Pleasure-Purpose at the OCC Gallery

I will be participating in the following exhibition, Pleasure-Purpose, this month at the Ontario Crafts Council Gallery. Read on for more details...

Pleasure-Purpose
May 8-June 6, 2008.
Curated by Janna Hiemstra
at the Ontario Crafts Council Gallery
990 Queen Street West
Toronto
Opening Reception: May 8th, 5:30-8:30pm

Featuring contributing artists: Alain Belanger, Ann Mortimer, Anne Barros, Carolyn Scandiffio, Janna Burford, Keith Campbell, Kevin MacLean, Lily Yung, Maciej Dyszkiewicz, Michael Fortune, Peggy Mersereau, Roger Wood and Tara Bursey.

From Curatorial Statement:

"Craft is a slippery entity. Occupying multiple spaces, it is able to take full advantage of its flexible margins to play with materials, techniques and its creative rationale. Craft can delight, comfort, confront and satisfy in more ways than one.

At the same time, attempts to pin craft down often result in defined categories of materials, processes and uses. A common approach situates craft somewhere between art and industry - a place where craft objects are not quite required to accommodate the contemplative relation between form and content, but rather operate as either decorative or functional pieces.

Within this framework, craft is often associated with a creative skill developed in terms of specific materials like ceramic, fibre, glass, metal and wood. These skills and materials further include the notion of the ‘handmade’, which carries with it implications regarding craft processes and purposes such as originality and authenticity, locality as well as anti-industrialism. As an aesthetic discipline rooted in the arts and craft movement of 19^th century Europe, in turn influenced by the industrial revolution, these implications are not surprising.

However, along with many other things in creative culture, borders have been crossed, and lines blurred. Contemporary craft easily negotiates the territories between functional, ornamental, sculptural and conceptual genres. One indication of this is the capricious category of ‘mixed media’ where materials converge, new materials like plastic are used, and found objects make an appearance. Craft can also be found across the cultural map in museums, galleries, schools, magazines, and the fashion industry; and is made, used, displayed, contemplated and discussed by a large and diverse mix of people.

In response to this seemingly amorphous area of making, PLEASURE-PURPOSE is an attempt to navigate craft and question its contemporary role; leaving space for the work to speak for itself, and allowing contradictions between different approaches to surface. With an array of multidisciplinary work by both emerging and professional craftspeople, different objectives and uses are contrasted to challenge boundaries and create discussion concerning the pleasure we find in craft and what we perceive its purpose to be. For all intents and purposes, craft is a unique embodiment of creative expression that needs to be explored."

Shred Scarf

I am in the middle of crocheting a paper scarf (an odd project for spring...this past winter has scarred me, obviously...) made out of the same shredded documents as the Insecurity Blanket. Here are some details of it...more to come later.

TZL Spring Open House

Come on out for our first annual TZL Spring Open House! Learn more about our collective activities and our collection, take time to read some of our fantastic materials, and find out about becoming a member with borrowing privledges. At the Open House, TZL-ers will be present to give tours of the collection and the library's other special features as well as answer any questions about what we do. There will also be a surprise Musical Guest, we'll be screening episodes of Our Hero as well as a short film about the Anchor Archive zine library in Halifax, and there will be snacks and drinks galore! Come out and show your support!

With Love,
Suzanne, Patrick and Tara
TZL Collective

Toronto Zine Library
Spring Open House
Wednesday, April 30th, 6-9pm

TRANZAC Club
Second Floor Rehearsal Hall
292 Brunswick Avenue
South of Bloor Street

Insecurity Blanket

A few photos from the three hour-or-so performance that took place in the Insecurity Blanket installation, 12.04.08. The show is up until tomorrow morning, so if you haven't seen it yet, shake a leg and get over there today at some point...

Elemental Connections at FCP Gallery

The Elemental Connections reception is this Thursday evening. Not sure that I'll be able to make it (I'm graduating and my "thesis exhibition" of sorts is that same night!), but that doesn't mean you shouldn't...

Elemental Connections:
An Exhibition of Sustainable Craft

March 3rd-April 25th, 2008.
Reception: April 17th, 5-7pm, FCP Gallery.

ELEMENTAL CONNECTIONS is an exhibition which addresses sustainability through material, process, and honoring the earth and the environment. Coming from the hands of artists from across Canada, you will find water, seashore, mountains, forest, prairie, farm, town, home and person. FCP Gallery presents this exhibition in partnership with the Ontario Crafts Council to celebrate the contemporary importance of craft, March 3 to April 25.

FCP Gallery
First Canadian Place
East of Adelaide Street entrance
Between York and Bay
www.fcpfirst.com

Elemental Connections: An Exhibition of Sustainable Craft was originally mounted at the Ontario Crafts Council Gallery September 27 - November 12, 2007.

Image: Alger pa Finner by Elemental Connections artist Catharine Paleczny, porcelain, 2006

Shannon Gerard + Katie Kehoe

Two really great looking shows, as seen on Akimbo today:

KATIE KEHOE
Form Poetry

TYPE Books Gallery invites you to the debut of Form Poetry, an exhibition of drawings by Toronto based artist Katie Kehoe. Each piece exhibits one word hand written over and over in various layers of graphite producing a multidimensional geometric or oblique form.

The meticulous nature of this work engages viewers and sparks curiosities. Form Poetry reduces complex forms and phrases to the bare minimum. Kehoe selects words that people use repeatedly everyday such as 'and' or 'yes', making the artwork more accessible. The forms she draws to write within range from fundamental geometric forms to organic and oblique natural forms. Using words as a mode of expression and structural tool, Kehoe creates text based post-minimal contemporary art.

Katie Kehoe is an interdisciplinary Toronto based artist who values interactive art as the most provocative art form and creates performance, installation and visual art. She is a recent graduate of the Canadian Film Center Media Lab's Interactive Art and Entertainment Program (formerly Habitat) and an apprentice of Joan Jonas, New York based pioneer of Performance Art. Her work has been presented in various festivals and galleries across Canada and in Toronto. Notably in Drawing 2008: 9th Annual Juried Drawing Exhibition, John B. Aird Gallery; [TEXT] curated by Gary Michael Dault, Propeller Centre for the Arts; Free Fall Festival (2006), a national festival of experimental performance, The Theatre Centre; and Sound Travels: Sign Waves (2005), an annual installation series, New Adventures in Sound Art.

Form Poetry runs at TYPE Books Gallery, April 3 to 27, 2008. Located at 883 Queen St. West, Toronto.

Media Contact: Shelley Banks 416.886.1848 / formpoetry@gmail.com

PLAYING DOCTOR
SHANNON GERARD

The installation PLAYING DOCTOR brings together various components of Shannon Gerard’s multimedia project, BOOBS & DINKS: Early Detection Kits.

Many dozens of crocheted plush breasts and penises contain small lumps that can be found by following illustrated instructions in accompanying booklets.

A short PSA style film features models in life-sized crocheted strap-ons who demonstrate self-examination. The strap-ons hang beside the projection for those viewers who wish to dress up and follow along.

A series of screenprints highlights moments of play, tenderness and expectation as models both demonstrate and experience self-examination of their “bathing suit areas.”

An autobiographical comic book, HUNG no.3; Lonely Tylenol, chronicles a cancer scare Gerard had last year when her partner found a lima-bean sized lump in his testicle.

The softness and humour of PLAYING DOCTOR aims to eliminate some of the fear surrounding self-exam of one’s own precious privates. The nature of this project changes as viewers experience it. At first the kits seem like cute and hilarious toys (tee hee, boobs and dinks!) but then as people play with them, read the booklets and find the lumps, the experience shifts. Even though the plush multiples contain a sinister possibility—garden pebbles stand in for possibly malignant tumors—interacting with the project is a strangely calming practice. PLAYING DOCTOR tries to touch people's fears and human underbellies through the ultra feminized, "soft" form of crochet, through playful interactive video and performance, and through the revelation of the artist’s personal experience. Broadly, the project initiates conversations about our bodies and confronts the idea of human frailty.

Partial proceeds from the sale of the BOOBS & DINKS: Early Detection Kits are donated to the Ontario charity Cottage Dreams (www.cottagedreams.org) which connects recovering cancer patients with donated cottage spaces in Haliburton and the Muskokas.

Additional information and images can be found at www.shannongerard.org

PLAYING DOCTOR runs:
April 3 to 26, 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 3, 7pm to 9pm

Open Studio
George Gilmour Members’ Gallery
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 104
Toronto, ON M5V 3A8

Tel/Fax: 416-504-8238
office@openstudio.on.ca
www.openstudio.on.ca

Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm to 5pm

Media Contact:
Shannon Gerard
416 593 5306
shannon@shannongerard.org

Insecurity Blanket Exhibition

Insecurity Blanket
Tara Bursey

April 1-15th, 2008.
Fly Gallery
1172 Queen Street West
Toronto

Insecurity Blanket is a sculpture-based installation in which the focal point is a blanket woven from shredded office documents. Juxtaposing the chaos of a randomized pattern with the order of a precise weave, the work explores ideas surrounding personal security, labour, repetition and technology.

Tara Bursey is a recent graduate of the Toronto School of Art’s diploma program and a former student at Ontario College of Art and Design. An artist whose practice encompasses sculpture and installation as well as drawing and craft, Tara’s work is characterized by its use of delicate sculptural materials such as garlic skin, hair and paper. In the past two years, she has exhibited extensively throughout the city in a diverse range of venues, from storefront window installations and telephone poles to the Textile Museum of Canada, the Ontario Crafts Council, as well as in group exhibitions in Halifax and Copenhagen. Tara’s most recent projects include acting as Curator of She Said Boom! Window Space, and working as one-third of the Toronto Zine Library Collective. In addition to her work as a fine artist, Tara also operates actively within Toronto’s independent music and small-press communities as a DJ, illustrator, designer and writer. She was born and raised in Toronto, Canada.

For more information contact:
Stephanie Cormier or Nancy Oakes
Administrative Assistants,
Toronto School of Art
(416) 504-7910

TZL at the London Indie Media Fair

The Toronto Zine Library will be tabling for a second year in a row at the 3rd Annual London Indie Media Fair. This year's festivities will include tables with indie makers and publishers from London and beyond, as well as workshops and guest talks. Last years fair was tons of fun, with really incredible tables of zines, crafts and art, as well as London organizations such as the Forest City Gallery, artists from the Community Outreach Gallery and Dave of seminal London 80s-90s garage-punk fanzine What Wave. We are beyond thrilled to be going back as guests this year. If you're in the London area, don't miss out!

The 3rd Annual London Indie Media Fair
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
At the London Public Library, Central Branch
281 Dundas Street
London, Ontario

ERI:3 Exhibition at Eyelevel Gallery

I'll be in this exhibition at Eyelevel Gallery in Halifax, which opens next week. I wish I was going! Over 100 artists are exhibiting in what will be a massive show of zines, multiples and bookworks. It should be amazing...

http://www.eyelevelgallery.ca

Upcoming Exhibitions

March 3- April 25, 2008.
Elemental Connections: An Exhibition of Sustainable Craft, FCP Gallery, 100 King St. West, Toronto, Ontario

March 13-April 30, 2008.
Eyelevel Re-Shelving Initiative: 3, Eyelevel Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia

April 1-15, 2008.
Insecurity Blanket (solo), Fly Gallery, 1172 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario

Pictured: Wing Study- Brewer's Sparrow (2007)

Cheap Date Pins

A couple of weeks ago, I was approached by Becky of The Sweetie Pie Press to be a part of her ongoing Artist Commissioned Pin project. Because I had just finished a rather epic poster illustration for a friend, I killed two birds with one stone by donating select aspects of the illustration- 6 portraits drawn from a university yearbook from 1962- to make up a pin set titled "Cheap Dates." Thanks for doing these, Becky...they look SO great. If anyone is interested in purchasing a set, check out Becky's Etsy store, look for The Sweetie Pie Press at local craft fairs and events, or ask me, as I'll have some sets of my own to sell real soon...

http://sweetiepiepress.blogspot.com
http://www.sweetiepiepress.com/
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=710

Becky also tagged me in her blog, meaning I have to list 7 random facts about myself on MY blog, so here it goes...

1. I can't swim or whistle.
2. I have horrible teeth. HORRIBLE. I've had 4 root canals (3 in the past three years) and have also had two teeth break on me in this time. What is wrong with me, you ask? I swear, I'm not a disgusting person with a really bad lifestyle or anything...maybe it's just bad British (via NFLD) genes. Either that or the year and a bit I spent managing a candy store. Ugh....
3. I've lived in 6 places in my entire life- two in Scarborough, three in Parkdale, and I'm currently near Trinity Bellwoods Park. I am a total house-mouse, and rarely travel. I've been to Switzerland, New York, Niagara Falls, Florida, St. Lucia, and the Bahamas. That's about it...and that all happened between the ages of 7 and 17.
4. Things I generally don't like: dogs, babies, actors, the TV, carrots, people who think they're above social skills, and the telephone.
5. I play organ in a band.
6. Right now, I am in the middle of reading Kobo Abe's "The Woman in the Dunes." I want to read Charles Schulz' biography next...
7. If I wasn't an artist, I would probably be a music writer.

Zines + Bookworks Exhibition

Zines + Bookworks
Tara Bursey

Opens February 15^th, 2008
Freedom Clothing
939 Bloor Street West
Toronto

Soiree:
Friday, February 15^th
8-11pm

Tara Bursey has been making zines for over ten years. She is also a visual artist whose diverse practice encompasses sculpture, installation, drawing, multiples and craft. Tara’s sculpture and installation work in particular is characterized by an often obsessive use of repetition, pattern and delicate materials such as eggshells, onion skin and paper. In the past two years, Tara has exhibited extensively in a broad range of venues, from storefront installations and telephone poles to the Ontario Crafts Council Gallery and the Textile Museum of Canada. Her most recent projects include From Russia with Love- a storefront window installation, acting as Curator of She Said Boom! Window Space, and working as one-third of the Toronto Zine Library Collective. In addition to her work as a fine artist, Tara operates actively within Toronto’s independent music and small press communities as a writer, illustrator and designer whose commissions have included countless event posters, album cover/sleeve art and merchandise design. She currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

For more information, contact:
cleanteen@hotmail.com

Elemental Connections + Making Matters Symposium

From R.A.U. Feels' Owen Sound Art Review
http://raufeels.blogspot.com

The following is the second instalment of a three-part recount of the symposium Making Matters: Sustainability and Craft Practices held at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery January 19, 2003.

Arlene Gehring, "Elemental Connections"

Independent Canadian curator and writer Arlene Gehring focused her attention on a recent exhibition she curated at the Ontario Crafts Council. Mounted between September 27 and November 12 2007, Elemental Connections: An Exhibition of Sustainable Craft brought together artists and craftspeople from across the country whose work makes use of naturally-occurring, handmade and, in one sense or another, renewable materials. A comprehensive list of the artists that took part in the exhibition appears below.

One of the first things Gehring pointed out was the range of approaches artists in the exhibition have to the whole idea of craft. Elemental Connections did not privilege only the aesthetically- or conceptually-innovative. Sure, there were works that blurred the presupposed boundaries between craft and art, either by using recognized craft materials in non-traditional ways or by producing traditional craft objects in unorthodox ways. And many of the contributors clearly thought and made not only outside established traditions of craft production, but some also embraced both suggestive and subversive themes. With the stark and precise presentation sense of a true-blue ornithologist, Tara Bursey (www.tarabursey.blogspot.com) fashions physiologically-correct replicas of actual bird wings using onion skin. The wings at once seem to flutter against the paper they are mounted to, and to stain it. Chantal Gilbert's (www.chantalgilbert.com) Bestioles series, in which she mounts her handmade pocket knives onto armatures resembling insect bodies, merges exquisite craftsmanship with a kind of sci-fi feminist-surrealism to produce irresistibly threatening fetish objects.

But Bursey and Gilbert's contemporary and thematically-driven use of craft methods and materials were not the only approaches witnessed in Elemental Connections. Given the underlying premise of the exhibition - craft demonstrating the knowledgeable interaction between the artist's hand and naturally-occurring and renewable media - there was, for Gehring, no reason to exclude craftspeople working in what she called "older traditions." By older traditions she was referring to those whose work reflects the unsullied application of established techniques - bowl-turning, or weaving for example - toward producing the mostly functional objects commonly associated with those techniques - bowls, baskets, etc. Examples of such works in the exhibition included the turned burl-bowls of Don Stinson and the woven kelp-gourd bowls of Anne Boquist.

However, most of the pieces stood somewhere between the unorthodox and the older traditions, incorporating both. The corn dollies of Daniel Kramer, for example: woven since Antiquity out of the last sheaf at the end of harvest as a way of containing the field's spirit, corn dollies were then ploughed back into the earth the following season to ensure prosperous harvest the following year. Seen today, they resonate as at once a sort of harbinger of potential environmental collapse and also remind us that powerful symbols can come from the most modest of means.

Apart from the craft and art work she introduced, my interest and curiosity was piqued also by a two-part claim Gehring made (which was subsequently reiterated by the symposium's keynote, Eric Nay). Gehring stated that an ideal "common cause" exists among craftspeople to produce objects that are environmentally sustainable. She then went onto say that, at its root, "craft production is inherently about environmental sustainability." I was, at first, confused and incredulous; was she saying that there are no craft methods and materials that are ecologically invasive or detrimental to the biosphere in some way? The very fact that craft materials cannot always be obtained locally, and that some materials and by-products are notoriously toxic seems to cast doubt on this assertion. Or was she simply speaking comparatively, in relation to the world of industrial manufacturing?

What I think Gehring meant when she linked craft necessarily to sustainability was that, considered at its anthropological root, craft knowledge is fundamental, basic, essential: it is a knowledge gained from working with one's own two hands on and with the earth. In other words, it is a knowledge embodied, and therefore a knowledge borne from the body's interaction with the direct and immediate environment. With this sort of knowledge comes a keener sensibility about the value of resources.

At least I think that's what Gehring meant.

This sounds well-and-good, but it also makes me a bit uneasy. Gehring is not simply offering a contingent definition of what craft happens to be; she is making an aesthetic value judgement about what good craft ought to be. Or rather, she is building the ethical obligation to make craft environmentally sustainable into the sensual or aesthetic appreciation of the craft object. Given her understanding of what craft is, any object manufactured in ways, or using materials, which contradict the sustainability clause is simply excluded from the possibility of being good craft. Are we really ready to exclude all objects made using some form of petroleum by-product from the pale? What about inherent toxicity of some of the materials inherent to particular craft traditions? Moreover, would it be possible to draw hard-and-fast lines between things made by hand and those disconnected from the hand? I couldn't help but feel that what Gehring was trying to offer up with Elemental Connections was a radically puritanical understanding of craft. This is not necessarily a negative criticism of either her or the exhibition. The pieces and the curatorial selection of those pieces seemed exquisite. I'm more intrigued than anything that someone has the wherewithal to insist on a necessary connection between the value of something as craft, and the way that something was produced.

Elemental Connections included work by Anne Boquist, Tara Bursey, Karen Cantine, Joanna Close, Paul Gray Diamond, Phyllis Erwin, Mary Fox, Chantal Gilbert, Andrea Graham, Vivienne Jones, Daniel Kramer, Nancy Latchford, Ryan Legassicke, Julie Lockau, Les Manning, Kirk Mceathron, Catherine Paleczny, Bernadette Pratt, Ann Schneider, Don Stinson, Ione Thorkelsson.

Pictured: Tara Bursey, Wing Study- House Sparrow, onion skin and adhesive on paper (2007)

Siue Moffat at the Toronto Zine Library

A talk with guest speaker
Siue Moffat
Hosted by the Toronto Zine Library Collective

Sunday, February 3^rd, 2008. 1:30pm
Toronto Zine Library at the TRANZAC, second floor
292 Brunswick Avenue. Toronto

Siue Moffat began making zines in 1988. The subjects have ranged from gross food; yummy food; amusement parks in the Portland, Oregon; her involvement in the punk zine; and even, oddly enough, a zine that mixed Monty Python and punk. In 2003 Siue self published Lickin' the Beaters: Low Fat Vegan Desserts Illustrated by 8 Fantastic Artists. Basically a zine in book form, she did nearly everything herself including the photos and index. Siue busies herself between vegan food, punk rock and film archiving. Her second book of vegan chocolate and candy recipes will be published in the spring, while the first is scheduled for reprinting in March. Both books are being published by PM Press, the new imprint of AK Press. Siue is very proud of her large collection of veg cookzines.

The Toronto Zine Library is run by a collective of zine readers, zine makers and librarians who are looking to make zines more accessible in Toronto. We believe that zines are still an important medium of communication, and that they should be cherished, protected, and promoted. Our aim to do this through our public collection of zines, conducting related workshops at our physical library and abroad, and by holding events that promote zines as a method of open communication and free expression.

For more information, please contact us at torontozinelibrary@hotmail.com
Or consult our new website and online catalogue: http://www.sitekreator.com/zinelibrary

Illustration credit: Allyson Mitchell

Shrimplace

A doily made of tiny dehydrated shrimp. I did five of these just before Xmas.

The Haunted Home at Canzine

Here are some photographs of my Haunted Home room installation that was a featured artist's room installation at the last Canzine, which took place at the Gladstone Hotel on October 28th, 2008. I neglected to post them earlier...

From the artist's statement:

The Haunted Home is a room-based intervention of sculptural work. Among the works included in the installation are 100+ bars of hand-carved soap, “worry bead” multiples made of hand-drilled diet pills, chrysanthemums made of latex gloves, and plaster casts of children’s blocks that spell out 9-1-1. These works employ common household objects, often in multiples, to both comment on the female experience and allude to intimate, human anxieties relating to the body and the home.

Morag Schonken- these are the roots that i've grown, that have grown in me

these are the roots that i've grown, that have grown in me
Morag Schonken

January 1-31, 2008.
She Said Boom! Window Space
372 College Street
Toronto

Supplementary exhibition multiple available for $2 each. Contact ssbwindowspace@hotmail.com for more information.

“Our bodies remember.
Every part of us remembers everything that has ever happened.
Every touch, every feeling, everything is there in our skin,
ready to be awakened, revived.”

Mary Morris ~Nothing to Declare~

Morag Schonken, born in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), is a fibre-based installation artist. She currently lives and works in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Morag has a fine arts diploma from the Toronto School of Art where she studied with Donnely Smallwood, Nicole Collins, and Andy Fabo. Her solo exhibition in 2004 entitled What the Body Remembers at the TSA Gallery in Toronto, Ontario, featured two bodies of work which embraced the use of fibre and traditional labor-intensive processes. Morag has been in numerous group shows in the Toronto area including the annual Shadow Box Exhibition at the Textile Museum of Canada (2005 to 2007); Amalgam at the Niagara Gallery (2006) and Art as Books at WARC Gallery (2003). An avid traveller, Morag backpacked through Australia in 2005-06 before returning to Toronto to intern at Propeller Gallery were she co-coordinated their 10^th Anniversary show, Propeller Turns Ten. She has since moved to Winnipeg to participate in the Foundation Mentorship program through MAWA as mentee to Shawna Dempsey. Morag was the recipient of the Barbara Barrett Scholarship (2003), Brian Burnett Digital Media Scholarship (2006), and the Foundation Mentorship Bursary (2006).

For more information, contact:
Tara Bursey
She Said Boom! Window Space
ssbwindowspace@hotmail.com

Zines + Craft

Here is installment number three of a series of work I wrote for the latest Toronto Zine Library resource zine. This time no interview...just a short piece on the co-relation between zines and craft. Enjoy.

And happy c-day, by the way.

I think it was in about 1999 or 2000 when I noticed the big shift. Suddenly it seemed like there was way more STUFF at zine fairs-I remember tables full of wearable bits and pieces, loads of t-shirts, pouches and patches. Later buttons became insanely popular, as well as hand printed posters and artist’s books, magnets, and hand-crafted one-of-a-kinds. Soon enough the few zines left at such fairs were drowning in a sea of knick-knacks and bric-a-brac. I remember grumbling about this at the time, concerned for the future of
MY MEDIUM, which was without a doubt the noble zine of the olde-fashioned cut’n’paste variety. My mantra was FUCK CRAFT. I was truly afraid that the people around me were forgetting their roots- opting for commodity over community, style over communication.

Well, I was wrong. It took several years and my delving deeper into my own life as an artist and compulsive maker to see the many connections zine and craft-based work share. Among these shared connections are:

The Power of Intimacy- Both zines and crafts are intimate in nature. Zine-makers make zines for the love of it, for little profit, and for a small (sometimes SUPER small) audience. Makers of craft objects are in the same boat- the limitations of the hand and one person making small runs of carefully crafted objects ensures that only a few people will be the recipients of such objects, making the power of the object to it’s owner all the more. Also, because both zines and craft objects are made by hand, evidence of the creator remains attached to the zine/craft- whether it be hand cuts, hand-drawn elements or handwriting, to crocheted embellishments or off-register hand-printing, the evidence of the creators hand makes for a more visceral experience for the keeper of the object.

Intellectual Accessibility- You don’t need to go to school to learn how to make a zine. Zine-makers make their own rules, write about whatever they want, and work intuitively. Craft-based artists make work with materials that are familiar to all walks of life (string, wool, fabric, and other natural/organic materials). Everyone has natural associations to such materials, which makes the general public infinitely more likely to engage in craft-based work than a lot of contemporary art that employs remote concepts (that are the product or 4-6 years of study within an institution) and materials. Not to mention many craft traditions are handed down from generation to generation- a way of learning and making loaded with significance and history.

Material Accessibility- Making a zine requires little more than paper, a pen, a glue stick, a pair of scissors, patience and motivation. Photocopying is a cheap and accessible method of self-publishing. Craft materials are also cheap, and are often plentiful and involve simple techniques and processes unlike more conventional sculpture techniques such as casting, ceramics, metal/woodworking, and other methods of making which employ the use of special tools, machinery, and sometimes harmful and hazardous processes and chemicals.

Creation as Democracy- One of my favorite aspects of zine-making is that anyone can make one. I made my first zine at 13. I knew a family growing up who made zines together- the mother and her two sons, who were about 12 and 8 when they started, we equal partners in the creation of what ended up being a long-running and widely-known Toronto zine. Zine
makers come in all ages, races and backgrounds. Zines empower and engage all different types of people, regardless of social position, education, and personal wealth. The same could be said for craft- all parts of the world have their own indigenous crafts and folk arts. Much of these ways of making are handed down, and involve sustainable materials and
and the use of natural national resourses.

The Power to Heal- For more than a few people I’ve known over the years, their zine was the ear they had when no one else was there to listen. On the other hand, craft techniques often involve a meditative, slow production which soothes the mind and bears psychic rewards not often found in other contemporary ways of working.

*****

Interview- Shannon Gerard

Do you remember your first encounter with a zine or the "zine world?" How and when were you first introduced to zines?

I don' t remember the exact circumstances that led to zine appreciation or making-- I have always loved books and multiples and DIY. I do remember the first eureka moments of figuring out that I could be an artist and a writer at the same time-- that the two loves of drawing and writing could coexist as a practice for me and that there was this whole other community of people out there making similar work. After going to Canzine and CutNPaste and other smaller fairs for years, I finally started booking tables and throwing my own stuff into the mix about 5 years ago.

Do you think your early involvement with zine culture helped inform your practice as an artist/printmaker? Please explain...

Yeah, my books are really connected to printmaking in that they are both things I do in multiple. I totally love making more than one of the same thing-- when I see them all stacked up, or all hung up together I get all thrilly and excited. That kind of repetition is so compelling for me, and so satisfying. There is also a really strong connection between zines and printmaking in that screenprinting and letterpress, before they were taken up by the art world, started as ways to produce stuff cheaply and distribute it widely. So, maybe part of the appeal of working in multiple is that I can communicate the work to more than one person. Lots of people can read my stories. I find that I don't make so many traditional prints anyway-- mostly of the printing I do is part of book projects.

Much of your work involves the use of modest materials and techniques rooted in craft and lo-tech methods of making (silkscreen, letterpress, handmade multiples). What attracts you to this way of working?

I love the idea of not needing a lot of expensive equipment or fancy materials to make art or tell stories. So much of my work is autobiographical and intimate-- so it makes sense (hopefully!) to use materials and processes that feel familiar to people. I am just telling pretty simple stories from my life-- anyone can do that. And I am using materials and methods that a lot of people can understand and recognize. Also the stories are personal, so I want the books to have definite evidence of the hand of the artist all over them.

What sorts of things influence your art/writing/comics? (People who are influences, concepts, places, etc.)

Boys. It's kind of funny to boil it down to that-- but most of my books so far have been about all of the love and fear and losses and hope and fragility of relationships either beginning, ending or never totally materializing. But I think my focus is shifting too-- like my recent Boobs and Dinks project is connected also to questions about fear and fragility but in a broader more universal sense. I guess I am trying to tap into fear in a different, softer way with that project. And I also think and write a lot about faith-- trying to make sense of the Christian upbringing I had and then kind of fell away from. I feel like a lot of my childhood beliefs are in ruins, so lately I have been trying to search through that rubble too.

Zine/Bookmaking are quietly subversive forms of expression/creating. What are your thoughts on this, especially in light of your recent brush with censorship? (York U Bookstore)

It is really so important to make work that is subversive. When people react by censoring your work, I guess you know you're onto a good and provocative idea. The Boobs and Dinks project tries to get at people's fears and human underbellies through this ultra feminized, "soft" form of crochet. In a way the censorship of that project completely serves the conversation I am trying to start about fear. Some people were freaked out about a crocheted penis on display-- but that started a whole bunch of other conversations about being freaked out about our real bodies. It's so awesome.

Do you have an all-time favourite zine? A current (recent) favourite?

Big Questions by Anders Nilsen is amazing. Lickety Split Smut Zine out of Montreal rocks. stef lenk's silent graphic novel chapters are beautiful. Anything by Lilli Carre (Tales of Woodsman Pete is probably her best known series) is so sweet and inspiring.

Zinemaking/self-publishing is an intuitive medium that is most often self-taught. You teach a nano-publishing course at the university level- zines sometimes pop up in the curriculum of post-secondary art classes. What are your thoughts on TEACHING zinemaking? Is zinemaking something that can be taught? Have you experienced anything specific as an educator that has helped shaped this opinion?

I think it is important to expose people to zine making, bookbinding, multiples, etc... at any level and in any context. A place like OCAD is a natural place for courses about indie publishing to spring up, since people at art school tend to be searching for and forming little micro communities and zines and DIY are so tied to community. Art school students are also so eager to take courses that have a real world connection-- that mean something beyond the marks you get and the techniques you learn-- and courses in DIY are all about that. It is also really fun to use all the resources of the school (like the presses and typefaces and foil stampers and all the print toys we have at OCAD) to make experimental bookworks and to milk the access to that equipment while you have it as a student or faculty member. The courses I teach in indie publishing are more like open concept experimental arenas than really directed classes-- but then I also try to offer tonnes of practical advice about taking your work way beyond school into the broader indie community in the city. For a lot of people that course could be a point of entry into an otherwise overwhelming space, so I am really glad to get to teach for that reason.

Is it important to preserve zines as an alternative form of communication? What can we do as zinemakers/zine readers/indie publishers to facilitate this?

I think the impulse to catalogue and preserve ephemeral objects and ideas is so great. It is so amazing for me to be able to bring my class from OCAD for example to a place like TZL because it helps to fulfill my aim of taking the course out of the institution and into the world. I can show off all this amazing stuff that other people have made. It is inspiring. And to have dedicated spaces in the city where materials like zines and multiples are available helps solidify the importance of those otherwise invisible (or hard to find) modes of production, venues for expression and ways of communicating. So yeah, space-- space dedicated to housing zines and workshops and classes--is so vital.

Shannon is a book/comic artist, multiple maker and educator based out of Toronto. For examples of her work, check out her website: http://www.shannongerard.org

Open Studio, December 13-15

My studio will be open to the public from December 13-15 this month. The open studio will coincide with the Toronto School of Art's winter open house, which will be taking place on those days as well. The reception will take place on Thursday, December 13th, from 7-11pm, and I'll be there for the reception's entirety, as well as all day on Friday. All are welcome...please try to make it out for some refreshments and a holiday drink!

Open Studio (Tara Bursey, Julie Himel, Brette Gabel and Andree Tardif)
In conjunction with the Toronto School of Art's Winter Open House
410 Adelaide Street, 3rd Floor (West of Spadina)
December 13-15, 2007
Reception: Thursday, December 13th, 7-11