Tara Bursey

Zine News

2012-02-11T15:18:00.001-05:00

1. My latest zines, the first issue of Goin' Down The Road: Newfoundland Stories of Leaving and Museozine are now up for sale in my Etsy Shop for anyone who's interested in picking up a copy by snail mail.

2. On the flip side, locals can now pick up copies of either zine at local art shop No Show Exhibits, which is a part of Katharine Mulherin's Queen West art empire of amazingness. The shop can be found at 1082 Queen Street West, just east of Dovercourt.

3. Said zines will be traveling all the way to Halifax, where they will be both exhibited and for sale in Eyelevel Gallery's Reshelving Initiative 5 exhibition. You can learn all about it here.

4. Finally, there is no confirmation on this yet, but I'm hoping to table OCAD's very own zine fair, happening at the end of the month. Once I know that I have a table reserved, I will post more specific info about this as soon as I can.

First Art Purchase

2012-02-10T16:59:00.001-05:00

I am unbelievably excited to announce that I've made my first major art purchase! It's a 'Putz' bag of chips sculpture by the artist STO, inspired by the regional chip brand Utz from Pennsylvania. Utz chips were a staple in Baltimore-- they were everywhere there, and we ate a boatload of them. So this is a super cool joint Valentine's gift for us, financed mainly with my own art sales at Katherine Mulherin's new-ish Queen West art shop, No Show Exhibits.

The chip bag was originally included in a New York exhibition called My Slow Called Life in NYC at Mulherin Pollard Gallery. For the show, STO recreated his entire apartment in paper mache. Photographs of the installation can be found here on STO's blog.

Here is Ben wishing these were a real life bag of Utz' Crab flavoured chips, a Baltimore favourite of ours...either that or Carolina-Style BBQ...

Columns and Swoops

2012-02-03T12:32:00.002-05:00

Somewhere along the line-- during my time in the States, most likely-- I turned into an architecture gawker. In the States, I went to museums and felt that I could admire the architecture without having my enjoyment of it be tainted by a certain degree of bitterness about the politics and astounding prices that are par for the course among (many, but not all) Toronto institutions.

Looking at these photos, it dawned on me how cool it would be to make a big series of pictures like this. I'm hoping to make it out to the DIA in Detroit later this month, so we'll see if I can add a new photo to the pile that soon.

Fox Court, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Looking up at the Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC
Central Court, The Walters, Baltimore, MD

Charles Ledray

2012-01-31T21:48:00.001-05:00

Charles Ledray is a Seattle-born artist I became interested in while working at the Textile Museum last summer. I've been bogged down with school stuff for the past week and haven't posted anything in a while, so here is a little piece I wrote for an assignment about the work pictured above entitled workworkworkworkwork, first exhibited in 1991. FYI: I will be building a "fantasy exhibition" of sorts around this work for a curating class.

*
Charles Ledray
workworkworkworkwork, 1991
588 objects: Fabric, thread, cotton batting, yarn, embroidery floss, nylon cord, carpet, leather, wood, metal, foil, metal chain, wire, nails, porcelain, pumice, beads, buttons, cardboard, corrugated cardboard, paper, magic marker, paint
Approximately 13.7 m x 25.4 cm x 5 cm
Private Collection, Houston, TX

Charles Ledray is an artist working primarily in the area of fibre-base sculpture and installation. His work is characterized by labour-intensive and somewhat obsessive tendencies towards hand making. A compelling blend of high-art and craft, his best-known works are installations comprised of handmade men’s suits, hats, fantastical garments and ceramic vessels that play with multiplicity and scale. In his installation workworkworkworkwork (1991), 588 miniature objects-- among them garments, magazines, housewares and multiple pieces of art-- were displayed in New York’s Astor Place in the form of an impromptu street sale. Each of the objects was painstakingly hand-crafted by Ledray, and their presentation on a busy sidewalk-- often splayed across shrunken replicas of flattened cardboard boxes and rumpled raincoats-- cleverly blurred the lines between art and mass-produced object. The individual objects themselves are an enigmatic combination of abjection and whimsy, like a half-inch dildo in a dollhouse.

Both the presentation and objects of workworkworkworkwork evoke a number of responses in the viewer. The lack of human presence in the installation causes the objects to convey a sense of melancholy and loneliness, imploring one to piece together biographical details of the hypothetical owners of each cluster of tiny belongings for sale. The objects are reminiscent of toys or props-- accessories for a Ken doll whose dream house was foreclosed and who is drifting from fleabag hotel to fleabag hotel. Each object straddles the line between precious and imprecious, with grasshopper-sized hardcover novels standing spine up as if tossed aside among real cigarette butts on the sidewalk. The centrality of labour is evident in the work, from Ledray’s labour to the title of the work to the work of people who labour to make mass-produced objects in sweatshops that move from multi-national chain store to church sale to sidewalk vendor to landfill. Finally, the piece’s presentation on a public sidewalk is dependent on the presence of the pedestrian to complete the work. This brings to mind how members of dominant society-- in the case of workworkworkworkwork, the Manhattan white-collar worker, socialite, window shopper, or tourist-- view people on the margins of society. The homeless, street vendors and people performing menial jobs are relegated as background players against an urban backdrop, always viewed peripherally. The miniaturization of the objects in workworkworkworkwork poignantly reflects this.

While it is easy to get completely caught up in the sense of wonder and delightful seediness of Ledray’s tiny sculptural stand-ins, a key to the work’s success lies in its presentation in public, on a sidewalk in a huge metropolis that dwarfs everything it contains. Situated in Manhattan-- an iconic American city which has long been seen as a centre of commerce, immigration, power and consumption-- workworkworkworkwork interacts with its site’s impressive web of history, from deadly industrial disasters in garment factories and riots fuelled by class resentment to the economic and social conditions of New York City in 1991 when workworkworkworkwork was first exhibited. The relationship between the objects-- which despite their scale evoke personal histories that feel very real-- and the site activate something much larger than the diminutive objects laboured over by Ledray: a greater social history of a city that lies deeper than a sidelong glance during a brisk walk across a crowded intersection.

Photos courtesy of the Whitney's website: http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/CharlesLeDray/Images

Museozine

2012-01-10T18:29:00.002-05:00

I completed my latest zine exactly a week ago, making my collective zine output total a whopping four zines-- two were collaborations, and two were my own-- in 2011, the official year of the Revenge of Print. Looking back, I feel that I did well...I did my part for the revenge! Print was one of my first loves. Needless to say, I hope it is here to stay.

While this zine came to fruition mere days into 2012, I consider it a '2011' zine because so much of its research and construction was done in 2011. In a nutshell, Museozine is a zine of interviews with friends of mine-- all wonderfully creative young people who craft, make music and make art on their own terms-- about their museum experiences. These interviews started off as casual research I was doing for my job at a small Toronto museum last summer. The interviews were, in some cases, so honest and joyful and surprising that I felt like I just had to publish them in zine form as a way of honoring and preserving them.

Some of my favourite moments in the zine include the following quotes:

"When I was a young kid I loved to sit upside down on the couch (legs up the wall, head hanging down over the end of the seat) and look at the living room/kitchen upside down and fantasize about how cool it would be to be able to walk around in a house that was upside down. Really upside down, but defying gravity so everything would stay in its place, and to walk in the front door and try to navigate around the house that way and see all the familiar objects in this whole new way. I did this a lot. It was a bit of an obsession. There's my dream museum-- my childhood home upside down." --Elaine B.

"If I could create my own museum it would be quite a bit like my own apartment, except much, much bigger...everything from old print (magazines, comic books, fanzines, old books) to old toys, various pop culture items, guitars and music gear, and-- probably most importantly-- vinyl records." --Matt H.

"I think a hobo museum would be cool. It would have a riding the rails simulator, and a hobo camp staffed with historical re-enactors like Black Creek Pioneer Village, and maybe a folk singer from the 20s or 30s. Although this is changing, museums tend not to represent the lives of people on the margins of history." --Patrick M.

Today, headlines about millions of dollars in funding for culture and research being cut from both the municipal and the provincial budget over the next year were splashed across Toronto papers. Sad when you consider how much museums have captured the imaginations of the people I interviewed. Most of these interviews referred to childhood museum experiences, which, for the case of many, happened in the 1980s, before the massive culture funding slashes and economic recession of the very late 1980s and early 1990s. There is currently an accessibility problem among Toronto's museums. I hate to think that the current economic climate and recent cuts will make the current problem (or crisis, even) of local museum accessibility--and not to mention cultural funding-- even worse.

For lots of impassioned writing on the topic of public access to museums and cultural institutions, check out Toronto critic and arts writer Leah Sandals' always engaging blog, Unedit My Heart.

Danville Community Encyclopedia

2012-01-09T21:38:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, I finished my latest zine, Museozine. This got me thinking about how artists have used the interview format in both performance and printed matter. Tonight in my Publications class I was introduced to a really awesome example of this (somewhat minor) tradition called the Danville Community Encyclopedia by artist Anna Callahan. For this project, Callahan hung out in a public library in Danville, Illinois interviewing members of the public of all ages about their respective areas of expertise. She eventually filled an entire book with transcriptions of the interviews she collected-- the encyclopedia entries as diverse as Ghostbusters, Gospel Songs, Attention Deficit Disorder, Protest, Chicago Illinois, Canada and Tupac.

This was an uber-limited edition. I wish I could buy this!

For more on Anna Callahan and her community projects, check out her website.

(P.S: This is my 300th post!)

16 Museums

2012-01-02T13:46:00.000-05:00

For a zine that I'm working on which should be done later on today, hopefully! More on this later...

Crime Map Walk

2011-12-18T11:13:00.004-05:00

Here are some photos from my final project for my Performance Art class. The following text is my short artist statement about the project.

Crime Map Walk
Performance documentation from 10.12.11
Video, laptop, paper, pins

This performance is inspired by the idea of the artist as traveler, responding to the city they find themselves in as well as walking tours and maps. Its jumping off point was an online “crime map” of Baltimore, which one can consult to find an up-to-the-minute map and information indicating the locations and types of crimes committed across the city. Before coming to Baltimore, I found myself browsing such maps as a way of attempting to distinguish between the “good” and “bad” parts of the city. As any long-time resident of Baltimore knows, it is quite difficult to make such a distinction here, where there is a fairly high crime rate city-wide.

For this performance, I used the Baltimore Crime Map (http://crimebaltimore.com/) to trace a walking path between my house in Charles Village and a main intersection in the Inner Harbour. I then walked this long path, trying to pass as many sites of recent crimes as possible, taking photo-documentation in the form of over 100 photographs taken every half-block or so along the way. These photographs were then turned into a stop-motion style video, which serves as the main document of the performance.

This performance plays with the idea of how people respond to crime and fear in an urban environment. As a defense mechanism, many people avoid areas they feel are “bad” in their day-to-day travels. This performance reverses this logic, and in doing so, faces certain fears of crime head on. Also, in performing this walk on a Saturday during the holiday season, I realized that hardly anyone was walking around on the streets I walked during my journey. This performance also attempts to address the importance of street life and pedestrianism in keeping cities both lively and safe.

That's All Folks!

2011-12-13T13:28:00.001-05:00

Installation with popcorn kernels, uniform and props, completed last week. I've never put popcorn kernels on a wall before...now I know it's possible!

I think this piece is a distillation of a lot of the feelings I've had and things I've seen while visiting the States. Most of all, I think it is about how history moves from one period of time to the next, and about the feeling that things are about to change. It is also about the loss of illusions.

One of my favourite movies of all time is The Last Picture Show, which I couldn't help but think of as I was thinking up this piece, as well as thinking up the performance I did in McKeldin Square a few months ago. While the film's trailer focuses a little more on the torrid affairs between the residents of the fictitious town, Anarene Texas, the movie is set during a time when the movie theatre was beginning to play less of a role in people's lives because of the home television set.

Also on the topic of the movement from one historical period to the next, I read the following quote in a class recently, written by the American art critic Martha Schwender on the use of appropriation in the work of the artist Sherrie Levine. It excited me because it questions whether or not we are nearing the end of a long period of overarching irony/cynicism in contemporary art...or perhaps also a period plagued by a sense of cynicism in general?

Appropriation rose out of this desire to have it both ways, to keep what you loved-- or at least knew intimately-- and still make art. It was a great solution. But I was born in the 1970s, following the burnout of the 60s, and it has run aground in recent years. Not only have artists like (Sherrie) Levine, Jeff Koons and Richard Prince been dragged through the legal system for their cultural borrowing, but the postmodern irony and cynicism on which Appropriation was founded also feels outmoded in the Occupy Age.

Adventures in Canada

2011-12-02T22:00:00.001-05:00

First try at making a movie! I'm happy with it. Mr. Lightfoot-- if you're reading this, please don't sue me for copyright. Technically this is student work. I am a big fan of yours, and I'd be really upset if you were mad at me...!

Adventures in Canada

2011-11-28T23:04:00.001-05:00

Busy, busy, busy these days finishing up my semester at school (and my time in Baltimore City!), so there has been little time to write here. One of my major projects right now is a body of work inspired by the story of my father leaving Newfoundland and traveling across Canada before finally settling in Toronto in 1973. It's a wild story that can serve as a snapshot of so many things which relate to Canada's recent history-- the migration of Maritimers to large Canadian cities to look for work in the mid-20th century, Toronto as Canada's "boomtown" in the 1970s, and a look at how working people have been affected by the steady decline of industry.

While I've had papers to write about this topic, art projects dealing with this line of research started out as diversions, but have ended up being an important part of the greater project. An interview with my father was transcribed and turned into a short zine, pictured above. I dedicated the last week to condensing the interview into fragments and using them in a stop-motion animated video (a still from it is included above as well), complete with a soundtrack featuring a rare Gordon Lightfoot song (!) and a book from the late 1800s.

I will post the video here once it's done. In the meantime, here is the link to the project blog.

http://newfoundlandstoriesofleaving.blogspot.com

House Proud

2011-11-06T17:45:00.001-05:00

Here are a few photos that were taken a few weeks ago at Canzine 2011 of the City of Craft table, (or "City of Craft Village"), with houses by Ian Phillips, Jen Anisef, Kid Icarus, Cecelia Hayes, Roz Faustino, Reverend Aitor, Michelle Renaud, Becky Johnson, and myself. House number #2432 is my contribution-- a little ink drawing of my house in Baltimore. I've been looking forward to checking out pictures of this awesome little collaborative project co-ordinated by City of Craft wonder lady, Becky Johnson. There has been a ton of buzz about City of Craft as of late-- I am so sad to miss it for the first time this year since it started....be sure to check it out over the weekend of December 10-11, 2011.

Photos: Glowing Doll
glowingdoll.blogspot.com/2011/11/paper-city.html

www.cityofcraft.com

Don't Flinch, Jack.

2011-11-03T14:06:00.000-04:00

Photos from an assignment from school that incorporates performance and hand-drawn posters of quotes about labour taken from Newfoundland "Jack Stories," Barbara Erhenreich's book, Nickled and Dimed, and an interview with my father. This performance isn't quite where I want it to be, so I won't post too much about it here. The photos turned out good, though!

Top Photo: Kristine Woods

The Wall at the Back of the Theater

2011-10-19T11:25:00.000-04:00

A couple of Sundays ago, I decided to do a performance for Occupy Baltimore-- Baltimore's version of the Wall Street Protests-- which started a few weeks ago in a public square in the Inner Harbour area of town. The performance was inspired by a project I was assigned in a performance class (I still have yet to do the actual assignment in class on Monday...this wasn't the school assignment) where we were asked to develop a character or alter ego. For this piece in McKeldin Square, I became an out-of-work "popcorn lady" who lost her job because the theatre she worked at (In the present? In the 40s or 50s? I'm not quite sure...) closed down. The performance consisted of me kneeling on the ground for two hours, spelling out a long quote in popcorn kernels. The quote belongs to the annoying, but highly quotable (Baltimore-born) Frank Zappa, who once said: "The Illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes to expensive to maintain, they will take down the scenery...pull back the curtains...and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre." The quote was slightly abridged from it's original form for the performance, for the sake of my knees and back.

This performance was obviously inspired by my time in Baltimore-- and the United States. It is a crazy time to be here-- there have been protests across the country, and Baltimore itself has been a troubled city since the 1960s. The downtown core of Baltimore is beautiful, but largely deserted. There is poverty and blight everywhere. While the arts community and a select few are fighting hard for the city to have a chance at a renaissance, it will be a long, hard road. What are the odds that it will happen? This is a city made for a million people, and the population has steadily declined since the 1970s to 620,000 people. Poor Baltimore-- in so many ways, the city and its people have been really inspiring, but I leave for good in December. I know it will haunt me, and I will wonder and worry about it as if it was a wayward friend.

On a lighter note, executing this piece was rough. I did a somewhat similar performance with popcorn kernels last spring that took just under half as long, and that was hard enough. Because the piece is at least partially about labour, the endurance aspect of the piece was fitting. About a third of the way through the quote, this sweet little man offered me a bit of help. He did one letter-- an F-- before I shoo-ed him away because he was slowing me down. The poor guy was very disappointed, and reluctantly left me to my work after a while. I really hit my stride after he left.

This was the first piece of "work" that has materialized since my arrival here, and I'm glad to have it more or less behind me. There is definitely more to come soon. I'll end this post with the lyrics of a Randy Newman song I only just heard for the first time yesterday. While my photos don't really illustrate the Baltimore this song speaks of, the idea of it is definitely simmering close the core of this piece.

Beat up little seagull

On a marble stair

Tryin' to find the ocean

Lookin' everywhere

Hard times in the city

In a hard town by the sea

Ain't nowhere to run to

There ain't nothin' here for free

Hooker on the corner

Waitin' for a train

Drunk lyin' on the sidewalk

Sleepin' in the rain

And they hide their faces

And they hide their eyes

'Cause the city's dyin'

And they don't know why

Oh Baltimore

Man it's hard just to live

Oh, Baltimore

Man, it's hard just to life, just to live

The Illusion of Freedom...

2011-10-10T12:20:00.002-04:00

My little helper at work in McKeldin Square, at Occupy Baltimore yesterday afternoon. Much more on this later.

Photo: Jacob Ryan Smith via Facebook

NFLD Stories of Leaving

2011-10-07T11:41:00.000-04:00

Started a new blog yesterday afternoon for a school project, and it is likely that the project will become an ongoing one. The project will probably apply to very few reading this, but if you can think of anyone who would be interested, please feel free to pass on the blog address/call for submissions.

http://nfldstoriesofleaving.blogspot.com

FYI: Goin' Down the Road is a classic Canadian film about two Maritimers traveling to Toronto look for work in the early 70s. It provided much inspiration for this project.

Das Bande

2011-10-06T11:28:00.001-04:00

Among all of the work and relocation-related craziness I was faced with this summer, I somehow managed to begin one zine collaboration project, and end another. This one-- Das Bande-- was a whopping year-and-a-half in the works. I am happy to say that it finally made its way into the world in August...the week that I left town!

Das Bande was a collaboration between Gena Meldazy and myself. Gena was one of the people interviewed for my Punk Rockers on Creative Survival and the Survival of Creativity zine in 2009. Shortly after finishing that project, Gena asked if I would like to work with her on a zine project that focusses on women involved in punk rock across Canada. The zine ended up featuring several interviews (mostly conducted by Gena) with individuals (most impressively Jade Blade from the legendary Vancouver punk band The Dishrags...whoa!), and the interviews were broken up by drawings I did of girls from in and around Toronto's punk scene. For the cover, we asked the formerly of Toronto/now of Vancouver printmaker and illustrator Megan Speers to draw something, and the result-- a gang of girls camping in rural BC, presumably?-- was totally and utterly amazing. After much humming and hawing over an appropriate name for the zine, we finally settled on Das Bande, and I hand stamped title bands for the small print run of 50 zines in total. The zine also has a fold-out poster of the interior drawings I did for the zine, which I unfortunately lacked the foresight to photograph...darn!

Do you want a copy of this zine? Gena is overseeing its distribution, and I suspect that they may be all accounted for seeing as the print run was so small. If you're interested, contact Gena and ask her if and how you can get one.

Robyn Love Interview on TCA

2011-09-26T13:59:00.000-04:00

Conducted an interview with knit-ty multi-disciplinary artist Robyn Love last week in honour of the massive public art project that she was commissioned to do for the Cheongju International Craft Biennale. The interview was posted on TCA last Friday...read it and get inspired!http://torontocraftalert.ca/2011/09/23/questions-for-crafters-cheongju-robyn-love/

Image: Water Tower Cozy by Robyn Love, courtesy of her website.

Cover Stories

2011-09-20T11:50:00.000-04:00

Before I left to come to Baltimore exactly one month ago, I packed my life with an unbelievable amount of projects-- mostly collaborative. Some had been in the works for a while, and I felt a real responsibility to have things finally materialize before I left town. It was also a good way to spend some time with the people I know before I left Toronto for a while.

One such project was "curating" the exhibition Cover Stories for the Toronto Zine Library. While I was asked by the TZL to curate an exhibition, it was largely a collaboration between myself and three of the members of the TZL Collective-- Lyndall, a talented lady who made a documentary about Who's Emma a few years ago; Chris, the creator of many zines over the last 10 or 15 years, at least one of which is considered a Canadian "classic"; and Patrick, who is one of the founding members of the TZL, and is a great all-round guy and an amazing baker. After being asked to help create an exhibition, I spent three or four weeks going through the library's massive collection with a fine tooth comb, picking out any zines that I liked especially, or pulling out zines that shared some sort of mutual connection. While I went into this project not having any curatorial theme in mind whatsoever, one slowly emerged. As an artist and zine-maker, I couldn't help be attracted to interesting and unique design in the zines I came across. I eventually decided that creating a narrative about zines through their covers might be a neat way to create an exhibition that, while forming physical zine "groups," doesn't claim to draw on any real fixed history of zine-making.

I eventually chose a pile of zines and divided them into 6 loose thematic groups which eventually became "Just Text," "Print Media," Colour," "Little Zines," "Hearts and Other Body Parts," and "In the Mail." Each collective member of those mentioned above chose two groups at random to write short didactic descriptions about to serve as wall text for the exhibition, interpreting the themes as they saw fit. I wrote the following summary of the exhibition:

Cover Stories is an exhibition of selections from the public collection of the Toronto Zine Library. Using thematically-grouped zine covers as a springboard, we thought it would be interesting to highlight zine art and design as a way of telling the greater story of zines– what they are, how they’ve changed over the years, and why they continue to be a valuable and relevant medium. While some selections from the library have been refashioned as photographs for this exhibition, others appear in their original form to be handled and appreciated as intimate and tactile objects. In creating this interactive exhibition, we hope that you will spend time with some of the titles on display while learning about zines as both an art form and a method of communication.

We were REALLY down to the wire with finishing work for this exhibition-- we ended up installing the show two days before I left for Baltimore! I am thrilled with how the exhibition turned out-- it was a really great collaboration, and everyone played a really important part in making it happen. Lyndall took some really fantastic pictures of the zines that were chosen for the exhibition, and Chris played a huge part in designing and assembling what ended up being a really wonderful exhibition zine/catalogue (pictured above), which will serve as a great document for after the show comes down.

Cover Stories should still be up in the Southern Cross Room of the TRANZAC Club at 292 Brunswick Avenue, in the Annex. I'm not sure when it's coming down, but if you're interested in checking it out, do so soon!

The Feedback Quilt Project

2011-09-12T11:12:00.000-04:00

I'm going to step back in time a bit to post some documentation of a participatory activity I designed for the TMC that was up in the museum for the month of August. The quilt was part of a larger project I did for the museum, doing qualitative research about visitor engagement and satisfaction. Inspired by some of the ideas in Nina Simon's book, The Participatory Museum, I thought I would make an in-museum project that would serve as something of an interactive guestbook. Here is a short summary I wrote about the quilt that explains it a bit more. I'm happy to report that by the end of my contract on August 19th, the quilt was almost completely done!

The purpose of The Feedback Quilt Project is to create a participatory visitor feedback activity for the museum space. Its goals are to collect and preserve visitor content, to create a more interactive museum environment, to educate visitors about a particular material practice (quilt structure and construction) and to become a “town square,” essentially creating an alternative portrait of our visitorship.

A 3-colour hourglass quilt structure (http://quilting.about.com/od/blockofthemonth/ss/cal-hourglass-quilt-block_2.htm) was mapped out on an 8’ X 4’ piece of Foamcore with a 1/2", dark-coloured masking tape. The board was mounted to a wall facing the 2nd floor elevators and stairwell. The activity requires that visitors answer at least one of three questions:

1. Describe your ‘Fantasy Museum.”
2. What keeps you from going to museums?
3. What do you want out of a museum for textiles?

Each question has a corresponding coloured “quilt block” sticky note. Using a dry-mounted, colour-coded quilt legend, visitors placed a sticky note with their response in the appropriate position on the quilt template, almost like a large paint by numbers or cross-stitch kit. In doing so they are building a large quilt form together, and the more questions they respond to, the more the “quilt” starts to take shape. The quilt form was chosen as a basis for the activity due to the connections between quilting, community and communication.

Responses to this activity were revealing. Many people took the opportunity to spill their guts about what they felt museums were and weren't giving them as visitors. Many focused on the price and hours of operation of museums not being accessible. A few came up with truly amazing ideas for fantasy museums-- a museum of smells, a snowglobe museum, a "museum of everything in the entire world." I came away from the project at the end of my contract realizing that museum visitors will reveal a lot to you if you make the effort to stray away from the same old prescribed questions, such as "are you a return visitor?" and "how did you hear about our museum?"

My sincerest thanks goes out to the museum for giving me the chance to basically make art and talk to enthusiastic museum-goers and textile fans all summer. Funnest job ever!

For more documentation of the quilt, check out the TMC's fantastic Facebook Page.

On Ownership

2011-09-08T11:40:00.001-04:00

My Crossed Stitches project has officially come full circle-- someone else made a William Morris cross stitch kit, and is selling them for $82.00 at the BMA gift shop!! "Needlepoint designed exclusively for The Baltimore Museum of Art." Unbelievably annoying...but also totally hilarious and ironic.

Photo Credit: B. Needham

Heir/Looms

2011-09-01T21:40:00.000-04:00

Last week, my project Crossed Stitches was included in the exhibition Heir/looms, curated by Nicole Dawkins for Studio Beluga in Montreal. The exhibition seems to have gone off without a hitch...congratulations Nicole, and thanks so much for including me!

A really gorgeous and engrossing catalogue accompanied the exhibition, packed with artist interviews, images and multiple exhibition essays. It was a real honour to be included in it. The catalogue is a super limited edition, so I thought I'd include my complete catalogue interview and artists statement here for anyone who is interested in me nattering on and on about myself and my family...

How much can we really claim to “own” our ideas? The repeating, reworking and re-contextualizing of ideas from the past is part of the postmodern condition. So many ideas have come to fruition over the course of history-- when we make something, what are the odds that it hasn’t been made before? Anyone who has come across the work of another artist that is uncannily similar to their own knows what it means to have their sense of ownership over an idea thwarted. Perhaps the solution to this dilemma is to forfeit ownership altogether.

My piece, Crossed Stitches, explores these ideas. Focussing on a wallpaper design by William Morris-- a designer whose level of influence cannot be overestimated-- I went through the painstaking process of creating an accurate and fully-functional cross-stitch pattern that corresponds to his original design. This process involved transferring each design onto a large grid and translating each pattern so that it is comprised of squares on a grid. These large-scale grid drawings were then used to make a cross-stitch pattern on another piece of grid paper, dividing the colours of the pattern into symbols as “real” cross-stitch patterns do. This final pattern was then included in hand-made cross-stitch kits, so people can make their own William Morris “fabric swatches.”

Crossed Stitches has been paired with an embroidered piece by my mother, created for me in 1989 from a commercial cross-stitch pattern from a book called Patterns From the Past. Both pieces represent different views on the issues of authorship and authenticity.

How did you come to work with fibre-based materials?
When I think back to the very first pieces of sculptural work I made as a student long ago, I remember using materials that weren't "artists" materials, probably because I wanted to make the work that I was envisioning without having the equipment, or the technical know-how attached to sculptural materials such as clay and plaster. I remember making sculptures out of crumpled up tin foil, ceramic tiles, coffee filters, paper-- materials that are very rooted in the domestic and "every day." Early on, I was inspired by artists like Robert Rauschenberg (still one of my very favourite artists), and I think this work was partially inspired by artists like him who worked with simple, cheap found materials poached from every day life. Then about 6 or 7 years ago I made a leap from attempting to make art that was like pure sculpture to making work involving garments. I would buy used garments and speculate who the owner used to be, and how the garment might be a reflection of who that person was and what they did with their lives. I would sometimes attach used garments to found old photos and create narratives with installations centred around the found garment. While this body of work didn't last long I consider it my first serious body of work, and it definitely set the stones for a long-standing interest in garments, textiles and fibre art which has been a part of my work to varying degrees for quite a while now.

How does the materiality and practices of working with your chosen medium affect the conceptual focus of your work?
I work in many different media. Generally I will get an idea for work, and will work in whatever medium I have to to get the work done, whether it be a drawing with ink, needlepoint or a sculpture made out of miniature shrimp that is inspired by lace. Sometimes the concept informs the choice of material, and sometimes an experiment with an interesting material will lead to a concept that is linked to what the materials are "doing" or can do. Both material and concept are very important and inextricably linked in my work. The Crossed Stitches work is a good example of this.

How or where did you learn to stitch or sew?
My grandmother taught me to crochet and my mother taught me needlepoint. I remember being about 8 or 9, spending a ton of time doing both. I didn't keep up with either craft, but picked them both up later in life as part of my art practice.

Is there a tradition of craft/making in your family?
Definitely. Growing up, I had a great deal of contact with my mother's side of the family, who are Macedonian. The main form of craft that my family engaged in was crochet. My grandmother crocheted these sock-like slippers for my mother, her sisters and all of my cousins (and I) every winter for most of her/our life. She even crocheted me a bra for one of my dolls once...!!!! Recently, my mother must have been having a particularly sentimental day (!) because she showed me a huge bin full of crocheted baby clothed and blankets that my grandmother, other relatives, and her old co-workers made me when I was a baby. My mind was blown and I was very humbled by the incredible skill and patience used in the making of these objects. As my mother pulled miniature sweater after miniature sweater made by many different people, I was amazed to recognize my grandmother's work immediately. The crocheted items she made were simpler, less decorative and more utilitarian than the rest of the baby clothes. My mother showed me a baby blanket my grandmother crocheted that was incredibly beautiful in it's simplicity. My mother said something along the lines of "your grandmother made that when they didn't have any money at all. She would just work and work on that blanket." That is the thing that I appreciate the most about the items crocheted items I've come across made by my grandmother and other family and people around me growing up. Many of these people didn't have much money, but they always found something to give...they were so generous. Usually these things were hand-made-- clothing, food, and things like that.

Interestingly, the side of my family that I don't have a lot of contact with-- the family from Newfoundland-- are even bigger makers than my Macedonian family. The culture of making and crafting in Newfoundland is such a rich one. This is something I'm starting to learn a bit about, and would love to learn about more in the future.

How does this affect your relationship to these materials and practices?
I don't know how much it directly affects the work that I've done with craft materials. One thing that comes to mind immediately is that members of my family-- my mother for example-- who don't necessarily have a understanding of conceptual or contemporary art can relate to work that I've done that somehow employs the use of craft materials and processes. These materials and processes are accessible and easy to identify, thus opening up lines of communication and dialogue about the work. I really like that this is the case, because non-artists are generally very afraid to talk about art. I want such people to feel like they can take something from art...conceptual art, too. What is the point of making artwork that only other artists will look at?

How is your personal, family or cultural history reflected (or challenged/deconstructed) in your work?
One thing I can identify in my work that reflects my upbringing is a sense of work and perseverance. I hope this doesn't come across as hokey, because it's totally true. I come from a stubbornly hard-working, blue collar family. Sometimes I feel like if a piece of work isn't hard to construct or doesn't take a million hours to make, it isn't worth doing. I love labour-intensive processes, and maybe subconsciously feel like work that is difficult or laborious will be appreciated more, or is more valid somehow. I should probably get over this!

Is the history of craftmaking or domestic arts important to your practice and to your work?
The history of craftmaking and domestic arts actually aren't really all that important to my art practice. I am interested in materials and processes in general. Sometimes a process or a material will resonate with me, and it will find its way into my work somehow, either intentionally or unintentionally. I can see myself delving more into craft history in the future, but right now I approach craft mainly from a very visceral connection to making, creating, building and using my hands. I am interested far less in the historical domestic arts as I am in contemporary notions of crafting as an alternative to buying, it's ties to the do-it-yourself ethic, and the psychic rewards of doing slow work. Sometimes crafting feels like the only antidote to aspects of contemporary life that can be overwhelming or frustrating-- omnipresent technology, advertising, consumerism, rude people, crowded subways, etc.

How do you imagine your work will be positioned and passed on by future generations?
I imagine that some of my work will be mistaken for garbage and thrown out! Seriously! That is why I document the hell out of my work, and write a fair bit about it. I want future generations to know that these strange things I've done-- with food, paper, and fragile materials in particular-- weren't just the product of a crazy person! It all took a fair bit of time and thought, and occasionally people found it interesting...ha, ha!

AVAM, Baltimore

2011-08-29T09:28:00.002-04:00

Between the earthquake and the hurricane, I managed to make it out to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore late last week. Lots of amazing work there and lots to think about. Their current exhibition What Makes Us Smile? was full of happy-sad work by a wide range of individuals, from outsider artists to Patch Adams, M.D. I loved the beaded Alfred E. Neuman headboard by Patty Kuzbida. It was also a unique pleasure to see the work of a Toronto friend in a huge museum show in a totally different city-- Rev. Aitor of The Misanthrope Specialty Co. had some of his infamous Unflattering Portraits in the show, and seeing them there was like seeing a familiar (ugly) face in a crowd of strangers.

After seeing the exhibition, Ben said that it was great that a museum like this exists because the things on display were "things he would have wanted to make when (he) was a kid." In saying this, he was referring to art made out of salvage, and a huge model boat made out of toothpicks (!) in particular. In so many words, I think he was implying that the work at the AVAM might encourage people to make things just for the sake of making them or follow a creative impulse that might initially seem odd or "pointless." This is an important thing for artists to keep in mind too-- there is nothing wrong with just making for the sake of making, or doing something "just because you want to." After all, experiments are the mothers of invention.

Huipils From Guatemala

2011-08-26T12:09:00.001-04:00

Greetings from Baltimore! I'm settled in here, so I think I'm ready to start posting again after a very long absence. There's tons to post about, but I will start off with some eye candy, plain and simple. Over the course of my employment with the Textile Museum this summer, one of my projects was to photograph an enormous private collection of Mayan huipils-- traditional women's blouses-- from the Guatemalan Highlands. Here is a small handful of them.

From Top:

Purple huipil from Comalapa, Guatemala
Patterned huipil from Comalapa, Guatemala
Red huipil from Nahuala, Guatemala
Brown huipil from Chichicastanango, Guatemala

Heir/Looms

2011-07-16T22:57:00.001-04:00

Here is a sneak preview of an exhibition I'll be taking part in next month in Montreal. Thanks to Nicole Dawkins for including me!

More info on Heir/Looms to come soon.

www.heirloomsexhibit.tumblr.com

Moon Man Newfie

2011-06-25T19:45:00.001-04:00

Here are some cell phone photos of me and my souvenir pillow-in-progress made at a workshop this afternoon at the Textile Museum of Canada. The workshop was held today by Andrew Hunter of the collaborative art duo, Dodolab. This pillow is inspired by the province of my forefathers and mothers (Newfoundland!) as well as the Stompin' Tom song, "Moon Man Newfie" and various NFLD culinary oddities. This weekend's workshops are a part of the TMC's newest exhibition, Cold Comfort: New and Improved Souvenirs of Canada. It's amazing-- go check it out!

Photos: Andrew Hunter

Catching Up

2011-06-24T22:59:00.003-04:00

I am very behind on this blog! My only excuse is that I'm one month into a summer job that requires me to spend a very long time on a computer-- something far from the retail reality I was so used to one short month ago. By the time I get home, I would rather not type another word! There is plenty to catch up on, but for this post I'll just concentrate on the two (wonderful and super noteworthy) shows I have work in right now.

The above photograph is of my corner of a little world known as The Wunderkabinet-- a roving series of exhibitions in Kreuzberg, Berlin curated by the talented Leah Buckareff. This is my third Wunderkabinet exhibition, and in some ways the premise of this third exhibition-- The Reading Raum-- is the one that is closest to my heart. Housed in a wacky architectural storage unit called The Turtle in the Etsy Labs Berlin space, The Reading Raum is an archive and exhibition of mini-books, zines and printed matter. Much like a zine library, people are encouraged to peruse the books and linger, and they even have the option to purchase many of the items on display. I loaned a heap of work to the show and if the photographs of the opening on Leah's Flickr page are any indication, it looks like the show was very well recieved when it opened. Congrats Leah, and thanks again for including me!

Secondly, I am one of the 49 artists included in Paradise Lost-- the very last exhibition at Fly Gallery, a long-running and much loved window gallery on Queen Street West. The following is text from the press release put out by Tanya Read and Scott Carruthers, proprietors of Fly Gallery:

After 12 years Fly Gallery is packing it in. Our mandate has been to keep art accessible and contribute to the cultural life of the street. Since 1999 the development of this stretch of Queen St. has changed the dynamic of that culture. One may call this development ‘Gentrification’. Often associated with negative connotations it is a reality of many urban neighbourhoods. Whether the development is a good or bad thing, it is a factor in why Fly is leaving Queen West. Is this Paradise Lost or a new beginning? The spirit of Fly will live on and we have invited artists to say goodbye with us.

I had my very first art show at Fly Gallery in 2005, and I ended up showing there twice more in 2006 and 2008. Fly was instrumental in bringing art to the Queen Street strip and providing people with spontaneous and often playful encounters with art in their daily lives. It was immeasurably valuable as a truly accessible art gallery-- a rare breed in this day and age. I'll miss it dearly! Happy trails, Tanya and Scott!

This is a photo of my piece for Paradise Lost while it was in progress. "The poor are shunned even by their neighbours, but the rich have many friends" is a proverb from the Old Testament. I chose it because I felt like it succinctly summed up my view of what has been happening on Queen West for the past five or six years. While the tone of this proverb may seem a little snippy, I admire Tanya and Scott for taking the opportunity to move forward and start anew.

Paradise Lost is up at Fly Gallery-- 1172 Queen Street West-- until August 13, 2011.

Photo Credit (Top): Ina Gollmann

Beer-broidery

2011-06-08T22:00:00.002-04:00

So far so good! I still have lots to do, though. It has to be done by June 18th.

Sandwich Board

2011-05-23T11:40:00.001-04:00

The beginnings of what will be a pretty intense cross-stitch project. This piece will (hopefully, if it turns out well!) end up in Toronto window gallery institution Fly Gallery's very last show, Paradise Lost, which will run from late June until the end of July.

More on this project as it starts to take shape.

School Jerks EP on Art 4 Punks Blog

2011-05-13T22:03:00.001-04:00

Not much to report these days-- is it possible that I'm experiencing the dog days of summer in May? I've felt oddly bored and paralyzed lately, as though I've been hit by some form of post-school narcosis.

A few weeks ago the School Jerks EP got a nice mention on a blog that I follow out of LA called Art 4 Punks. Thanks for the props, Paul! Take a look at A4P for a peek at some of the more interesting examples of punk and hardcore record art from this side of 1981.

Here is a funny peek at the process of making the record covers. Ben spent two nights hand stamping 1000 covers in our living room as I (for the most part) watched on in amusement/amazement. While part of me isn't as happy with the overall result of this record over the previous one, it's still pretty awesome and there's been some nice feedback about it.

B'More or Bust

2011-05-02T14:26:00.005-04:00

It's official. I'm relocating to Baltimore for 4 months in September to attend MICA. Land of crab cakes and Hairspray. Holy crap!

Three Towers

2011-04-28T11:40:00.001-04:00

These are three pin designs I drew two days ago for my pals, the Modern Superstitions. Text will be added which will also be hand-drawn, and it looks like we'll only be using the bottom two after all-- the water tower and the hydro tower.

Modern Superstitions are the easiest band to do artwork for-- it is always a huge pleasure. The main reason for this is that both their lyrics and music are so damn evocative. The idea of bell towers and clock towers immediately came to mind when I first listened to the songs on their last EP. We ended up going with a stained glass motif as a slight variation on those ideas, but I was able to work with towers in this pin project, which I'm grateful for. These towers are definitely less majestic and more mundane and "local" feeling, which matches some of their songs and lyrics this time around-- Hometown, Loveless Town, etc.

The hydro tower is an ode to my own hometown, Scarborough (incidentally, also a loveless town!). The water tower is an icon associated with more rural hometowns. The idea is that the hydro tower pin be silver, and the water tower be a bronzy gold...we'll see if everything works out as planned!

Sweetie Pie Press Tour Fundraiser

2011-04-24T11:22:00.002-04:00

Only three days to go. Take a look at this video, get inspired by Becky's amazing life and activities, and DONATE.

All the details can be found on Becky's Kickstarter page.

Easter Eggs

2011-04-22T22:35:00.000-04:00

Dyed some easter eggs today using wax. These are some of my favourites.

Mushroom and Butterfly

2011-04-21T14:00:00.003-04:00

This was my final project for a sculpture class this year. Would you believe the course was called Nature, Transformation and Change? Leave it to OCAD to infuse a course about nature with computer processes and trends in technology. Even though I don't "feel like myself" having done this project-- some of these ideas felt like a bit of a stretch for me-- I did enjoy the process, and have been meaning to work with sound for a while. I realize reading about this project won't be everyone's cup of tea, but read on if you feel so inclined.

Mushroom and Butterfly

Mushroom and Butterfly is an artistic experiment centred around two audio recordings and their corresponding audio waveforms. The name of the project comes from the two forms popped corn can take, the butterfly and the mushroom. This project is an extension of my last project, which used popcorn kernels as raw material for a public art intervention that explored genetically modified organisms and the corporate mediation of our collective experiences of food.

This project was also inspired by recent research I conducted for completely different projects. After researching the work of contemporary artist and experimenter Natalie Jeremijenko, I became interested in her projects that explore unlikely forms of data visualization such as tree growth and digital printer viruses. In writing a completely different paper on a Canadian abstract painter from the 1930s named Bertram Brooker, I became interested in a condition he experienced called synesthesia-- a neurological condition where one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to an involuntary secondary sense or cognitive pathway. In other words, synesthesia involves an inexplicable intersection of two or more senses. For example, some people who experience synesthesia might associate certain numbers with certain colours, or identify certain letters as either masculine or feminine. Bearing this in mind, I was interested in how senses can be combined to conduct investigations guided by intuition. For this project in particular, I used both sound and data visualization in an attempt to examine the inherent differences between genetically modified corn kernels and organic corn kernels.

Natalie Jeremijenko-- one source of inspiration for this project-- is a contemporary artist who has worked extensively with nature, and has explored both analog and digital forms of data visualization. In her project Onetrees (1998-2003), Jeremijenko planted one thousand clone trees across the San Francisco Bay Area. While these trees are genetically identical, their growth and development over time serves as an indicator of the social and environmental differences of each site they were placed in. This project, as such, could be thought of an unconventional method of data visualization. The projects A-Trees and Stump are computer art works related to the greater Onetrees project. A-Trees are virtual trees that allow people to monitor the growth of a virtual tree on the desktop of their personal computer. The A-Trees software includes a real-time carbon dioxide sensor, causing the virtual tree to either thrive or suffer according to the amount of CO2 in the immediate vicinity of the computer. Similarily, Stump acts as a re-imagining of more conventional forms of data visualization, giving form to what the Onetrees website refers to as “tree debt." According to the website:

(Stump is a) printer queue virus that counts the number of pages consumed by the printer. When the equivalent of a tree in pulp has been consumed the program automatically prints out a slice of tree. Accumulating these pieces of paper ‘grows’ a stump of the forest that you and your printer have consumed, and a tangible representation of tree debt."

For my own project Mushroom and Butterfly, I was interested in exploring the inherent differences between GM and organic popcorn kernels, and whether or not the two types of kernels would “behave” differently when popped. I have very little experience using technological or computer-based processes in my work, and decided to use audio recording both because I have a working knowledge of some recording software, but also because audio recording seemed like a somewhat nonsensical and very unlikely lens with which to envision the properties of genetically modified and organic foods. My process entailed my positioning my laptop next to my stovetop. I recorded the popping sounds of both the GM and organic popcorn using the Mac recording program GarageBand, starting and stopping the recording from the first popped kernel to the point when the kernels finally finished popping. The results of the recording were two audio recordings, and the accompanying audio waveforms. While the recordings could be considered pieces of readymade sound art in themselves, the audio waveforms act as a form of visual data that clearly illustrates the differences between the behavior of both bags of popcorn. For example, the organic corn waveform reveals that it finished popping faster overall, and the quality of it’s popping reads on the waveform as louder and longer clusters of multiple pops, with an irregular rhythmic quality. On the other hand, the genetically modified popcorn’s waveform is quieter, with a less vigorous yet highly surprisingly regular rhythmic quality. While such a hypothesis could never be considered truly scientific on account of subtle differences in cooking temperature, freshness and ingredients, the audio waveforms from the two recordings seem to indicate that GM popcorn behaves more regularly than organic popcorn.

While the viability of my findings through this experiment many not convince anyone that I’ve discovered anything profound about the differences between genetically modified and organic corn as evidenced through popping sounds, I do think there is value to experiments such as this one. In particular, I think there is potential for audio waveforms to serve as a method of reading and measuring information outside of the sphere of music. While this may be far from uncharted territory, I would be interested in exploring these ideas in greater depth in future projects.

Bibliography

“Onetrees: An Information Environment.” Xdesign/Natalie Jeremijenko Website. New York University. 30 March 2011

Sardar, Zahid. “Society’s Signposts: Natalie Jeremijenko’s Trees Aren’t Simply Decorative-- They Can Be Read Like a Social Register.” San Francisco Gate/sfgate.com. October 23rd, 2004. 30 March 2011

“Synesthesia.” Wikipedia. 13 April 2011

Tribe, Mark and Jana, Reena. “A-trees: Natalie Jeremijenko.” New Media Art. Edited by Uta Grosenick. Cologne, Germany: Taschen 2009. 48-9 (print)

The Thomson Collection

2011-04-11T12:12:00.000-04:00

While it is somewhat fashionable to poo-poo the Art Gallery of Ontario's Thomson Collection-- Ken Thomson was largely responsible for funding the AGO's renovation, and his extensive collection of European and Canadian Art was donated to the gallery after his death-- after doing a fair bit of research on it for a paper, I can honestly say I am a big fan. The European Collection in particular is home to some very eccentric sculptural gems-- the sorts of things that would belong to a flamboyant uncle with black humour who travels a lot. The above images are some of my favourites. They are courtesy of the AGO's Art of the Day tumblr page.

From Top:

Rosary Pendant: Death Mask and Skull Eaten by Worms and Lizards
Northern France or Southern Netherlands
1500-1525
ivory, polychrome

Allegory of Youth and Death
German (Augsburg or Munich)
early 17th century
ivory, 7.3 x 22.6 x 9.4 cm

Death Triumphant
German (Bavaria?)
around 1670
lindenwood, 24.0 x 13.5 x 7.5 cm

Skull Pendant with Entombed Skeleton
British or Dutch
17th century
gold, enamel, diamonds, 1.4 x 1.2 x 3.4 cm

The Twilight Zone, The Uncanny Valley and Rod Serling on Creativity

2011-04-07T18:29:00.006-04:00

I've been at home with the stomach flu for the past three days. I have a ton of work piling up around me, but all I can bring myself to do is watch episode after episode of The Twilight Zone on Youtube. I have been a fan of TZ for as long as I can remember, but I've fallen back into love with Rod Serling and TZ in a big way recently. Here is an amazing picture taken during the production (I'm guessing?) of my all-time favourite episode, The After Hours, which involves mannequins coming to life, and a hidden floor of a shopping mall. Also, the episode was shot in 1960, and the episode's lead (pictured on the left, with her mannequin double on the right) looks exactly like the first Barbie doll, that would have been released less than a year earlier in 1959.

This photo also reminds me of a theory I learned about recently called the uncanny valley. It is a robotics theory that determines at what point humans become repulsed or "creeped out" by robots that look like humans. I would say that the mannequin definitely sits in range of the uncanny valley, without making the episode remotely unwatchable.

Not entirely unrelated, here is a video of Rod Serling in the late 60s or early 70s speaking with students about writing for television, specifically about creativity and working with ideas. Everything he says could be applied to making visual art too, and it's all fine advice, even if at times it is a little "dad-like." I believe my own father said "if it wasn't hard, everyone would do it" to me at some point within the past month...!

Psychedelic Album Art

2011-03-25T21:08:00.001-04:00

I once joked that I can tell how awesome an album is going to be based on how illegible the album's title is on it's cover. If this sounds weird, it's because most of the albums I consume are from the psychedelic era. Here are some examples of records from my collection with totally over-the-top cover art and creative (if completely unreadable) examples of typography. This post is probably inspired by my recent review of the work of Marian Bantjes, who has admitted to being influenced by the art and design of the late 60s.

From the top:
The Incredible String Band, The Five Hundred Spirits or The Layers of the Purple Onion (Elektra, 1967)
SRC, Self-titled (Capitol, 1968)
Elyse, Self-titled (Tetragrammaton, 1968)
Pisces, A Lovely Sight (Reissue on Numero Group, 2009)
The Tiffany Shade, Self-titled (Mainstream, 1968)

Marian Bantjes Review on TCA

2011-03-23T16:58:00.003-04:00

A review I wrote of the Marian Bantjes exhibition was just posted on Toronto Craft Alert. Check it out here.

For more information on the show at Onsite (at) OCADU, check out these websites:

http://www.ocad.ca/onsite
http://iwonderbantjes.tumblr.com/

Corn Maze Performance

2011-03-20T15:38:00.005-04:00

Last week, I did a performance at Dundas Square with popcorn kernels. I confess, this was an assignment for the one studio class I am taking in school this year, called Special Focus Studio: Nature, Transformation and Change. The assignment simply required that we make a piece of work that references ecological art, bio art, and uses "light, weather, animal, vegetable or mineral" as material for a work of art. Pretty familiar territory for me, I'd say!

My idea was to continue in the vein of the last piece of work for this class-- it involved a proposal for a piece of public art using cast Iroquois longhouse/greenhouse hybrid forms as a basis for three bronze sculptures across from a cluster of highrise buildings in my old neighbourhood in Scarborough. The project was rooted in ideas about urban food insecurity. I was also thinking about recent work I've done with cornsilk, specifically the corn maze quilt square I made for the Greenbelt Foundation Quilt Project, sponsored by the Ontario Craft Council. This is the short write up I did about my square, for the project's catalogue:

Corn Maze is a representation of an aerial view of a corn maze made out of the corn silk of Ontario-grown corn. Corn mazes, like berry picking, are attractions commonly linked to agritourism or “agritainment.” As a city-dweller, my experiences of the Greenbelt growing up were limited to such forms of contact with rural life. Similarly, as an adult my connection to rural Ontario is almost entirely limited to my consumption of locally grown produce. Corn Maze pokes fun at my unabashedly urban relationship with Ontario’s countryside.

In doing further research on corn mazes, I came across photos of a number of corn/hedge mazes that served as enormous advertisements for McDonalds, Husky and Chevrolet, meant to be seen aerially. To me, these rather perverse advertisements served as an apt metaphor for the omnipresence of corporate interests in the realm of food, from agriculture to food retail and brand power. Corporations mediate out experiences with food-- it is disturbing to think that such a vital, elemental part of our lives is essentially constructed and informed by corporate interests.
I knew that I wanted to make an installation in a public space that used the idea of a corn maze as it's framework. My objective was to make make a physical manifestation of this dichotomy of food experience as natural, nourishing, visceral and personal while also highly mediated. I also was thinking about the ideas surrounding my original Corn Maze quilt square-- in an urban environment, our experiences of food involve us purchasing it as opposed to growing it. How might one reconcile this distance from food's original source-- the farm, the earth-- through a performative gesture? Deciding on the right site was really important to the performance. After briefly considering laying a Corn Maze out in the parking lot of the Liberty Village location of Metro (where I do most of my grocery shopping), I decided that Dundas Square would be the best site due to it's proximity to so many billboards, signs, and for the square's general sense of insane media barrage.

So, for my performance I made a corn maze-- modelled after a corn maze drawing I did with corn silk on Kozo paper just under a year ago-- on the ground. It ended up being about 10' X 10' large. I used a Metro reusable shopping bag to carry about 30 lbs of kernels to Dundas Square...it was insanely heavy! Being on my hands and knees for an hour was no easy task either, but the pain was eased slightly by the fact that many passers by stopped to look and chat as I was working. Children tidied my stray kernels as I worked and distracted hungry pigeons by feeding them breadcrumbs. One man-- who was awesome, and helped me clean up all my kernels with a shovel when I was done-- told me about how what I was doing reminded him of his wedding in the Philippines where coconut leaves were laid out in patterns on the ground as part of the ceremony.

There is a little more to this piece and my research for it than I will write about here. I did a bit of research on GMOs and the artwork of Costa Rican artist Lucia Madriz, who does artwork with staple foods such as corn, beans and rice. I also learned about some interesting parallel practices that are related to my installation, such as Navaho and Tibetian Sand Painting, as well as the Indian practice of Kolam, which is essentially sand painting with rice powder in order to invite birds and small insects and animals into the home in order to pay tribute to the harmonious co-existence of humans and animals. All in all, making this installation was a great experience, and it has provided me with a number of ideas for more work with corn...work that will be a little easier on the knees, at that!

More pictures of the performance can be found on my Flickr page. All photos by B. Needham. Thanks, Bo!

School Jerks 3rd 7"

2011-03-19T21:13:00.004-04:00

This glorious recorded artifact of the hardcore punk persuasion came out about a month ago, and the cover drawing is by yours truly. I hand-stamped the logo on about 200 of the 1000 copies that were made, too.

School Jerks' myspace can be found here.

Joni Mitchell Draws on the CBC, 1967

2011-03-09T18:09:00.002-05:00

Joni talks negative and positive space with the hosts, and does a pretty groovy drawing. This is one of many very fun CBC RetroBites, scooped off of the CBC's Youtube channel.

Marian Bantjes

2011-03-06T21:14:00.002-05:00

Marian Bantjes is an exceptionally talented and creative designer and typographer from British Columbia. She has an exhibition up right now at Onsite (at) OCAD, that I can't recommend enough. The exhibition is at least in part in honour of her new book, I Wonder.

For more info on Bantjes, check out her website.
For more info on her OCAD exhibition, look at this.

Shadow Box Exhibition at the TMC

2011-02-27T11:45:00.004-05:00

I probably should have posted about this earlier, but I have a piece up in the Textile Museum of Canada's annual Shadow Box exhibition and auction right now. This is my fifth year in a row doing the event. The show us up until the night of the auction on March 3rd, so there is still a bit of time to see the work. All the work is posted online here along with all the info about the show.

Above is a photo of my rather simple piece for the show this year. It is made of garlic skin and it is called...you guessed it (or did you?)...A Breast.

Broken Pencil #50

2011-02-27T00:08:00.003-05:00

The latest issue of Broken Pencil is out, and I am featured pretty darn prominently in the article entitled "Despite What You've Heard, Zines Aren't Dead" by talented journalista Liz Worth. The issue is a zine special, in celebration of BP's 50th issue. Big thanks to Liz for including me and making me feel so....expert-ly?

Also featured within this latest issue are neat little pieces on my pals Becky and Julie Voyce. Check it out!

Vladimir Nabokov's Alphabet in Colour

2011-02-19T21:20:00.001-05:00

I came across this beautiful book yesterday afternoon in a bookshop near my house. It is an illustrated alphabet by Jean Holabird of Vladamir Nabokov's descriptions of the alphabet, inspired (is that the appropriate word?) by his Synesthesia. The text included in the book is quoted from Nabokov's Speak, Memory. The book is a really interesting meditation on the senses and the ways they can intersect with one another.

The following text was scooped from the Alphabet in Colour page on the Gingko Press website:

"For anyone who has ever wondered how the colors Nabokov heard might manifest themselves visually, Alphabet in Color is a remarkable journey of discovery. Jean Holabird’s interpretation of the colored alphabets of one of the twentieth century’s literary greats is a revelation. Nabokov saw rich colors in letters and sounds and noted the deficiency of color in literature, praising Gogol as the first Russian writer to truly appreciate yellow and violet. This book masterfully brings to life the charming and vibrant synesthetic colored letters that until now existed only in Nabokov’s mind.

In Alphabet in Color Jean Holabird’s grasp of form and space blends perfectly with Nabokov’s idea that a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape. He saw “q” as browner than “k,” while “s” is not the light blue of “c,” but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl. . . . Dull green, combined somehow with violet, is the best I can do for “w.”
In his playful foreword, Brian Boyd, “the prince of Nabokovians,” points out that an important part of “Nabokov’s passion for precision was his passion for color.”

Three Sisters

2011-02-10T22:01:00.004-05:00

I just finished the following assignment for school a day or so ago. The assignment was to propose a work of public artwork, which got me thinking about Scarborough, my old neighbourhood, and it's history, which I only had a vague idea about. The assignment gave me an excuse to delve a little further into said history-- specifically the history of the Iroquois in Scarborough-- as well as to explore a new side of my ongoing interest in food-y art.

Three Sisters

My idea for a work of public art stems from the history-- as well as my own experiences--of the Scarborough neighbourhood I grew up in. My project, entitled Three Sisters, attempts to draw a parallel between urban food insecurity, urban horticulture, and the history of subsistence farming practices of the early Iroquois in Ontario.

While growing up, I was always vaguely aware of the presence of a monument on a hill a few blocks away from the apartment building where I lived. In researching the monument and the history of early native inhabitants of Scarborough, I learned that in 1956, while steam-shovelling in the area preparing for the building of a new suburban subdivision, two Iroquois ossuaries were found near the intersection of Lawrence Avenue and Bellamy Road. The ossuaries were estimated to contain the bones of about 472 individuals The burial took place in about 1250 CE and was part of a Feast of the Dead ceremony, which typically took place at the time of village relocation. Shortly after discovering the ossuaries, the area was declared a historic site and a reburial service was performed by Six Nations chiefs. Today, Tabor Hill is now officially designated as a native cemetery ground. Additional research indicates that as early as 1100 CE, early Iroquois inhabited and practiced agriculture in a limited scale in parts of Scarborough and Pickering.

While Tabor Hill is located facing a quiet residential street, the main arteries that surround the cemetery are lined with high-rise apartment buildings that are home to many low-income individuals and families. Recently, I became interested in issues of urban food insecurity for the working poor, for people on social assistance as well as for populations of people in depressed, under-serviced urban neighbourhoods. Hunger and insufficient nutrition are realities for many people in Toronto. This problem is being addressed in part by the growing number of inspiring community gardens and urban horticultural initiatives in inner-city Toronto neighbourhoods such as Alexandria Park and Parkdale. Such initiatives bring to mind Iroquois practices of subsistence farming, within which the “three sisters”-- corn, beans, and squash-- were dietary staples.

My goal is to create a public artwork that combines my artistic interest in the culture of food with the horticultural practices and symbols of the Iroquois and the burgeoning urban horticulture movement. My proposal involves the placement of three bronze sculptures in a parkette on Greenbrae Circuit in Scarborough, across from a cluster of high and mid-rise apartment buildings. The sculptures would each be approximately 6-8’ tall and 15-20’ wide, and would structurally resemble both Iroquois longhouses and hoophouses, which are essentially greenhouses with a flexible material draped and tied over the frame. This “longhouse” shape seems like an appropriate structure to work with, given not only it’s structural relationship to the hoophouse, but also to the highrise apartment, which is meant to accommodate a number of people through the upward and outward stacking of living quarters.

Each of the Three Sisters sculptures would be cast with a different surface treatment, each one alluding to and resembling the “three sisters” of the Iroquois-- corn, beans and squash. Ideally, the sculptures will not only beautify the parkette, but will exist to house and shelter community gardens for the apartment buildings directly across the street.

The purpose of my project, Three Sisters, is two-fold-- the sculptures will not only serve as a monument to the history of aboriginal people in Scarborough, but they also serve as a new kind of monument-- one that quite literally serves and nurtures the community that they are currently situated in.

Skele-toons

2011-02-03T18:12:00.002-05:00

I've been finding myself particularly drawn to skeleton imagery lately. These are three pieces of work I've found in my travels lately, online and in person. The first is a skeleton drawing by local artist Shannon Gerard, that I acquired at her awesome studio sale that took place last weekend. The drawing is from the comic she did called Sword of My Mouth, which came out last year on Jim Munroe's No Media Kings book label. I'm looking ever-so-forward to framing it and putting it up somewhere. Finally...a piece of work that my boyfriend and I can agree on. Skeletons are unisex, right? We all have them!

The next two pieces are ones I found on Etsy by Portland artist Michael Paulus. These famous cartoon character skeleton drawings-- and the way he goes about doing them-- are pretty priceless. His project statement about them is pretty interesting too...the following text is scooped from his website under the series Character Study:

Animation was the format of choice for children's television in the 1960s, a decade in which children's programming became almost entirely animated. Growing up in that period, I tended to take for granted the distortions and strange bodies of these entities.These Icons are usually grotesquely distorted from the human form from which they derive.

I decided to take a select few of these popular characters and render their skeletal systems as I imagine they might resemble if one truly had eye sockets half the size of its head, or fingerless-hands, or feet comprising 60% of its body mass.

These characters have become conventions that are set, defined, and well-known personas in our culture. Being that they are so commonplace and accepted as existing I thought I would dissect them like science does to all living objects - trying to come to an understanding as to their origins and true physiological make up. Possibly to better understand them and see them in a new light for what they are in the most basic of terms.

Giuseppe Penone

2011-01-26T17:45:00.001-05:00

I came across some really inspiring images of the work of Giuseppe Penone in preparation for a presentation I'll be doing on his work for school. Penone is an artist from Italy associated with the Arte Povera movement. I am mainly interested in his work with food (he grew zucchini in molds of his own face, among other things), but he is probably best known locally for his large-scale installation Cedro di Versailles, which is currently installed in the Gallery Italia corridor in the AGO with some of his other work. Amazing stuff.

"My work developed from thinking about the principle of sculpture: how it broadens to encompass the elements of nature. It is the material itself that suggests the piece, a sculpture expressed in the equal juxtaposition of the human being and nature because the human being is nature. (...)
My work is by no means symbolic. It is based on the process, the method. I try to produce the work by pursuing the process of its making, the meaning and logic of the material. The work is the coincidence of the processes that have been formed; in this sense it is an identification."

-Giuseppe Penone

More on Penone here:
http://www.exporevue.com/magazine/gb/penone_beaubourg_angl.html
http://www.ago.net/Giuseppe-Penone-The-Hidden-Life-Within
http://www.allisonhunter.com/Art/penone.html

Wunderkabinet, Round Two

2011-01-23T23:07:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures of my plaster fingers in the second Wunderkabinet exhibition, curated by Toronto expat Leah Buckareff. The show opened a few days ago, and runs until April in a cozy corner of a great shop/craft space called La Bastellerie in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighbourhood.

I was in last year's inaugural Wunderkabinet exhibition, and I'm thrilled Leah invited me back for a second showing, which features some of my favourite artists and crafty types from Toronto and abroad. The first photos give a glimpse of said talent, such as (from left) Sara Guindon of the Pin Pals, Lana Bragina a.k.a Uloni and Rosalyn Faustino. What company!

For more info on the Wunderkabinet, take a look at this website.

Photo Credits, from top: Lana Bragina and Leah Buckareff

Soft Rock

2011-01-17T18:41:00.004-05:00

My mind was totally blown when I came across these LP pillows while doing an Exile on Main Street image search. The person/people who make them do commissions, and above are some photos of some of my favourites. It is not entirely clear who makes them online, but they can be purchased through New Zealand-based Etsy shop, Toggle.

If you could commission one cushion, what would it be? It's a tough question, but the New York Dolls debut came to mind on account of it's iconic centre label.

Restocked at Art History

2011-01-14T21:57:00.002-05:00

I re-stocked a bunch of crafty bits and art multiples (what's the diff?) at Art History today. If you have a particular hankering for plaster fingers or ears, onion pins, tea pins, corn zines or Shrimplace, that is the place to get them locally.

Art History
1080 Queen Street West
(at Dovercourt)
Toronto

http://arthistorytoronto.blogspot.com/
http://www.nowtoronto.com/lifestyle/stores-story.cfm?content=173793
http://www.designlinesmagazine.com/guide/guide_detail.php?id=1116

Hand and Rosary

2011-01-09T14:07:00.002-05:00

Process shots of my work for the next School Jerks 7". Just finished it this morning!

Shrimplace on Etsy

2011-01-04T22:15:00.004-05:00

Just put these up for sale in my Etsy shop. Check 'em out.

City of Craft 2010 Recap

2011-01-03T14:45:00.009-05:00

Christmas and New Years came so soon after City of Craft this year, I've barely had a chance to reflect on how everything went yet! Above are three photos showing parts of the exhibition Love and Money, which I organized for City of Craft this year. Last year, I programmed 14 installations as well as a small-ish group exhibition, so by those standards I was a total slacker this year.

Love and Money reflected on intersections of craft and commerce. This is a sticky issue I think about often...I am a maker of craft-like things, but often feel positioned outside of both the mega-profitable how-to craft industry and the world of fine craft. Handmade craft objects in this day and age are in many cases luxury items that can only be afforded by a select few. This runs counter to the populist appeal of craft objects as opposed to, say, art objects. In addition, craft processes were employed in the past out of necessity and frugality, and to some in the west-- and to many outside of western cultures--they still are. This dichotomous relationship between craft and luxury and hand-making as a way of operating (somewhat) outside of the capitalist system is an interesting one. Each of these fragments of thought were floating around in my mind when I conceived of this exhibition.

Much of the work in Love and Money used craft to subvert notions of commercial exchange, and what can be considered "precious" or "luxurious." Themes explored included playing with and altering dollar bill imagery, the creation of objets d'art with imprecious materials, theft, combining making with altruistic/charitable gestures, creative reuse, and more. As the exhibition began to take shape, I was thrilled at how much the collection of work had an underlying sense of mischief and play with regards to the theme.

My big thanks to every individual who contributed to Love and Money-- each of the eleven artists in the exhibition, as well as Becky and Jen of City of Craft, and Janna, Valerie, and everyone at the Ontario Crafts Council.

In addition to curating Love and Money, I tabled City of Craft as a vendor this year. What a weekend! I met a ton of amazing people, and made a heap of moolah. This taught me that while the money can be a complex source of contemplation, frustration and stress, it feels pretty damn great to have it every once in a while...especially around Christmas.

Looking forward to what next year's City of Craft will bring!

Syd Barrett Colouring Book

2010-12-29T17:14:00.006-05:00

This is the third rock-related post in a row, which goes to show that when I'm not in school and have the time, I dive head first into record geekdom. Found this glorious piece of work on the blog Retro To Go-- a colouring book of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett. Looks great...! The people behind it are appropriately called Piper Gates Design.

More here.

Raymond Pettibon

2010-12-27T10:15:00.007-05:00

Raymond Pettibon is on the cover of the latest issue of Border Crossings magazine. I bought it about two or three weeks ago, and still haven't had the chance to curl up and read the interview with him. Maybe today is the day.

More on Raymond Pettibon here and here.
Images of his art for Black Flag and other bands here.

RIP Captain Beefheart

2010-12-23T12:42:00.007-05:00

Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart died on December 17th. I was so busy with City of Craft that I didn't even know until days later. Not only was Captain a mindblowing and innovative musician, but he was an abstract painter too. He will always be one of my favourites. Do yourself a favour and treat yourself to a Captain Beefheart Youtube orgy, or a Captain Beefheart album (Safe as Milk, Trout Mask, or Lick My Decals Off Baby, preferably!) today.

Don Van Vliet's painting's can be found here.
The ultimate Captain Beefheart online resource is here.

Love and Money Artist Profiles: Rachael Kess and Kalpna Patel

2010-12-14T21:30:00.006-05:00

New interviews have been posted with Love and Money exhibitors over the last couple of days. These latest two are with fibre-based artist Rachael Kess and craft superhero Kalpna Patel. Rachael's interview can be found here, and Kalpna's can be found here.

Images, from top: Rachael Kess, Blush, Kalpna Patel, Stay Gold necklace

Zines in Canada interview for Broken Pencil

2010-12-12T10:50:00.010-05:00

I did the following interview last month with Liz Worth for an article on Zines in Canada in the 70s, 80s, 90s and today for the next issue of Broken Pencil. Only snippits of this interview will likely make it into the article, but I enjoyed doing the interview enough that I thought it would be worth posting here in its entirety. Lots of stuff is included about zine culture in the 90s and my own introduction to the world of zines. The picture above is of me when I was 17...I'm the one on the left, and it was taken in 1999 at Who's Emma, 69 1/2 Nassau Street.

It seems that a lot of people have the impression that no one makes zines anymore, that we have the internet now and blogs and websites are the new zines. But we know that's not true, because people still make zines. Why do you still make zines, and why do you think other people still do, too?
I make zines because I always have made them...I never questioned whether I should stop making them. I suspect zine-making was part of the youth culture of a certain time, or a fad for many people, but for me zines have always held a great deal of importance. I made my first zine when I was 12-- after drawing, zine-making was the first creative practice I ever engaged in, and definitely the first creative practice I took seriously enough to work at and put the product of out into the world. In some ways, I think zine-making really paved the way for my art practice as an adult. I still make zines today-- when I was a teenager, I had a zine that went on to do thirteen issues, but now I generally make one-off zines a few times a year, on a variety of topics. I make little recipe zines on Japanese paper, zines of sketchbook excerpts, and I recently made a limited-edition zine on creative practice within the context of the punk community. My zines now feel tied to my art practice, as opposed to when I was a teenager, they were more tied to punk rock and feeling my way through radical politics.

A huge reason I still make zines is my relationship to the physical act of making them. Making them can be a very long, persnickety process of cutting, pasting, measuring margins by hand, adjusting contrast until you get it just right...it's a very tactile process and the result is very personal. There's a level of intimacy and personalization in making a printed zine that you just can't achieve with blogs. This sort of thing applies to reading and the reception of zines, too....there's an intimacy and tactility in experiencing a zine physically that is not common within internet-oriented contemporary culture. I know that the tactile and tangible quality of zines and the yearning for something physical is what draws a lot of people to them.

What did you see as the zine's role in the '90s? What do you think that role has become in the '00s?
In the mid-90s, the internet wasn't nearly as widespread as it is today, so the role of print media in general was one of greater importance then than it is now. Zines were definitely an alternative voice in print at that time. I remember as a teenager, it seemed like a revelation that you could make your own little books and for twenty bucks you could make 15 of them and put them in two or three shops on consignment, or trade them with your friends, or trade ad space with another zine and sell your zines through the mail that way. The zine community was very much an in-person and through-the-mail phenomenon back then. People were actively forging relationships and community this way, and in retrospect, while it took a lot of time and effort, I never thought of that part of it. It just felt like I was part of something bigger than myself and my suburban, teenage life...it was exciting!

Of course, the internet has really changed this sort of thing. What constitutes as an alternative voice in this day and age? Everyone has a voice on the internet...the internet has made it incredibly easy for people to self-publish at the push of a button, and people do. They talk and talk...about their cute cat and their breakfast and their favourite bands and clothing labels and their night at the bar or their day at the park and it never ends. The cacophany of voices on the internet is insane...how do we navigate through it all? What does it all mean? Is it meaningless? I struggle with these questions a lot.

Perhaps the role of the zines today is exactly the same as what it used to be-- maybe zines are still an alternative voice, or more of an alternative voice than they ever were. In an incredibly fast-paced world where we are inundated with facts, pseudo-facts, images, and useless information transmitted digitally, zines are something refreshing and different.

In the past 10 years, have you noticed any key moments or changes within the zine community that show how the culture has changed compared to what was happening in the '90s?
Definitely. The one key thing that I've noticed about zine cuture in the past 10 years is that a certain amount of focus and energy has come off of the production of zines and more focus has been put on the preservation of the zines and zine "history" through archival pursuits such as zine libraries, websites, larger distros and the publication of books that are collections of particular zine titles-- some examples of this include Cometbus, Scam, Doris and Absolutely Zippo. This is not to say that there aren't still people making zines, because of course there are many. In a way, zine culture is healthier than ever because there are individuals out there working hard to ensure that zines stand the test of time and are firmly imbedded in our cultural history. In the 90's, I'm not sure that these sorts of things were thought about nearly as much...I think at that time, people really embraced the ephemeral nature of zines, to the point that many of them from that time haven't survived. The archivist in me is so happy that there are a few hardcore zine collectors in every city that have ensured that their zines from the 70s, 80s and 90s have stood the test of time, tidily sealed in boxes and Ziploc bags in cool, dark rooms!

Over the past few years, more and more zine libraries have popped up, which is really great. In the GTA, we have three, and I'm pretty sure the Toronto Zine Library at this point has the largest public collection of zines in Canada, numbering in at about 5000 pieces. The Anchor Archive Zine Library is a library in Halifax run out of a house. The house-- Roberts Street Social Centre-- is home to other fantastic programming such as a screen-printing collective, a books beyond bars program, a seasonal artists residency program and a slew of skillshares, workshops and events. On the other hand, public collections of zines and related ephemera are starting to find their way into large public and university libraries. An well-known example of this is Kathleen Hanna's zine and letter collection, which she recently donated to NYU's Fales Library for their new Riot Grrrl Collection.

In a similar vein, collections of zines in book format have allowed more people access to the work of zine makers, which is essentially a good thing. Though they are very different in feel from the more intimate zine format, they allow the work of zine makers to have a wider reach. Zines that no longer exist are often collected in book format, which is great for people who would have otherwise missed the boat.

In the '90s, I remember buying zines at Chapters and Tower Records. They never actually seemed to enter mainstream culture, but they were available through mainstream outlets, but as the '00s crept along that distribution all fell away, and zines have gone back to the underground. Do you see this as an evolution, devolution, or anything at all? I guess I'm wondering with this last question is: are zines meant to be something of a secret underground? Are they where they should be right now?
I don't know that I see that shift that you're describing as an evolution or de-evolution. I started buying zines like Cometbus, MRR and Rollerderby at Tower Records in the mid-90s too, and I feel like retailers like Tower Records carrying zines at that time was most likely a hold-over from the just-dead grunge and riot grrrl movements of the early 90s. It makes sense that Tower jumped on the bandwagon of those movements a little late, and quickly dropped the idea of stocking zines as the mainstream completely lost interest in such things. Hilariously, I used to put my zines on consignment at Tower Records in '95 or '96...in retrospect it strikes me as rather surprising that a multi-national corporation would go through the pains of keeping paper files for consignment not unlike small punk record shops and anarchist infoshops!

I am divided as to whether or not I think zines are meant to be underground. If it weren't for punk and zine-making becoming mainstream phenomena in the 90s, I probably wouldn't be a zine-maker of 15 years right now. Punk and zine culture reached kids at high schools in Scarborough in the 90s, and I'm grateful for that. In the years that zines were making the news, I think youth outside of urban centres realized that they could become media producers and form their own creative communities that encompassed not just music-making, but the production of related art and written output.

Regardless, I kind of like where zines are right now...they're not nearly as huge as they were at the apex of their fame in the 90s, the zine community that exists now (both locally and internationally) seems very healthy to me. Now (as opposed to the 90s), everyone can use the internet to it's fullest capacity as a tool to promote and distribute zines, which is really great. Zine fairs happen every year, and attendance is always incredible. I have a friend who travels across Canada and the US with her zine distro...it's amazing! It goes to show that there is still an interest and enthusiasm for zines which perhaps transcends notions of "underground" and "mainstream." Maybe this is indicative of the fact that zines have reached a point where they are imbedded in our culture for good, for the ages. I hope so!

Love and Money at the Ontario Crafts Council

2010-12-09T18:21:00.005-05:00

Love and Money
December 16 - 31, 2010

At the Ontario Crafts Council, 990 Queen Street West, Toronto

Reception: Thursday, December 16, 6 - 9 pm

Participating Artists:
Helen Benninger
Kalpna Patel
Leah Buckareff
Lizz Aston
Matt King
Meags Fitzgerald
Rachael Kess
Sandra Gregson
Stephanie Cormier
Steven Tippin
Wendy Walgate

City of Craft, in partnership with the Ontario Craft Council, presents Love and Money, a group exhibition that will take place at the Ontario Craft Council Gallery as a part of City of Craft’s 2010 off-site programming. City of Craft is Toronto’s largest independent craft sale and weekend-long event featuring craft-based installations, free workshops, and craft-related programming.

This year’s exhibition will explore the broad relationship craft and crafting has with commerce. Craft(ing) is currently a multi-billion dollar industry. From mainstream craft media personalities and the DIY Network to hipster how-to guides, mega craft fairs and fabric designers du jour, the commercial nature of the contemporary “crafting” movement often seems to starkly contrast the idea of crafting for necessity from days gone by. On the other hand, there are people who turn to craft and craft processes for a sense of transcendence and autonomy. Many would argue that there is more of a need to craft for crafts sake now than ever-- either to re-skill ourselves for an uncertain future, or simply to learn to slow down.

Are money and craft strange (or natural) bedfellows? How does craft transcend issues of commerce? How might one navigate or perceive the dichotomy of craft for love/craft for money? How do examples of contemporary craft and craft practices address or challenge issues of ownership, value, and exchange?

Love and Money is curated and coordinated by Tara Bursey.

For more information, contact cityofcraft(at)gmail(dot)com.

Orly Genger

2010-12-06T14:54:00.003-05:00

Just bought the latest issue of Sculpture magazine, which had a feature on American artist Orly Genger. I had never heard of her before...she makes amazing large-scale installations consisting of crocheted rope. I read that the bottom image, Big Boss, was crochet entirely by hand by Genger and consists of 100 miles of rope. Totally amazing...imagine how muscular she must be!

Meags Fitzgerald and Leah Buckareff Interviews

2010-12-05T17:21:00.005-05:00

Life has been absolutely crazy with school and City of Craft preparation, to the point where this is possibly the longest I have gone between blog posts.

I just conducted my first of a series of interviews with Love and Money exhibitors. First up are Meags Fitzgerald and Leah Buckareff, who both work with dollar bill imagery. Check out the interviews here.

Image: Meags Fitzgerald, Tender Tender 50 (2010)

Odds and Entries at XPACE

2010-11-12T08:46:00.008-05:00

I wrote the exhibition text for this fantastic show opening tonight at XPACE. The show-- of work by Toronto's Tongue and Groove Collective-- involves the installation of sculptural interventions in an elaborate cluster of found drawers. Here is some information about the show:

Odds and Entries

Tongue and Groove Collective

November 12-December 11, 2010

Reception: November 12th, 7pm

XPACE Cultural Centre/XBASE

58 Ossington Avenue

Toronto

Simon Black, Kailey Bryan, Robert Clements, Maggie Flynn, Jeanette Hicks, Brian Hobbs, Meghan Scott and Tasha Turner

Worn, unwanted and left for the landfill, fifteen dressers and cabinets have been hoarded in XBASE. Granted a second chance, these drawers no longer passively house socks and employee files. They are stacked, leaned and fastened to each other. In the basement space they take over, free to be explored. The collaborating artists inhabit these sliding spaces creating relationships between the drawers and those who visit them.

More info about the show can be found here.

Odds and Entries

Exhibition Text

When I was eight years old, I had a friend named Sandra. One day she came to my house to play. Within minutes of arriving, she pulled a see-through plastic take-out container out of her pink shoulder bag. “This is my kit,” she told me. Inside the container were the following items: a folded-up tissue, a length of green string, three maple keys, a black marble, a cut-out photograph of a overflowing basket of apples from a magazine, a tiny fabric doll and a Ritz cracker. I remember being jealous of Sandra’s kit. I tried to make one of my own, but it didn’t work out. There was something about hers-- maybe the way the tissue was folded, creating the perfect little bed for the doll-- that made it better, and far more alive than mine.

When I was nineteen years old, I moved into my second apartment on Maynard Avenue in Parkdale. It was an eight-story apartment building, and most of its tenants were over fifty. After moving my things into the unit’s smaller bedroom on my first night there, I decided to start hanging my clothes in the closet. As I was preparing to fold my freshly-purchased-and-unused towels (organized by the colours of the rainbow, of course) and put them on the top shelf of the closet, I noticed something red pushed to the very back corner of the shelf. I jumped to grab for it, and upon realizing what it was, my heart jumped out of my chest. I threw it back onto the shelf and slammed the door shut. The object was a used, strappy red high heel shoe. It may as well have been a dismembered limb. Later that night, I got my boyfriend to retrieve the shoe and throw it away.

These stories attest to the potency of objects. We connect with used and found everyday objects because of the traces of human life they contain. While we consume images, facts, and pseudo-facts in abundance on a daily basis, the voiceless, tangible stuff of everyday life contains the real truth or our existence but lacks the means to tell it. In an age of infinite information, are the secret lives of objects one of the last facets of our lives that have not been laid bare?

In the exhibition Odds and Entries, objects of ambiguous origin are contained in a series of salvaged drawers. Some of the interventions are as subtle as whispers—one drawer’s interior is adorned with a single spider web made of human hair, simultaneously evoking a sense of intimate human presence, desolation and loss. Another drawer contains a surreal, illuminated campground dreamscape, and another a forest of rotating cocktail umbrellas. While one drawer alludes to a pointedly domestic space, the others feel like strange and fantastical hybrids of space that is public and private, indoor and outdoor, sensual as well as mechanical. Another drawer plays with the idea of bodily detritus, attraction and repulsion, but to a more absurd and suggestive end.

Odds and Entries, like the closet with the red shoe and Sandra’s kit, involve containment as a way of isolating objects in order to give them new meaning. Situating work in repositories associated with the domestic realm-- as well as the exhibition’s emphasis on organic discovery-- defies conventions of gallery display and arrangement. The fact that the installation is situated in a raw, subterranean space further defies such conventions, while hinting at the role of our subconscious as a guide through the objects we encounter. Most importantly, the work presents us with objects and environments shrouded in ambiguity. While we can never know the true histories of the objects we happen upon by chance, we can lose ourselves in their mystery and meditate on their impact. In doing so, we not only allow ourselves to see the hidden life in inanimate objects, but can gain insight into our own lives and the lives of others.

Image: Kailey Bryan

Fresh, Local, Craft! at the Ontario Crafts Council

2010-11-03T20:34:00.008-04:00

I am in the following show at the OCC which opens tomorrow! The Greenbelt Quilt is an amazing project that has toured Ontario over the past few months. Come and see it's unveiling!

Fresh, Local, Craft!

At the Ontario Crafts Council

990 Queen Street West

Toronto

November 4 - December 12

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 4th, 7:30 – 9:30 pm
Panel Discussion: Thursday, November 4th, 6:00 – 7:30 pm. The Great Hall, 1087 Queen St W, Toronto

Fresh, Local, Craft! is an exhibition that fuses community-building and environmental activism with the processes of craft making. Springing from a fruitful partnership, Fresh, Local, Craft! also constitutes the final tour stop for the Greenbelt Quilt of Possibilities project. The Quilt project originated through the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation’s request for assistance in creating a community work that celebrates and advocates for Ontario’s protected Greenbelt space. In response, the OCC organized and implemented the project with Kate Busby as curator, and has been running a tour of the Quilt throughout 2010 with noteworthy stops at Queen’s Park and the G8 Summit in Muskoka.

Underlying the connection between quilt-making and community building is the more widespread movement of craft as a popular medium for activism, where craftspeople and artists engage their creativity as a tool for change. Local economies, sustainability, recycling and up-cycling are addressed in different techniques, media and processes to question dominant norms of consumerism, worth and health. The Quilt contributors deal with these issues in their donated textile squares and reflections, and in Fresh, Local, Craft! their voices are accompanied by ten artists whose work expands on the question of stewardship through textiles, glass, ceramic, paper, wood and metal.

Fresh, Local, Craft! explores the dynamic between individual and communal processes of making in response to our relationship with the local environment. It celebrates the positive role that the Greenbelt plays in our lives, including its ability to bridge urban and rural life with the preservation of Ontario’s rich natural environment. Perhaps most importantly, the exhibition points in a direction where objects, food, air, water and soil are integrated into a society that no longer takes them for granted.

Fresh, Local, Craft! includes the work of: Glenna Agnew, Wendy Anderson Breedveld, Lizz Aston, Jayne Barrett, Tara Bursey, the Burr House Spinners and Weavers Guild, Maggie Butterfield Dickinson, Karen Chisvin, Natalie Drajewicz, Lise Downe, Roisin Fagan, Evann Frisque, Brette Gabel, Judy Gingrich, Fabienne Good, Margaret Gurica Hannigan, Clayton Haigh, Philip Hare, Beverley Hastings, Linda Heron, Pat Hertzberg, Kate Hunter, Mark Jaroszewicz, Sheila Jonah, Colleen Kennedy, Jen Kneulman, Mary Kroetsch, Katherine Laco, Sophia Lada, Kathy Lakatos, Kaitalin Lawford, Lory MacDonald, Nola McConnan, Valerie McLean, Karen Menzies, Lee Meszoros, Midori Nagai, Stacey Olson, Janet Patterson, Dorie Preston, Laura Preston, Julia Prime, Louisa Pucci, Danielle Reddick, Mary Ann Rich, Jean Pierre Schoss, Alison Seale, Brenda Secord, Don Stinson, Anastasia Tiller, Cheryl Trudeau, Catherine Vamvakas Lay, Linda Varekamp, Mary Walker, Wendy, Wallace, Helena Wehrstein, Liz Wilde, Erica Wilson, and Sandi Wong.

Hideout Interview

2010-10-30T09:56:00.005-04:00

A little profile of me was just posted on Rosalyn Faustino's newly-relaunched blog, The Hideout. Check it out here. Thanks Roz!

City of Craft at Canzine 2010

2010-10-26T22:07:00.005-04:00

I spent last Sunday at Canzine hanging out with Jen A. at the City of Craft table, spreading the craft gospel. The table featured an awesome DIY make-your-own-button station, which I assisted with as a bonafide button-making pro. Jen and I pooled our extensive collections of Japanese and found papers as button fodder, which proved irresistible to passers-by. Here are some pictures of Jen and I looking like a couple of sexy librarians (!), as well as some documentation of pins made by Canzine-goers.

Photos by Jo Prescott. Thanks, Jo!

Skin Studies

2010-10-17T15:29:00.006-04:00

I made these over the last few nights.

Printing Errors at Akau

2010-10-14T16:41:00.008-04:00

I attended the opening for the great little exhibition Printed Errors at Akau Gallery at the beginning of the month, and have been meaning to post about it here for a while. Here is the text from the press release:

As we all know, to err is human. Or, as a character in Jonathan Franzen’s novel “Freedom” says, in retrospect, “mistakes were made”.

In this exhibition, Barbara Balfour has invited thirteen artists who have worked in various forms of print media to respond to the notion of Printing Errors. They include: Janice Carbert, Shannon Gerard, Libby Hague, Micah Lexier, Patrick Mahon, Eric Mathew, Ken Nicol, Lauren Nurse, Dan Olsen, Derek Sullivan, Jeannie Thib, Daryl Vocat, and Joy Walker.

Once one moves beyond the detection of error – the dismay and disappointment of one’s own error or the Schadenfreude of detecting someone else’s – what can be done with it? Above all, can printing errors be interesting?

As someone with a real interest in print media (a little known fact about me is I started a print major at OCAD almost 10 years ago which I subsequently ran kicking and screaming away from, though I've never lost my visceral connection to the process of printing), this was a really fun show to soak up and think about. It was also neat to play spot the error with each piece! I especially enjoyed the work of Ken Nicol (who did the cue card piece pictured above that was not in the show) and Jeannie Thib, and it was nice to see some fellow artists from the DIY art/craft community included as well, Shannon Gerard and Daryl Vocat.

Printing Errors is a part of the international print symposium, Printopolis, sponsored by Open Studio. For more on it, check out this website.

Geometry of Circles

2010-10-12T23:04:00.006-04:00

Amazing Geometry of Circles animation, with soundtrack by Philip Glass from Sesame Street, 1979. I'm not sure why the picture quality gets crummy after the second half, so for more, be sure to conduct your own search of GoC on Youtube. The following information is snipped from Muppetwiki:

"Geometry of Circles" is a series of unnumbered animation pieces created for Sesame Street in 1979 with music by Philip Glass.

The shorts consist of the movement of six circles (each with a different color of the rainbow) that are formed by and split up into various geometric patterns. Glass's music underscores the animation in a style that closely resembles the "Dance" numbers and the North Star vignettes written during the same time period as his Einstein on the Beach opera.

Shary Boyle

2010-09-27T11:32:00.008-04:00

I saw Shary Boyle's show Flesh and Blood at the AGO last week. I have so much more to say about it than time permits right now. Basically, I think I will treat last week's viewing as a test run and I will go again in order to really have it all sink in.

All in all, it is an amazing show.

Crossed Stitches

2010-09-22T19:52:00.010-04:00

Last week, I finished my first school assignment of the year. True to form, I chose to do something ambitious and stupidly time-sucking, despite the fact that I needed to come up with an idea and have it materialize in under a week. The theme of the assignment was ownership, and this is what I came up with: two fully-functional cross stitch kits of existing pattern designs, one by William Morris (father of the English Arts and Crafts movement) and one by American home and garden retail outlet, Terrain. Here is some writing I did that gets into the nitty gritty of my work on this project:

This project was in part inspired by my experience sitting in on a jurying session for a large seasonal craft event. Over the course of viewing submissions, I noticed that there were undeniable parallels between some submissions; in some cases, fashionable buzzwords were used to label hair accessories, while certain imagery was almost inescapable. To me, this illustrated that as makers, we are not immune to having the trends of the day-- whether they be acorns or relational aesthetics-- infiltrate our work in some way.

On a broader scale, this same idea relates to the concept of ownership. How much can we really claim to “own” our ideas? The repeating, reworking and re-contextualizing of ideas from the past is part of the postmodern condition. So many ideas have come to fruition over the course of history…when we make something, what are the odds that it hasn’t been made before? Anyone who has come across the work of another artist that is uncannily similar to their own knows what it means to have their sense of ownership over an idea thwarted.

How can we as artists deal with this sense that we cannot truly “own” our work? Perhaps the solution is to forfeit ownership altogether.

My piece, Crossed Stitches, explores these ideas. Using two very similar pattern samples as inspiration—one is by William Morris, and one is by a contemporary independent textile design studio called Terrain—I went through the painstaking process of creating accurate and fully-functional cross-stitch patterns that correspond to each design. This process involved transferring each design onto a large grid and translating each pattern so that it is comprised of squares on a grid. These large-scale grid drawings were then used to make a cross-stitch pattern on another piece of grid paper, dividing the colours of the pattern into symbols as “real” cross-stitch patterns do. This final pattern was then included in hand-made cross-stitch kits which include embroidery floss, a needle and canvas, so people can make their own William Morris or Terrain cross-stitched “fabric swatches.”

This piece plays with ideas of ownership (as well as consumerism and trends in art and design) in a number of ways. Crossed Stitches is a piece of work I have done based on the work of two other artists/designers. One might argue that the Terrain design was derivative of the William Morris design. If one was to take one of my William Morris cross-stitch kits and complete it, how much of the finished piece is considered their work, my work, or the work of William Morris? At the root of this work is the inevitability of “shared ownership” as a part of the current climate of making creative work in any media.

The Wunderkabinet

2010-09-19T01:17:00.006-04:00

I will be in this great little show in Berlin, which opens next week!

For more information on The Wunderkabinet, take a look at the website. Thanks for including me, Leah!

Corn Recipes

2010-09-14T16:51:00.007-04:00

The perfect season for them! I plan on posting this latest food-zine on my Etsy shop within the next few days...

Royal Car Wash

2010-09-01T18:04:00.007-04:00

...is gone, and it's strange yet awesome faded mural is no more. God know what useless business will occupy the space next. "Boutique" french fry stand? Ear candling, reiki and tattoo parlour? A pet psychiatrists office? Or better yet...another crappy bar?

Vinyl decal drawing installation on Royal's rolling door by Susan Rowe Harrison.

Zine Dream 3

2010-08-21T16:35:00.005-04:00

I am doing Zine Dream again this year...it is happening next Sunday, August 29th from 11am-5pm at the Tranzac.

For more info and for the list of exhibitors, check out the Zine Dream website.

The T.A.M.I Show in Border Crossings Magazine

2010-08-16T22:05:00.006-04:00

Anyone who knows me outside of the world of art and craft knows what a music head/record nut I am-- more specifically, a 60s music head. Because of this, it was especially pleasurable when I happened upon the short article Rock of Ageis: "The T.A.M.I. Show Directed by Steve Binder by Robert Enright in the latest issue of Border Crossings (which most know is an art magazine as opposed to a music magazine).

The T.A.M.I. Show is a feature-length concert film from 1964 showcasing some of the most popular rock'n'roll/soul groups and artists of the mid-sixties such as The Beach Boys, James Brown, The Stones, The Supremes and Lesley Gore as well as a few minor garage acts like Boston's The Barbarians. Enright argues that both the film's visual style and the artists represented captured that very particular period of early/mid-sixties innocence and idealism just before the civil rights movement, Vietnam and a general sense of social unrest and cultural upheaval in the U.S. The article emphasizes the idea of the performances foreshadowing future events, with nicely articulated asides on Leslie Gore's "You Don't Own Me" as a proto-feminist anthem and a potential early assertion of her identity as a lesbian, and the fact that the Beach Boys performance on T.A.M.I took place only two months before Brian Wilson's (first?) nervous breakdown.

A cool article well worth reading if you dig music. Also, search The T.A.M.I. Show on Youtube for some excellent footage from the recently released deluxe DVD edition of the concert.

Photos: The Supremes and The Beach Boys on the T.A.M.I Show

Garlic "Recipies"

2010-08-16T21:47:00.002-04:00

I made this zine a few weeks ago. Aside from that, I've been swamped working 8 days (some 9.5 hours long!) straight at my two jobs and wading through (many fantastic) applications for this exhibition. Simply not enough hours in the day these days...

The garlic zine is available to purchase on Etsy at this link.

Drawing with Scissors and People Place Thing at the TMC

2010-07-31T12:13:00.008-04:00

I went to the Textile Museum on Friday afternoon and finally saw the exhibition Person Place Thing, which showcases the work of Lia Cook, David R. Harper and Stephen Schofield. I saw David R. Harper's work earlier in the year at MKG 127, and was wondering how a reading of his work would change in a much bigger space.

Though I enjoyed seeing Harper's work in a larger space and appreciated the supplementary exhibition texts to guide me through his conceptual concerns, the real stand out of this show was Stephen Schofield. His work involves the stiffening of salvaged fabric with sugar water to create amazing three-dimensional inflated figures that not only have integrity to real human proportions and anatomy, but are also expressive, quirky, and incredibly playful.

Also up at the TMC is the exhibition Drawing with Scissors: Molas from Kuna Yala. This utterly packed exhibition showcases the decorative panels from the blouses of Kuna-- an autonomous ethnic group that is native to a small island off the coast of Panama. The molas are intricately embroidered and reverse-appliqued with handsewn geometric patterns and imagery as diverse as roosters, baseball players, labyrinth-like designs and Tony the Tiger. Through the history and subject matter/imagery of molas, the exhibition touches on themes such as colonialism, craft, spirituality, matrilocal customs and globalization.

Images, from top:

Stephen Schofield, Dibutade 1

Example of a Mola (A reimagining of the Victor/RCA logo?)

Lia Cook, Big Maze

David R. Harper, The Last to Win

ECG Drawing

2010-07-29T22:58:00.008-04:00

I've been working on this drawing for the past week or so, but my overhead projector bulb just burned out! What now? This is the first of 5 large scale drawings of documents from my medical file. If anyone has a overhead projector I can borrow....let me know!

24 Hour Zine Challenge Tomorrow at the TRANZAC

2010-07-27T21:25:00.009-04:00

This just in from the Toronto Zine Library...a 24 Hour Zine Challenge! It's tomorrow, so throw some supplies together and get thee to the TRANZAC for 5pm! Thanks Amy Leigh for the heads up!

Happy International Zine Month!

To celebrate, the Toronto Zine Library is participating in the 24 hour zine challenge and we would love for you to join us! We are hosting a kick off event this Wednesday, July 28th starting at 5pm and going strong until the Tranzac Club closes.

What is the 24 hour zine challenge, you ask? A yearly event where one attempts to make a 24 page zine from start to finish in 24 hours. From initial idea right through to photocopying/collating/stapling your zine. More information, list of this year's participants and sign up can be found here:http://24hourzines.com/

(Please note that you dont *have* to register and/or send your zine in when its finished. We encourage you participate to whatever degree you are most comfortable with. Or, you are welcome to just come and hang out at the TZL and cheer participants on!)

Bring your ideas and if youre able a snack to share while we hang out, listen to music, and get a start on our 24 hour zines! Some supplies will be available (paper, glue, scissors, magazine clippings, a couple of typewriters, a long arm stapler) but please do bring your favourite or necessary zine making supplies. Conveniently, there is a 24 hour Kinkos a half-block away!

Also, similar to the event folks at the Independent Pubishing Resource Center (http://www.iprc.org/) in Portland Oregon held a few days ago, we will be streaming our 24 hour zine challenge event live! If you're unable to join us, bookmark http://www.ustream.tv/channel/toronto-zine-library-24hr-zine-challenege and tune in on Wednesday starting at 5pm EST and participate alongside us from wherever you may be.

Ok, to recap:

WHEN: wednesday july 28th, 5pm until close

WHERE: the toronto zine library -- 2nd floor of the tranzac club -- 292 brunswick st. just south of bloor. close to spadina subway station

COST: free!

WHAT: 24 hour zine challenge kick off BRING: yourself, your friends, snacks, creativity, zine making supplies, ideas

Holler at us if you have any additional questions or concerns. We regret that the TZL is not a wheelchair accessible space.

The Toronto Zine Library 292 Brunswick Ave, 2nd floor

torontozinelibrary@gmail.com

http://torontozinelibrary.blogspot.com

Call for Submissions: The Wunderkabinet

2010-07-27T11:39:00.004-04:00

Here is a really great call for submissions, organized by City of Craft alumnae, Leah Buckareff! This is a really great way to get your work overseas! If you would like to submit handmade objects for display/sale in a rotating multiples exhibition cabinet, take a look at the Wunderkabinet website.

The Craft Reader

2010-07-10T20:45:00.005-04:00

I've been reading this on and off for the past few weeks in an effort to expand my theory deficient and unedu-ma-cated brain, as well as to get some ideas to put toward the Love and Money show. I particularly enjoyed the essays Building Materials by Adolf Loos and The Revival of Handicraft by William Morris. Adolf Loos wrote the infamous essay Ornament and Crime, in which he proclaimed that ornament was a sign of degeneracy(!).

I like your work: art and etiquette

2010-07-04T20:46:00.011-04:00

I bought this pamphlet/book at a bookstore in Brooklyn while I was there two weeks ago, because I both found it's concept hilarious and figured it would be an added bonus if I actually learned something from it, as someone who often feels like vomiting before her own openings. I once took the day off of work to go to an afternoon reception of a group show I was in, chickened out, and sent my parents into the gallery while I waited in the car! I agonize over the most basic of interactions that happen at openings, and judging by this book, I'm not the only one who does this by miles...

Here are some highlights from the book, which offers both biting criticisms of and honest advice and tips for navigating the art world, an oftentimes bizarre and complicated parallel universe which has it's own unique code of conduct and unspoken "rules."

ANONYMOUS: "Wait until you are at least six blocks away from a show before expressing a negative opinion about this show-- this is known as the "six-block rule."

ANDREW BERARDINI: "You must attend art openings. When you're Bruce Nauman, you can be a hermit in New Mexico. Until then however, you must attend art openings."

DAVID LEVINE: (When asked what constitutes bad manners...) "Getting so caught up in your own social discomfort that you fail to attend to the comfort of others."

RYAN STEADMAN: "If you're a skinny artist, be clean and neat. If you're a fat artist, be crazy looking and disheveled. Not sure why, but this seems to work best."

JESSICA SLAVEN: (When asked what the role of etiquette is in the art world...) "That the art world should have a separate code of behavior from civilized society serves to indicate its self-impressed and savage nature."

Call for Submissions: Love and Money

2010-07-02T20:22:00.007-04:00

The following call is for a group show I'm organizing for this year's City of Craft fair that will take place at the Ontario Crafts Council Gallery. Help spread the word!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Love and Money

At the Ontario Crafts Council Gallery

December 16-31, 2010

Reception: Thursday, December 16, 7-10pm

City of Craft (in partnership with the Ontario Craft Council) is seeking submissions for a group exhibition that will take place at the Ontario Craft Council Gallery as a part of City of Craft’s 2010 off-site programming. City of Craft is Toronto’s largest independent craft sale and weekend-long event featuring craft-based installations, free workshops, and craft-related programming.

This year’s exhibition will explore the broad relationship craft and crafting has with commerce. Craft(ing) is currently a multi-billion dollar industry. From mainstream craft media personalities and the DIY Network to hipster how-to guides, mega craft fairs and fabric designers du jour, the commercial nature of the contemporary “crafting” movement often seems to starkly contrast the idea of crafting for necessity from days gone by. On the other hand, there are people who turn to craft and craft processes for a sense of transcendence and autonomy. Many would argue that there is more of a need to craft for crafts sake now than ever-- either to re-skill ourselves for an uncertain future, or simply to learn to slow down.

Are money and craft strange (or natural) bedfellows? How does craft transcend issues of commerce? How do you navigate or perceive the dichotomy of craft for love/craft for money? Work that addresses any facet of the above ideas is welcomed as a submission. Submissions of fine craft, indie craft and art are encouraged.

Love and Money is curated and coordinated by Tara Bursey.

The official call for submissions and the online application for Love and Money can be found on the City of Craft website.

Submission Deadline: Sunday, August 15^th

Shredded Money photo by Becky Johnson

Dead or Alive

2010-06-28T22:48:00.005-04:00

Saw the exhibition Dead or Alive at the Museum of Craft and Design during my trip to NYC and Brooklyn. The show was incredible-- much of the work in the show reminded me so much of my own work, to the point that it made me feel a little weird. I ended up buying the show's catalogue, which is also gorgeous.

Brooklyn

2010-06-25T13:10:00.005-04:00

Went to Brooklyn Museum on Wednesday and saw these amazing shows:

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/extended_family/

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/kiki_smith/

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party/

From top: Brooklyn Museum, Kara Walker, Judy Chicago, Kiki Smith, Cheese fries at Coney Island.

Shrimplace

2010-06-18T19:58:00.004-04:00

Two new Shrimplace shadow boxes, made as a wedding present.

6"X6"

16.06.10