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Easter Eggs

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

Mushroom and Butterfly

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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