The son of a lumberjack, the artist and filmmaker Terrence Tasker (1947-1992) was raised in rural Saskatchewan and British Columbia before he also worked in construction, mining, finance, industrial installations, taxi driving and as a film projectionist. He made a series of short films: Steps, The Abortion, and Echo, which screened in New York and Toronto. In 1981 he co-founded and built the original Studio Altaire, a 90-seat theatre and visual art gallery that also operated as an after-hours club for jazz concerts and poetry readings in downtown Montreal. He worked as a set builder for Montreal's Centaur Theatre, the Toronto Free Theatre and others. Also while he was living in Montreal and Toronto in the 1970s, he created artwork to accompany a series of poems by Marie Slaight to present a modernized retelling of Sophocles' Antigone story about power, punishment and rebellion. In the late '80s, Tasker moved to B.C where he worked as a set builder on films such as The Resurrected and Deep Sleep. Tasker died in 1992 at age 45.

Twenty-two years later Tasker's artwork has been published in The Antigone Poems by Marie Slaight (Altaire Productions, 2014). Having worked in Montreal, New Orleans and Buenos Aires as a writer, producer, and performer for film, theatre and music, Slaight is now the director of Sydney-based Altaire Productions and Publications, a company that has co-produced independent New Orleans music and such films as the award-winning documentary, Bury the Hatchet, Kindred (Aussie sci-fi short film), Stephen Elliott's Happy Baby and Anna and Modern day Slavery, among others. 978-0-9806447-0-8 $24.95 US/ $34.95 AUS Distribution: Itasca Books Distribution (US), James Bennett (Australia).

[BCBW 2014]