Zine Dream 5

Zine Dream-- the annual zine (among other things) fair-- is happening again in August, but this year it has grown into an impressive three-day event.  Opening night is at the new location of Art Metropole; day two will feature a panel discussion moderated by small press/art/craft queen Shannon Gerard; and the main event takes place on day three-- a zine fair with 50+ vendors, entertainment and more.

I missed ZD last year on account of skipping town for Baltimore, but this year I'll be there with lotsa goodies.  I'll have a few old zines up for grabs as well as these posters and a brand new collaborative zine that I'm hoping will be done by the 12th!  Hope to see y'all there.

Event deets can be found here.

City of Craft Spring

There's lots of fantastic stuff on the horizon for this Spring, and this is certainly one of them.  City of Craft now has a large spring show along similar lines as the trunk shows that happen every few months at The Workroom in Parkdale.  I am proud to be DJ-ing this inaugural event at Trinity St. Paul Church on April 21st! The show is 7 hours long-- unfortunately I don't quite have it in me to do 7 hours of vinyl spinning, but I will be DJ-ing live for at least three hours during peak hours.  The rest of the time will be filled with fantastic tunes I've chosen.  Here's the little bluurb prepared about what to expect:

Tara has been DJ-ing around town for 7 years, and has done numerous guest sets on radio.  Past monthly nights included Out of Vogue (2005-06) and Girls Go Crazy! (2010-11) and her new monthly night Strange Notes will begin at the Embassy in Kensington Market in March of 2012, and will continue on the first Wednesday of every month.  For City of Craft's spring show, Tara will be ringing in the sunshine with some sweet pop, rock, bubblegum and psychedelia from the 1960s.  There will be three live sets over the course of the day on glorious vinyl!  Think Beach Boys, Girl Groups, fun pop hits that you know and cool lost nuggets that you don't know!  Rave on!  

Needless to say there will be a ton of fantastic vendors of craft and rummage at this show-- among them  my pals Sweetie Pie Press, Old Weston, Krystal Speck and tons more.   Don't miss it.

City of Craft Spring
Trinity St. Paul Church
427 Bloor St. West
Toronto
April 21st, 2012
11am - 6pm
$1 Admission

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.

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.

Neat Little Press Mention...

My Ninth Grade Notes and Plaster Fingers got a nice mention in a write-up about Art History in the current Design Lines Annual Guide Issue. Check it out here.

Both my Plaster Fingers and Ninth Grade Notes are for sale at my Etsy shop, which can be found here.

From Russia with Love on Etsy

Last night I placed a new listing on Etsy for From Russia with Love custom mail order bride drawings. I had the idea to do these a long time ago when asked to contribute the FRWL project to a group show that never came to fruition. Below is a short description of the project, along with ordering info.

*****

From Russia with Love Mail Order Bride-- MADE TO ORDER

Your very own mail order bride...made to order! For $30, I will send you your own mail order bride portrait, drawn in archival ink on a postcard-size (4"X6") piece of heavyweight cold press watercolour paper. Drawings can be made (from actual "mail order bride" websites) either at random, or made to order from your specifications. Specifications can include any combination of the following:

-Age
-Height
-Eye Colour
-Hair Colour
-Weight
-Hobbies/Special Interests

Each drawing comes with an info sheet that includes information about each portrait subject-- name, country and city of origin, age, etc.

From the original FRWL artist's statement:
From Russia with Love is a project based around a series of 72 portraits of Russian “mail order brides” drawn from photographs on internet sites. This project is an extension of previous work exploring serial portraiture- yearbook photos, WWII military portraits- and the idea of portraits of this nature serving as “human catalogues.” Using the laborious act of drawing each woman’s likeness by hand, the project attempts to subvert the idea of these women being catalogued, while alluding to their commodification through their presentation within storefront installations and supplementary bookwork/pinback button multiples.

*****

If you're interested in purchasing a drawing, buy one through the listing on my Etsy shop here.

Love and Rummage 2 Trunk Show

City of Craft and the workroom present…

The Love & Rummage Trunk Show 2
…and afternoon of locally made crafts and vintage wares with a Valentine’s focus.

Featuring Vendors: Tara Bursey, The Coldsnap Bindery, Shannon Gerard, Cecelia Hayes, Ella Kohlmann, Melodie Kwan, lines by: davis, Katie Muth, Kid Icarus, Papersnake Jewellery, Snap and Tumble, Krystal Speck and The Sweetie Pie Press.

Sunday, February 7, 2010
NOON-5:00pm
the workroom
1340 Queen Street West

FREE Admission (& free snacks)
http://www.cityofcraft.com/2010/loveandrummage2/index.html

City of Craft 2009

Okay...I've pretty recovered from City of Craft by now and am on to recovering from Christmas and gearing up for New Years Eve...! This will definitely be my last post about City of Craft this year, so I'll leave you with this link to my City of Craft 2009 installations Flickr page, which includes some great documentation of many of this year's on and off-site installations. Enjoy!

Also, thanks to all of my co-organizers, and all of this year's wonderful installation artists and participating artists in the Home and Away group exhibition:

Jen Anisef, Lizz Aston, Fiona Bailey, Rose Bianchini, Amy Borkwood, Leah Buckareff, The Caribou Collective, Marta Chudolinska, Heather Fagan, Rosalyn Faustino, Meags Fitzgerald and Pamela Norrish, Sara Guindon, Genevieve Jodouin, Becky Johnson, Jacinta Lodge, Serena McCarroll and Tyler Brett, Holly McClellan, The Misanthrope Specialty Co, Megan Morgan, Shanell Papp, Susan Rowe Harrison, Jen Spinner and Laurie McGregor, Streetknit and Ryan Kamstra, The Toronto Hyperbolic Reef Collective and Gillian Wilson.

Huge thanks also to our 2009 Queen Street West satellite installation venues:  Tanya and Scott of Fly Gallery, Janna of the Ontario Crafts Council, Sonja of Thieves, Kristin of The Knit Cafe and Royal Car Wash.

Hope to see you all next year!

Bright Lights, Big City of Craft

I haven't posted in a while due to City of Craft craziness, but I will very likely be posting up a storm here in coming days with documentation, thoughts on the this year's show and acknowledgements of all the amazing people I worked with as one of this year's organizers.

Until then, here's a nice piece on City of Craft from Torontoist. Thanks, Tabassum!

http://torontoist.com/2009/12/bright_lights_big_city_of_craft.php

City of Craft General Store

Here is a small fraction of the plaster fingers I made for the City of Craft General Store at Canzine yesterday.  Sadly, I was forced to be a no-show because of...swine flu?!?!  I'm not 100% sure, but boy do I feel sick!  I'm sorry to anyone who dropped by to say hello, and sorry to the lovely organizers of the COC room installation who I flaked out on.  Don't be fooled by these sanitary looking fingers...I would have been a living germ bomb had I attended...

Next on deck for City of Craft:  the main event.  Scary, but exciting. Stay tuned for more posts about installation programming in particular, which I've been working my butt off organizing this year!

The City of Craft General Store at Canzine 2009

I'll be taking part in the City of Craft Collective-produced room installation, The City of Craft General Store, at Canzine tomorrow! I'm one of twelve artists with goodies included in the "store"...stop by and check it out.

The Info:

This year, City of Craft is teaming up with the good folks at Broken Pencil Magazine to bring a brand new 'art room' to their annual celebration of indie culture, Hotel Canzine. Our room, The City of Craft General Store, will be a one-day jam-packed old-timey shop to delight all your crafty senses.

Sunday, November 1, 2009
1pm - 7pm
The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen St. West (Queen just East of Dufferin)
Toronto 
$5 admission comes with a free copy of the Fall issue of Broken Pencil Magazine

The City of Craft General Store features selected works from:

Bespoke Uprising  -  Bettula  -  Tara Bursey  -  Damned Dollies  -  Shannon Gerard  -  Lee Meszaros  - The Misanthrope Specialty Co.  -  Mr. Skona  -  Nightjar Books  - The Pinpals  -  Resurection Fern  - The Sweetie Pie Press

More info and artist links here.

More on this year's City of Craft here.

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

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.

Garden Party Trunk Show

This Sunday, I'll be tabling at the Garden Party Trunk Show, hosted by City of Craft and the Workroom in scenic Parkdale!  I'll be peddling all my usual wares- zines, pins, vintage books, art, multiples, as well as some special handmade items for hip daddies in honour of Father's Day.  Other vendors include:

Old Weston

Lunar Craft

Snap and Tumble

Tara Bursey

Willow Dawson

Brit Boutique

Krystal Speck

Pleasurecraft

Keri Rounding

Resurrection Fern

Operation Sock Monkey

Bespoke Uprising

Kid Icarus

Should be a blast!  Hope to see you there!

the workroom

1340 Queen Street West

Parkdale, Toronto

theworkroom.ca

http://www.cityofcraft.com/2009/gardenparty/index.html

Hunt and Gather Trunk Show

Here are some pictures of my wares at the Hunt and Gather Trunk Show today. Even though I had a late night last night and had about 4 hours of sleep in total, I managed to have a great (though utterly lethargic) day and an awesome time hanging out with some uber-talented crafters. Shout outs go to flu-ravaged button-ista Becky of Sweetie Pie Press (my table neighbour for the day) and the lovely and talented ceramicist Emily of Nesting Emily, who I was very happy to have met for the first time!

Thanks Becky and Karen of the Workroom for inviting me!










































(Photos by Karen Valino)

Hunt and Gather Trunk Show

Next Sunday, I'll be a part of the Hunt and Gather Trunk Show at the Workroom, curated by Becky Johnson and Karen Valino! I'll be peddling zines, pins, crafts and a few selected pieces of larger artwork as well as some awesome rummage which will include sewing supplies, Japanese and found papers, vintage books, nik naks and other miscellanea. The show will feature some awesome local makers of paper goods, craft, wearables, ceramics, art and their craft-related rummage! A really awesome opportunity to score some great stuff!

Other vendors include:

Fieldguided
Girl Number Twenty
Lines by Davis
Mr. Skona
Needle Book
Nesting Emily
Old Weston
Resurrection Fern
Sarah Anne Fork
Sara McNeil
the sweetie pie press
the workroom

Free food, too! Hope to see you there!

The Hunt and Gather Trunk Show
Sunday April 19, 2009
Noon-5pm
the workroom
1340 Queen Street West
http://cityofcraft.com/2009/huntandgather/index.html

Artists' Flea Market at Board of Directors

I will be participating in the Artists' Flea Market this Sunday, February 8th from 10am-6pm at Board of Directors (Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects). The Market will include cheap art works on sale by:

Tara Azzopardi as Baby Jane Lipshitz

Lex Vaughn as Peanut Brittle

Andrew Harwood as Zsa Zsa

Tara Bursey

Tanya Read

Colin Stark

Seth Scriver

Sandy Plotnikoff

Saera Burns-Whymz

Jennifer Lovegrove

Katharine Mulherin

Melissa Hamel-Smith

Melissa Levin

I will be selling loads of zines and bookworks, multiples, pinback buttons, paper-based art, drawings, food art and crafts and other surprises! Tons of stuff for between $2 and $10! Wow!

Should be heaps of fun! Hope to see you there!

Board of Directors

1082 + 1086 Queen Street West

(Near Dovercourt Road)

Toronto

http://www.katharinemulherin.com

City of Craft

Only one week away! Here are the full details:

CITY OF CRAFT 2008

Come forth crafty citizens to City of Craft 2008 - an innovative craft culture event where craft shoppers & makers come together to celebrate the handmade spirit. No ordinary craft fair, City of Craft 2008 features free workshops, craft-based installations, and outreach by community arts groups & studios, all alongside a curated craft fair of modern handmade goods.

Details:

WHAT: City of Craft 2008
WHO: 50+ craft vendors, community groups, installation artists, workshop leaders & satellite participants
WHEN: Saturday December 13, 2008, noon-8pm
WHERE: Theatre Centre, located at 1087 Queen Street West at Dovercourt

Some show highlights to get you excited:

*FREE STUFF ALERT: the first one hundred visitors will receive swag bags printed by Studio XIX filled with coupons for the show, plus fantastic goodies from indie publications and local & international craft artists.
*AWESOME STUFF ALERT: Check out amazing handmade goods on offer by more than 40 talented makers: http://cityofcraft.com/2008/cityofcraft/vendors.html
*NEIGHBOURHOOD CRAFT CRAWL: City of Craft takes to the streets with crafty programming in local businesses and galleries. (Those of you with a sweet tooth should not miss out on cupcake decorating & knitting activities at the Knit Café.)
*CRAFTY-COOL INSTALLATIONS: Stop by the window of League of Lovers and Thieves to check out Tara Bursey's installation of hundreds or origami shoes made with tea bags, or have a Victorian silhouette portrait taken by Danijela Photography, featuring a papercut frame by artist Li Sui. Get lost in a landscape of fibre, photography and sound by Lynn Harrigan, Scott M2 and dreamSTATE.
*MAKE YOUR OWN HANDMADE GIFTS (FREE!): Workshops include origami star books by the Paper Place, fabric covered magnet sets by The Workroom, recycled felt ornaments by Mr. Sköna, and screen printed cards by Kid Icarus.
*AFTERNOON TEA: Eat treats from Yummy Stuff & sip tea by Tealish between 2-4pm

So there you have it, there is really no better place to be on December 13th, 2008.

Visit the show website at http://cityofcraft.com/2008/cityofcraft which is being continually updated with more details.

City of Craft

So, my main project as of late has been preparing for both a vendor table and a big installation for this year's City of Craft. It is going to be an amazing event judging by last year's incredible vendors and turnout, so I'm kind of losing my mind trying to prepare goodies worthy of this stellar fair. The City of Craft website is now up, so check it out if you haven't already for vendor information, etc. I will be also be posting sneak previews of some of my wares as they're made here, so stay tuned...

City of Craft 2008

December 13th, 2008

The Theatre Centre

1087 Queen Street West

at Dovercourt Road

Toronto

http://www.cityofcraft.com

Zine Dream 1

I will have a table at the Zine Dream 1 multiples and small press fair this weekend at the TRANZAC. The Toronto Zine Library will also be open upstairs for exploration and lounging purposes. Be sure to come out and check out all the incredible stuff!!!

ZINE DREAM 1
small press art fair, featuring over 40 local artists and zinesters!
+ All 3 rooms of the rooms of the Tranzac, with music and
performances all day! + Toronto Zine Library Open House,
come hang out and read zines! + there will be a bake sale!!

SUN AUG 24 08 - TRANZAC, 292 Brunswick Ave. 12 to 6 pm

+ with music by
-Peace Loving (from Jamaica Plain, MA - http://www.myspace.com/peachloving)
-Doctor Matthew Dunn
-$100 lite (Ian & Simone - http://www.myspace.com/1hundreddollars)

-DJS Longhorn Grille + Orenda

+ performances by
-Lou Calabro
-Stephanie Wilkie
-Chris Locke

PWYC

contact laura (lauramclaura at gmail) or jesjit (jesjit at gmail) for more info