On our Saturday visit to Toronto, one of our most important things to do was to drop in to the soft opening of Graven Feather at 906 Queen St. West.  There we celebrated the opening of a new studio, workshop and showing space of three very talented young women;  Erin Candela, Pam Lobb and Jessica Bartram.  It was delightful! A brand new clean space all set up and ready to go. Lots of wonderful artwork,a large group of fans, cupcakes, champagne and lovely accordion music  playing in the background.  We were later shown around the beautiful garden and were quite smitten with the whole place. I think that they will be most happy here in their new studios and can’t wait to visit again to see what they have been up to.

My son wanted to take the photos and so I am not sure of who did what.  I do have links for each of the artists and you can look up their work if you are curious.  I do know the top photo is Pam Lobb and I can’t wait to tell her that Graven Feather was Odin’s favourite thing that we did on Saturday!

No news for awhile around here until last weekend when we had a whole pile of things to do in the big city and I made sure to take a couple of photographs… not enough though. We had to take the crazy car to transport some larger artworks.  It is not going to take big trips for too much longer, poor thing.

an installation by Libby Hague
Sympathetic Connections
in the Young Gallery of the AGO,
317 Dundas St. Toronto, Ontario
Saturday June 11, 2 – 5 and running until September 11th.
curated by Michelle Jacques
FREE ADMISSION

list of components:
28 wide soft trees
2 bags  paper cloud-chains
2 boxes multicolored streamers
2 bags assembled paper components
1 bag flowers
1 bag very misc. items
1 pkg. clouds
1 nuclear power plant
about a dozen reinforced trees
2 large packages thin birch trees
hangers
clothespins
tools
paste

…

The Art Gallery of Ontario is pleased to announce that the Toronto Now series continues with an exhibition by local artist Libby Hague.

For her Toronto Now exhibition, Libby Hague will animate the Young Gallery by connecting paper and print elements across the architecture of the space. Representational and abstract forms will be combined in a three-dimensional narrative that describes the natural world and our often troubled relationship to it. While the natural forms of Hague’s woodblock prints and paper sculptures appear outwardly light-hearted, closer observation reveals a nuclear power plant – with all its impending allusions – looming on the landscape’s horizon.

Inspired by anime, comic books and science fiction, Hague’s playful, yet often foreboding narratives give physical form to imaginative worlds. Her sculptural manipulation of print creates environments for investigation that hover between dystopia and utopia – spaces that present both inevitable disaster and possible solution.

Last week stumbled upon a most fantastic show at the Art Gallery of Hamilton as Pam and I were dropping off our artwork for the Gallery’s Spring art sale this weekend.  We saw Rouault’s Rhapsody to Suffering etchings and Matisse’s Colour of Jazz stencil and lithographic prints… then we wandered into a dimly lit room with soft sounds like music but not music, melodic.  We were in Diane Landry’s show the Defibrillators.

The two of us stopped and were hushed by the gentle movements, sounds and projected light and shadow and drawn through the show in awe of the beauty we were experiencing, created out of household paraphernalia, plastic bottles, sand, bike wheels, harmonicas and salad spinners.  I am not a writer and definitely not an art critic but when I see and experience something that truly wows me, I think I should share it with anyone out there who might also be effected the way that we were.  It is truly a wonderful collection of work that inspired me hugely.  Much of my work, I feel, deals with moments of quiet and contemplation, and the environments that Landry has created conjure up some of the same with an added sense of wonder.

If you do get to Hamilton this weekend, you might want to go around to the West Hamilton Studio Tour and or just wander around James Street North whose famous art crawl is the second Friday evening of each month.  On James St. you can find lots of great places to visit like Mixed Media, The Print Studio, White Elephant and lots more.