Gorilla Graphics: This is Our Brain on Vinyl

Ben and I whipped up a little installation for our awesome friends at local record shop Hammer City Records for November's art crawl. This installation is also a big crazy promotional scheme for Ben's new business, Gorilla Graphics. We are grateful that Craig and Leah gave us the space to purge our brains of some silly imagery lifted from the annals of pop culture's sewer.

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GORILLA GRAPHICS: THIS IS OUR BRAIN ON VINYL 
Art Crawl Night 
Friday, November 14 7-11PM

Hammer City Records



Gorilla Graphics is a small business run by lifelong punks Ben Needham and Tara Bursey that specializes in producing custom vinyl and sign graphics for exhibitions, promotions, artists and businesses big and small. 

Part showcase and part mural, Gorilla Graphics: This Is Our Brain On Vinyl blends the objects and visuals we love from the worlds of punk, art, pop culture and design. This installation illustrates the countless possibilities for producing vinyl graphics for application on everything from walls to windows to drum heads. Radical vinyl decals for cars/skateboards/your UFO/etc. will be sold at the opening, with all proceeds going to Hammer City Records!


http://www.gorillagraphicshamilton.com/

http://gorilla-graphics.tumblr.com/
 

http://www.facebook.com/gorillagraphicshamont
Twitter: @gorillasdovinyl

Hammer City Records

228 St N at Rear off Robert Street Alley
Hamilton, ON
Show runs until the second week of December!

The Pulling Strings Reference Library

There's lots of amazing stuff brewing with my textile-based collective, Pulling Strings.  A few weeks ago our newest project, The Pulling Strings Reference Library, had its soft launch at Needlework.  A growing collection of eclectic textile-related publications have been installed in Needlework's window along with a cozy chair for browsing and lounging.  After April, the library will become an ongoing fixture at Needlework as a semi-permanent community reference of textile art, theory and how-to books, zines and catalogues both old and new, weird and wonderful.

There are other great library goings-on happening until the end of April as well.  Every Tuesday and Thursday, our blog will feature reviews of books from the personal collections of some of our textile heroes.  This series kicked off last week with reviews by Robyn Love, Kate Jackson and Grant Heaps with many more lined up (previews of a few of the books that will be featured above!). At the end of April, we'll have a reading event at Needlework where an impressive group of textile enthusiasts will read aloud from their fave textile books.  More details to come soon!

http://pullingstringshamilton.blogspot.ca/
https://www.facebook.com/pullingstringshamilton

Zine News

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

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...

On Ownership

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

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

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

PLP at Mixed Media, Hamilton

The next showing of The Portable Library Project opens this Friday at Mixed Media in Hamilton. The opening will coincide with Hamilton's monthy James Street Art Crawl. See above (and below!) for all the details. Hope to see you there!

The Portable Library Project is a multi-dimensional mail-art/bookmaking project involving the creation of small works exploring ideas surrounding archiving, ephemera, journalling, libraries 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, 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 one 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.

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)

The Portable Library Project is organized and curated by Tara Bursey.

Poster design: Tara Bursey

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.