Hideout Interview

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

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

I made these over the last few nights.

Printing Errors at Akau

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

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

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

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

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

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

...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

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

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"

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

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

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!

More on this series of drawings soon.

Ink and coloured pencil on mylar.

29.07.10

24 Hour Zine Challenge Tomorrow at the TRANZAC

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

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

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(!).

More on The Craft Reader here.

I like your work: art and etiquette

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."

More on I like your work here.

Call for Submissions: Love and Money

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