks like Arnold Schwarzenegger; and Cry Baby kewpie doll that just sort of bawls a "Through the creation process, as well as designing the characters and building them you sort of develop the character yourself. You sort of kind of get a feel for the characters," says Ficner. NODDY is the latest step in what has been a whirlwind career for Ficner, who learned in childhood that puppetry satisfied his itch for both tinkering and performing. A high-school puppet production led to an introduction to Young and the job on Umbrella Tree while he was still in Grade 12 at Notre Dame High School. It was followed by roles on CHRO's surreal kids show Cowboy live shows, and an ambitious sci-fi feature, Voyage of the Vulture, which he created for the cable community channel Ficner says he owes a lot to the men-torship he has received from Young, whose list of former apprentices includes outrageous satirical puppeteer Ronnie Burkett.

"Noreen is a very valuable friend," he says simply. "She has a very nurturing quality to her, and we make a very dynamic team." By Tony atherton The Ottawa Citizen When the BBC wanted to sell its considerable store of Thomas The Tank Engine short films to innately xenophobic American kiddies, it turned to Canada to provide the translation. The result was Shining Time Station, a reassuringly North American railway show from Toronto's Catalyst Entertainment in which the British episodes about talking trains were only one element. Shining Time Station became a huge success on PBS, launched a profitable range of merchandising spinoffs, and made the BBC very happy. It's no surprise that the Beeb wants to do the same thing with its 10-year-old stockpile of stop-action animated shorts inspired by the Noddy characters of British author Enid Blyton.

And this time, Ottawa-area artists and performers are helping to bring the new children's TV show to life. NODDY (a working title), is being produced by Catalyst for PBS; it will also air on TVO and CBC. The show features well-known actors Sean McCann and Jayne Eastwood in live-action segments that wrap around British animated episodes about the adventurous Noddy, his magical pal Big Ears, and their friends. Production began last month in Toronto on 40 episodes that will begin airing next fall. Ficner's involvement in the series began more than year ago when he accompanied multiple-award-winning Almonte puppeteer and TV producer Noreen Young to New York, where she was picking up a prize for her late series, Under The Umbrella Tree (Ficner's first paying gig in puppetry was as an assistant on that CBC children's show).

At the ceremony, the two met officials from the BBC's U.S. offices, who later approached them about designing some puppet characters for NODDY. NODDY (Notions, Oddities, Doodads and Delights of Yesterday) is the acronym for an antique store run by a crusty, retired sea dog named Noah (McCann). Next door is a millinery run by his eccentric sister (Eastwood, who squeezes NODDY between tap-ings of CBC's soap opera, Riverdale). "She's kind of like a live-action Miss Piggy," says Ficner of Eastwood's character.

"She's so full of zest and energy and cartoonish witticisms." The puppets, meanwhile, are the antique toys that line the shelves in Noah's shop. Working from catalogues of antique toys, Young and Ficner came up with 23 possible designs. Seventeen were accepted, and the puppeteers spent most of the summer making them. Another member of the NODDY cast, Sherman the Turtle-Tank. The show's whimsical set was designed by Ottawa artist Phil Craig, it was built here, and it is peopled if that's the right word by puppets designed and created in Almonte and Nepean.

And local puppeteer Matt Ficner is lending a hand (or two) in making the puppets come to life. "There's so much in the show, it's quite fantastic," Ficner, 24, says from Toronto during a break in taping. "There's live action, there's puppets, there's the Noddy segments goblins, which are characters put in later in the production process." Ill 1 inriHUJlJ II I Jill 1 I 1 1 I 1 .1 iiiiiii. mm I jij. i L.

-rrrrl. t'dU, CIBC. Royal Bank Je loroiito-lJomlnlon Bank lOo-, i Bank of Monlreal Scoliahank A nr hv I'd linit tha $1 250,000 i V- ') Children's rounaai on ti (in, J- k''V:" de I H6prtal pour entants ON LY 25,000 Tl CK ETSVVILL E. SOLD! FINAL DRAW DECEMBER 9. 1997.

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