Shadow Box Exhibition at the TMC

I am participating in the Textile Museum of Canada's annual Shadow Box Exhibition for the fourth year in a row this year.  Sadly, I missed the reception, but the show is open to the public until October 29th. The little glove above is featured in my shadow box this year!  Go see it!

From the TMC website:

The BMO Financial Group Shadow Box Event is back for its 14th year. The auction features original works by more than 150 Canadian and international artists. With pieces bought right off the wall, the evening is a great chance to get some amazing art at surprisingly sensible prices. 

Artists' Reception and Media Preview:
October 14, 6:30 pm
Exhibition:
Open October 14 to October 29
Auction:
Thursday October 29, 6:30 pm 

Textile Museum of Canada
55 Centre Avenue (Dundas St. W & University Ave., St. Patrick subway)
Toronto, Ontario
M5G 2H5
t. (416) 599-5321
f. (416) 599-2911

http://www.textilemuseum.ca

PLP at Roberts Street Social Centre

Here are some photos from the day of the Portable Library Project opening at Roberts Street Social Centre! Thanks again Sarah Evans of RSSC and Morag Schonken (and Suzy, pictured above!) for helping put on the show. Everything looks super!

The Portable Library Project is on display at Roberts Street (in the Anchor Archive Zine Library) until November 1st.  Their hours of operation are Tuesday from 6-9pm and Sunday from 2-5pm...if you're in Halifax, be sure to check out the show before the end of the month!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Photos:  Morag Schonken

Portable Library Project in Halifax

Well, it's that time again!  As if taking care of City of Craft installations, volunteering during Nuit Blanche, and schoolwork wasn't enough to deal with this week, The second Portable Library Project show opens next week, at Roberts Street Social Centre in Halifax. Thanks so much to everyone who helped put this show together, specifically Sarah Evans and everyone at Roberts Street for their help and enthusiasm, and my good friend (and PLP artist) Morag Schonken for helping co-ordinate the exhibition.  Stay tuned to the PLP blog for photos of the show and press from Halifax!

*****

The Portable Library Project is a multi-dimensional mail-art/book-making project involving the creation of small works exploring ideas surrounding archiving, journaling, libraries, ephemera, and incorporating an art practice into everyday life. The 18 participating artists span several artistic disciplines, from performance art to fibre-based art; from photo-based art to craft to sculpture and installation.  Artists involved in the project are based across Canada, the US and are from as far away as Seoul, Korea.

Invited artists were sent/delivered an empty cigar box, roughly the size of a hardcover book. Over the course of a week, participants were expected to create a 'book' a day reflective of each person's day-to-day activities and artistic process. Books were ideally made while on the go; boxes were intended to be carried with the participant, where books were to be added and collected each day for seven days.

How do working artists fit artistic production into everyday life?  Challenging oneself to make work outside of a studio setting is one way. One element of The Portable Library Project serves as a challenge to artists to adopt a portable art practice to fit the demands of the life of a working artist, which often entails a job or two in unrelated work environments. The portability of the book format is a natural basis for the project, which also encourages artists to explore and comment on the relationship between the book and the art object.

Participating artists:
Aimee Lee (Seoul, Korea)
Amber Landgraff (Toronto)
Cara Spooner (Toronto)
Daphne Gerou (Toronto)
Debbie Danelley (Winnipeg, MB)
Deborah Margo (Ottawa, ON)
Fiona Bailey (Toronto)
Jen Pilles (Oakville, ON)
Laura Calvi (Halifax, NS)
Laurie Kang (Toronto)
Margaret Flood (Guelph, ON)
Margaret Legue (Forest, ON)
Morag Schonken (Halifax, NS)
Sheila Jonah (Toronto)
Simon Rabyniuk (Toronto)
Stephanie Cormier (Toronto)
Stephanie Vegh (Hamilton, ON)
Sylvia Ziemann (Regina, SK)

October 11th-November 1st, 2009
Opens Sunday, October 11, 2-5pm
Anchor Archive Zine Library
at the Roberts Street Social Centre
5684 Roberts Street
Halifax
http://www.robertsstreet.org/n/
Poster design: Tara Bursey

Bouncing Bride at Nuit Blanche

I will be jumping on a trampoline in my mother's wedding dress on top of an enormous wedding cake for this year's Nuit Blanche. Yup, you read that right.  I am a volunteer assisting with Cathy Gordon's performance project Bouncing Bride: What is Down Must Go Up which takes place tomorrow night at the Music Gallery.

Come and laugh at me from 11-1am!  Better yet, come up on the cake and jump with me!  Here is all the information:

*****

NUIT BLANCHE

SATURDAY OCTOBER 3, 2009

7pm to 7am

ZONE A

The Music Gallery, 197 John Street

Concept & Performance – Cathy Gordon

Cake Design – Laird MacDonald

Wedding DJ – Ulysses Castellanos

BOUNCING BRIDE: What Is Down Must Go Up

Coproduced by The Theatre Centre

Be the bouncing groom to the bouncing bride on your own mini-trampoline atop a ten-foot high wedding cake. Cathy Gordon follows up her last endurance piece ON MY KNEES: a public divorce ceremony, with this light-hearted look at the “bright-side” of divorce.

Projected from within the cake-sculpture will be a series of a hundred positive divorce stories ranging from Canada’s own Maggie & Pierre to personal stories collected for this project. The aim of the work is to expose the untold “happy side” of divorce, which is still regarded negatively in our society.

Request your favourite wedding songs from our very own Wedding DJ, Ulysses Castellanos, and then dance the night away under the stars in the beautiful courtyard of St. George The Martyr’s Church.

Those who wish to venture to the top of the cake, can sign up for a number and then continue dancing while they wait for their turn. Audience members will be allowed one at a time to the top of the cake where they can bounce with the artist (if only for awhile) as her new groom.

Fatigued Nuit Blanchers can also lounge instead - sinking into the cozy “bottom layer” of the cake. Their imprints in the memory-foam with create “waves in the icing” which serves as a physical reminder of their metaphysical traces and the impermanence of all relationships.

Cathy Gordon is a multidisciplinary artist and programmer living and working in Toronto. She co-curates Free Fall, a national festival of contemporary performance produced by The Theatre Centre in partnership with World Stage. Her work deals with the themes of hope, resilience and joy.

http://www.cathygordon.com

Pink Records

Yesterday I spent the majority of the night helping my boyfriend make some design decisions about his band's upcoming record. Part of our decision-making process involved establishing what colour of pink he wanted the record to be.  It is pretty hard to articulate subtly different shades of pink in words, so I started yanking out all the pink albums in my record collection...there were loads!  And to think he thought his idea was unconventional! Here's a selection of said records.  I'd bet my bottom dollar that someone has actually used the term "Fire of Love Pink," considering how distinctive a shade it is...

Does anyone have a favourite?  Musically or colour-wise?

Etsy Shop

So, I held off from starting my own Etsy shop in fear my time spent on the computer would reach ridiculous heights if I added yet another thing to my nightly internet routine.  Now I feel like this issue is a lost cause entirely, and I've given in.  Last month, I started work on an Etsy shop, which is for the pretty much ready for public consumption!  There are several things up for sale- mainly zines and small multiples, but a few larger works are up as well.  I feel like the time is right for this Etsy shop because I've recently started going to school part-time, and am as a result of this, working less.  I could use a bit of extra cash an a hell of a lot more room in my art-filled apartment.  

More work will be added within the next few weeks, so be sure to check back regularly!

Without further ado, here is the address.  Please take a look for yourself!

http://tarabursey.etsy.com

Artmap 2009

Here's a sample of my finished piece that will be a part of the Artmap project, which will be exhibited at City Hall as part of this year's Manifesto Festival.  Here's a snippet from my proposal to the project organizers:

I live in Ward 19, work in Ward 14, and was born in Ward 38.  I would be particularly interested in working with Ward 38: Scarborough Centre.  It is an amazing and unique area of Toronto in terms of it's diversity and the changes it's gone through since lived there as a child and young adult.  For my contribution, I would be particularly interested in depicting the children of Ward 38 by revisiting my elementary school and arranging to gain access to school photo archives in which I would use as source material to create a finished work which incorporates serial portraits of children (generated with paint and permanent marker) illustrating the wide range of ethnicities which call Ward 38 home. 

Making this piece was definitely a learning experience.  In reading about Ward 38, I learned that the year I was in fifth grade marked the first year of a period of nine years (1991-2000) in which the ward's immigrant population doubled.  I also found out that 50% of all the ward's private dwellings are in high rise apartments...which is funny considering the shape of the ward and the arrangement of portraits on my piece make it look a bit like an apartment building! 

More about Artmap 2009: 

Artmap is a collaborative art piece by artists from each of Toronto's 44 wards.  The work has been commissioned for Manifesto Festival of Community and Culture and will be unveiled on September 17th at 5:30 in the Rotunda at City Hall. City Councillors and participating artists will be in attendance.

 

Much like a giant puzzle, each artist or arts organization was given a ward shaped piece of an 8x17' wooden map of Toronto. Artists were then free to paint or rework the map piece to their desire. After being put back together and displayed, the work will be disassembled and given to each corresponding councillor's office as a reminder of the vibrancy and unity of artists across Toronto.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS AND ORGANIZATIONS

Ward 1 -  Angel Carrillo 
Ward 2 -  Shara Mohamed 
Ward 3 -  Nik Dudukovic 
Ward 4 -  Austin Clarkson / The Milkweed Collective 
Ward 5 -  Will Gaydos / Funktion Gallery
Ward 6 -  Jim Mckinley 
Ward 7 -  Network of Community Based Organizations 
Ward 8 -  Network of Community Based Organizations
Ward 9 -  Elle Alconcel, / Sketch, Womynation, Cue Collective 
Ward 10 - Angela Ming Yi Schneider 
Ward 11 - UrbanArts 
Ward 12 - Balu Kanagalingam / Arts for Children and Youth &  Rochelle Stephens / Boys' and Girls' Club of Weston-Mount Dennis
Ward 13 - Alexa Hatanaka 
Ward 14 - Che Kothari / Manifesto Festival 
Ward 15 - Katherine Earl, Liz Forsberg, Rosie Mohammed, Andrea Roberts / Artstarts 
Ward 16 - Carlos Weisz 
Ward 17 - Teresa Aversa 
Ward 18 - Javid Alibhai / LOFT Youth Program 
Ward 19 - Adam Hilborn 
Ward 20 - Marisol D'Andrea / The Martin Prosperity Institute
Ward 21 - Dan Chan 
Ward 22 - Maryam Siddiqi 
Ward 23 - Tom Decena
Ward 24 - Zanette Singh / Sketch & Womynation 
Ward 25 - Andres Musta 
Ward 26 - Evergreen Brickworks / Sketch 
Ward 27 - Judi Michelle, SunMi Jung, Gordon Becker / The Sculptors Society of Canada (SSC) / Canadian Sculpture Centre 
Ward 28 - Adrian Hayles 
Ward 29 - Gabrielle Lasporte 
Ward 30 - Billie Jo Tabobondung 
Ward 31 - Gordon Becker 
Ward 32 - Stephen Carroll 
Ward 33 - Art Starts Villaways / Yvette Martin
Ward 34 - Lisa Mansfield / Lease 
Ward 35 - Andrenne Finnikin / Arts for Children and Youth (AFCY) 
Ward 36 - Tim Whalley / Scarborough Arts Council
Ward 37 - Rob Matejka / Mural Routes
Ward 38 - Tara Bursey 
Ward 39 - Art Starts Glendower / Paulina O'Kieffe
Ward 40 - Tammy Yiu & Junichi Zacks 
Ward 41 - Catherine Hernandez
Ward 42 - Benedict Lopes / Scarbough Arts Council 
Ward 43 - Lindsay Bess / Elevated Grounds 
Ward 44 - Tharmila Rajasingam   

"Artmap is an opportunity for artists from across Toronto to connect with each other through the process and outcome. It has also been a political learning experience for many - lots of people did not know which ward they lived in or who their city councillor was before this project started" says Devon Ostrom, Visual Arts Director of Manifesto.

 

The work is supported by Live with Culture and the Toronto Arts Council and has been produced with assistance from the AGO, Polyteck, Scarborough Arts Council, Lakeshore Arts and UrbanArts.               

http://www.themanifesto.ca

http://www.themanifesto.ca/artmap/

Little Glove

I have a million things in progress right now, among them my contribution to this year's Shadow Box Auction at the Textile Museum. Here are some process shots of a little garlic glove in progress.  Look at the veins!  The auction takes place at the TMC every October, so I'll post more about it here closer to the date.

For more garlic gloves, look here.

PRCSSC + paperwork/foodwork

Two blog posts in one day about yours truly! First, a little bluurb from the lovely Becky Johnson about my brand new zine project, Punk Rockers on Creative Survival and the Survival of Creativity.  I have yet to write about this project here, so stay tuned for more on this. Secondly is a short piece on artclothtext about my online exhibition, paperwork/foodwork up on poplar gallery.online by artist Lesley Bricknell.  She writes:

"Artist Tara Bursey’s show paperwork/foodwork is currently on show at Poplar Online.  One of my favourite pieces is shrimplace, pale pink shrimps enmeshed together like a doiley.  It seems to me to hint at craft practices once traditionally associated with women.  Crochet, lacemaking - repetitious, labour intensive, domestic.  Tara’s choice of food as artworks is an interesting one.  Surely the refusal or rationing of food is a position of power and control.  Manageing the ‘unmanageable’?"

Becky's post here.  Lesley's post here.

Pictured:  Shrimplace (detail), 2008.

Fifth Grade

Here's a sneak preview of a project I've been working on for the past few nights...one of about a billion in progress right now!  I am one of a group of artists and art organizations working on a project called Artmap 09, which will be exhibited as a part of this year's Manifesto Festival next month. In a nutshell, each participating artist/organization is responsible for executing a piece of artwork on a surface in the shape of each ward of Toronto. I am in charge of doing a piece of work that represents Ward 38- Scarborough Centre, the ward I was born and grew up in.  After the festival, the piece will be presented to the councillor of Ward 38 as a gift.

For the piece, I decided to pay tribute to the kids of Ward 38. Specifically, I chose to draw each kid pictured in my fifth and sixth grade school photos from Churchill Heights Public School. The kids depicted in the piece illustrate the diversity my old neighbourhood in Scarborough is renowned for; the year I was in fifth grade marked the first year of a period of 9 years (1991-2000) in which the ward's immigrant population doubled.  

I'm really thrilled to be working on a project that immortalizes the kids I grew up with- kids from blue-collar families, the children of immigrants, kids who live in high-rise and basement apartments. Poor and lower-middle class kids making the most of a time marred by conflict and economic turmoil...kids a world away from the kids depicted on television shows of the day such as Full House and Home Improvement.  

For more on the Artmap, click here.

(By the way, that's me on the bottom right in the picture above...!)

paperwork/foodwork at Poplar gallery.online

It's been such a busy last few weeks for me and I have tons to post about, but need to devote my time to seeing through my millions of little projects right now as opposed to musing about them here.  One thing I really should have posted about earlier is I have a small online exhibition up now called paperwork/foodwork at Poplar gallery.online. Big, huge thank-you's to textile artist and Poplar curator Mackenzie Frere for making this happen and devoting time to putting up the work and designing the show.  While you're at Poplar, be sure to check out some of the archived online shows, many of which are really wonderful.

paperwork/foodwork is an older body of work executed during my time in Toronto School of Art's ISP Program in 2007-08.  For more images of this body of work, check out my ISP 07-08 Flickr page. 

paperwork/foodwork will be up until the end of the year.

Zine Dream II

All the info for this year's Zine Dream just came out.  I'll be tabling again this year, with some old zines, a long-in-the-making new zine (which I'll likely post about here within the next week or so...) and some odds and ends.  Here's everything you need to know:

Zine Dream is a small press art fair with over 50 vendors of hand made arts and crafts, zines, prints, and more! 

Also Featuring:

Toronto Zine Library Open House/Collaborative Zine Making Workshop!

A Bake Sale!!

Performances by:

Nick Flanagan (www.toromagazine.com/popculture)
Anna May Henry
Zeesy Powers (http://www.zeesypowers.com/)

Music by:

Carl Didur (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfh0eQxa4mM)
Andre Charles Theriault (http://www.myspace.com/andretheriault)
James Anderson 
Braintrust (electronic duo of Peter Thompson and James Kirkpatrick!!)

and DJs:

Wes Allen (http://doingittodeath.wordpress.com/)
Boner Dragon (http://offwhiteto.blogspot.com/)
and Body Beautiful (http://robertdayton.blogspot.com/)

Zine Dream II

SUNDAY AUGUST 30th 2009

at the TRANZAC 

292 Brunswick Avenue
12 - 6 PM, PWYC

Call for Submisisons: Collectorama at OCAD Graduate Gallery

I found this neat call on Toronto Craft Alert about a week ago.  I'd really like to talk about my record collection...! Check it out.

*****

Collectorama is an afternoon event dedicated to the gesture, impulse, and manifestation of collecting. It is being held in conjunction with the exhibition Other People’s Collections* in the OCAD Graduate Gallery on Saturday, September 19, 2009, 11 – 3pm.

Collectorama is an event for enthusiasts, artists, and experts to collectively tease out the pertinence and resonance of collecting and collections.

Collectorama is looking for you and your idiosyncratic! populist! embarrassing! enviable! professional! amateur! imaginary! real! contemporary! historical! rare! ordinary! huge! overwhelming! modest! boring! collection and/or research to be shared as a 10-20 minute presentation. There will be a slide & video projector present as visuals are strongly encouraged.

!! call for participation !!
Please submit:

• a short description of the collection you will focus on
• a short proposal outlining the scope of your presentation including the expected length and whether visuals will be used (making note of the format: digital, slides, objects…)
• a bio and/or cv

Email your submission to: collectorama2009@gmail.com by Tuesday,
September 1, 2009. All participants will be contacted within one week
regarding their participation in this event.

* Other People’s Collections is a collaborative exhibition between
Hazel Meyer, Amy Pelletier, and Deborah Wang, working with the
gesture, process and repurposing of collections. The exhibition will
consist of Meyer’s installation Cvjetka Meyer’s collection of 1027
handkerchiefs- strung, hung and motorized and Pelletier’s series of 36
photographs, Collector, along with the launch of Wang’s Text Painting
Project, at the OCAD Graduate Gallery from September 17 to October 4,
2009.

Call for Installation Proposals: City of Craft 2009

City of Craft is looking for crafty artists and artsy crafters to create installations for this year’s City of Craft 2009, which will take place both in and around The Theatre Centre during the weekend of December 12-13, 2009. This year’s installation programming will be greatly expanded to include more installation artists and even more fantastic Queen Street West venues. For this year’s installations we hope to include a wide range of crafty approaches, which reflect the diversity and conceptual richness of contemporary craft practices. Several venues will be available to artists for City of Craft installation programming this year, from Queen West galleries, storefront windows and public spaces to the nooks and crannies of City of Craft’s fabulous and historic venue, The Theatre Centre. Some ideas for proposals could include (but are certainly not limited to!) the exploration of:

- crafty public interventions


- ‘digital craft’ (craft + video, craft + kinetics, etc)


- crafty performance


- textile-based installations


- participatory craft-based installations

To propose an installation, go to our online installation application:http://www.cityofcraft.com/2009/cityofcraft/installations/form.php

For more information, or questions regarding City of Craft installation programming or submissions, contact: cityofcraft@gmail.com

Good luck!

Signed,

The City of Craft Collective

http://www.cityofcraft.com

City of Craft 2009

December probably seems pretty far away to most people in the midst of all this mid-summer mugginess, but the months leading up until then are booked solid for myself and the other organizers of this year's City of Craft.  We are already working our obscenely sexy butts off preparing for this year's big event, which will take place on December 12th and 13th.  For those of you who are crafty and interested in applying to be a vendor of cool contemporary crafts and multiples this year, online applications are now up on the City of Craft website.  Check it out!

My job as a City of Craft organizer this year is overseeing this year's installation programming. For the past month, I've been working away writing the installation electronic application, preparing potential installation venue packages, planning with other organizers and brainstorming like mad.  This week I'll be tackling the daunting (stomach-turning actually, for shy ol' me) task of approaching potential Queen Street venues.  Contrary to what the above flyer says, installation applications are not yet online, but they will be by the end of this week.  If you are interested in proposing an installation for this year's event, keep an eye on the CoC website for the e-app and feel free to contact me or the City of Craft official email address for more information or with any questions about this year's expanded installation programming.  

Good luck!

What is City of Craft, you ask?  Click here to find out.

Ought Apartment at the VAG

At the beginning of the month, I was in Vancouver for a few days (doing this) and I was lucky enough to catch Reece Terris' installation Ought Apartment at the Vancouver Art Gallery.  In short, the installation involves a multi-level structure in the middle of the gallery which houses 6 mock apartments, one per decade, from the 1950s to the present. Terris' eye for detail is incredible, and it was a riot watching gallery-goers of all ages revel in the spot-on period furnishings and accesories, from the surprise drawer contents of the 1950s washroom to the all-too-familiar popcorn air popper in the 1980s kitchen.  My personal favourite detail was the VAG's marble spiral staircase trimmed with orange shag carpeting! 

Ought Apartment was so funhouse-esque, I couldn't resist taking a number of photos (see the above detail from the 1970s apartment) which eventually got me in trouble with gallery security.  In fear that they will tar and feather me if I share them here, I am only including this one photo...if you want to see more, you'll have to come over to my place and check 'em out!

For more on Terris' Ought Apartment, click here.