Annual Toronto outdoor art exhibition

The annual Toronto outdoor art exhibition happens next weekend, July 10 to 12 at Nathan Phillips Square, the northwest block at Bay and Queen streets in downtown Toronto. The show's website has a fabulous booth map with the location of each artist's booth. Mouse over a booth number and you'll get the artist's name, a photo of the artist's work and a website where you can check out more. There's plenty of fibre art to be found. See you there!

Kandinsky on colour

"Generally speaking, colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another to cause vibrations in the soul."
- Wassily Kandinsky in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France.

Kandinsky expo poster photographed from the roof.
April, 2009

'I make pictures by cleaning...'

Seeing how dirty a wall is by cleaning it in this way, kind of gets people immediately. - Paul "Moose" Curtis, The Reverse Grafitti Project

Thanks to Heather Dubreuil for the link.

Mozart's requiem will play, on tiny speakers made of clay...

I am so amazed at times, that I am actually alive.
- Andy Goldsworthy; [Interview][Digital Catalogue][Wikipedia][Google images]

Gender equality - still a work in progress

I was inspired by the artists who shared their stories in the film, Who does she think she is?, currently touring North America, which made me laugh and cry. As an afterthought, it still amazes me how, in so many ways, things have not changed radically for women since I was in my twenties. Gender equality is still a work in progress, perhaps even more so for artists than for many other professions. Good film.

Radical Lace and Subversive Crochet

"I wanted to turn an oversize, macho, gas-guzzling vehicle into a technological ghost by shrouding it in a white, fuzzy cover reminiscent of women's hard work from another time, another place." - Jerilea Zempel

Fibre artist Jerilea Zempel, known for public art projects that take a humourous and for some, a provocative approach to subjects like violence, war and the environment, was featured on the comedy news show, the Colbert Report last week, in a skit called America’s Fragile Borders. Her art, part social satire, part political activism, challenges viewers to reflect on the meaning of traditional historical monuments, as well as our use of everything from guns to gas-guzzlers. Examples include a piece installed outside a Polish military museum in 1995 called Guns and Rosettes in which she shrouded a Soviet tank with what appears to be an enormous pink doily. The Colbert Report skit, a spoof on American Homeland Security, chronicles Zempel’s experience this past summer. Upon returning home to the U.S. from Canada, she was detained by U.S. customs agents at the border after drawings in her artist sketchbook, showing an SUV adorned in a lacy white coverlet (a piece she now calls Homeland Security Blanket) caused the customs agent to suspect her of being an industrial spy. In October, the Plattsburgh, New York newspaper, The Press Republican reported the details in this article, Keene artist had a hard time getting back into the U.S.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Nailed 'Em - Radical Knitting
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Mark Sanford

New York, N.Y.

"Something began me...

53rd Street & 6th Avenue

and it had no beginning:

Florence Schoenborn Gallery - MoMA

something will end me...

Rustic Pavillion - Central Park

and it has no end."

Carousel - Central Park near 66th Street

-Verse from Carl Sandburg's The People, Yes 1936

We spent three wonderful days in New York City in celebration of my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. The city was a beauty to behold. Although it was cool and wet, it did not rain, and at times mist hung low over the buildings. In Central Park the ginkgo trees dropped their magnificent leaves, blanketing everything in a flaming yellow carpet.

Kimmelman on Art

"There's a certain point at which it may be obligatory to try and understand something that does not automatically explain itself to you."
- Michael Kimmelman

Michael Kimmelman is the chief art critic for the New York Times, and naturally he has his fans as well as his detractors. Personally, I've benefited whenever I've read something he's written or heard him give an interview.

Kimmelman on Art: Part 1 of 2



Kimmelman on Art: Part 2 of 2

Transforming the dry language of data

"Beauty is a powerfully effective tool for drawing viewers into uncomfortable territory." -Chris Jordan

'Consumer Culture Turns into Murals of Trash' is an article that explores what led American photographer Chris Jordan to take a unique approach to documenting waste. His website showcases additional images from the exhibit Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait.

Perception beyond the tangible

Spring Water
Laura Cater-Woods

"I work in an abstract manner, I am not interested in depicting but in evoking. When the work succeeds, it speaks beyond itself."

- Laura Cater Woods

"Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes. Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind."

- Arshile Gorky [images][biography][wikipedia]

After taking a number of workshops with quilt artists over the past couple of years I consider Laura Cater-Woods to be one of the best teachers I've had. I had a fantastic experience with her and will take a course with her again if she teaches anywhere near me in the future. What did I like about her? She works with each person individually, she inspires original work, and she appears to deeply connect with the creative spirit in each participant. She has a great sense of humour and does not shy away from discussing any topic. Did I mention technical expertise? Great person, great teacher. She blogs here.

Image of the quilt 'Spring Water' used with permission.

Many sources for inspiration

Untitled
Commercial and hand dyed cottons
11 x 11"
Unfinished

This was begun in the class I took over the summer with Pamela Allen, a fabulous teacher who I can not recommend highly enough. Each student was given a small square cutout of a partial work by a well known artist and asked to create a small quilt around it. I was given the piece with a white vase and onions that you can see in the upper left hand quarter of the quilt. It was taken from a still life by Matisse called, 'The Red Onions' painted around 1906.

Art criticism

"I know that Ellsworth [Kelly] says [his work] comes from nature. But I don't know why you'd want to say this, because art relates to perception, not nature. All abstract artists try to tell you that what they do comes from nature, and I'm always trying to tell you that what I do is completely abstract. We're both saying something we want to be true. I don't think artist like myself, or Ellsworth, have the faintest idea what we're doing, but we try to put it in words that sound logical." - Roy Lichtenstein in Portraits by Michael Kimmelman.

I'm reading the book Portraits: Talking with artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre and elsewhere by New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman. In the book, Kimmelman goes to the art museums named in the title of the book, with well known, older contemporary artists such as Elizabeth Murray, Roy Lichtenstein, Lucian Freud, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jacob Lawrence and Chuck Close, taking notes while each one talks about art that interests them. It's a great read and gives much insight into how the artists see and relate to historically important works. The artists also talk about their own lives and work. What strikes me in reading the book is that the artists’ commentary is always so highly personal and subjective, underlining the notion that it is your own subjective perceptions and inner voice that are most important when you look at and think about art. To some degree, I also think that, as an art critic, Kimmelman underlines the essential personal nature of art criticism by letting artists speak for themselves. In this interview with Charlie Rose, Kimmelman talks about the book and why he wrote it.

Ruth Asawa

"An artist makes use of ordinary things and makes them extraordinary" -Ruth Asawa

Last month Glennis Dolce left me a comment here in which she mentioned a favourite artist, Ruth Asawa. I had never heard of Ruth Asawa but soon discovered a great deal of information including video clips , podcasts and articles (see below), about this amazing artist and her life's work. Born in 1926 in Southern California, USA, she is perhaps best known for her tied and crocheted wire sculptures.

Organics
Crocheted wire sculpture
by Ruth Asawa
Photo by Aqui-ali

Among other works, are hundreds of masks that she has made over the past forty-five years of family and friends, documented in this short film by her son Laurence Cuneo. About the masks she said, "When I cast a face I know I’m just capturing a minute of a person...I don’t care about making that a technique. But I like the idea of stopping the moment of time" [link].




If you're interested in reading more about Ruth Asawa, the Oakland museum of California has posted this article on its website entitled Ruth Asawa: Completing the Circle. Leonardo Digital Reviews has an excellent online review by Amy Ione of the book "The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air" by Daniell Cornell, Director of Contemporary Art Projects at the deYoung Museum in San Fransisco and curator of the Ruth Asawa retrospective of the same name. There are also several good blog write-ups about her life including one by quilt artist Pam Rupert on Ragged Cloth Cafe and another by jewelry artist Louise Hill on Louise Hill Designs.

Thanks to Glennis for telling me about this artist.

Wrap, Stitch & Burn

If you're in Toronto in May, textile artists Nieves Carrasco and Valerie Knapp will exhibit at the *new* gallery in Toronto. "A monochromatic palette captures the unique qualities of resist-dyed Japanese paper" says Nieves Carrasco about her work.

Colourful Inspiration

Brenda Smith of Serendipity Patchwork and Quilting posted last week about an opportunity to win a painting by artist Abie Loy Kemarre by filling out an online survey and subscribing to the newsletter of the gallery, Central Art Aboriginal Art Store. After doing so, I soon found myself on another site called Aboriginal Art Directory viewing slideshows of some really amazing artwork there. Have a look at these Aboriginal Artists Slideshows for some colourful inspiration.

Flickr artists are another great source of inspiration for me. Some time ago I stumbled across the excellent photo collage work of Roger Kellison aka Rogerio, who kindly gave his permission to post his work here and to use it as a source of inspiration for a quilted textile collage.

collage287
Roger Kellison

He explains the process he uses to create his collages this way:

"it is largely trial and error of layering pics until I find something I like...and then enhancing the resulting image. Usually this is done by darkening and cropping the collage. [I] often will turn one or other image on it's side or even upside down. Just playing around you could say."

collage106
Roger Kellison

Roger also introduced me to flickrleech, a very cool online tool that allows you to view any flickr user's account 200 photos at a time, because, as the flickrleech developer so eloquently states, paging sucks. You can view Roger's work on flickrleech here.

Walk on Queen's Street -- Loop Gallery

Self portrait with paintings
March 2008

This photograph shows the window of the Loop gallery in Toronto earlier this month which, at the time, was exhibiting works by Canadian painter John Abrams. The gallery was closed that day, probably because of the snowy weather. I like the way the vivid colours and images in the paintings shine through the reflection of the mostly black and white Toronto street scene outside. There's more info about John Abrams here.

Le Petit Salon des Arts

Il y a un côté intimidant et même assez froid aux galeries d'art. Les gens n'osent pas toujours entrer, mais je veux leur montrer que l'art c'est pour tout le monde, dans une ambiance chaleureuse.

-Frederic Daty

(There is an intimidating, even cold side to art galleries. People don't alway get the courage up to go inside, but I want to show them, in a welcoming ambiance, that art is for everyone.)

Last week I happened to hear an interview on CBC Radio One with a couple who have turned their large east end Ottawa home into a gallery and meeting place for artists and musicians, which they have named Le Petit Salon des Arts. Amazingly, they are parents to two young children and do not accept commissions for the sale of art that is on display in their gallery/home. According to the radio interview they are interested in presenting emerging artists and musicians in their gallery space. This past Friday they opened a new show called Emergence. We attended the opening on Friday night and had a wonderful time listening to music and browsing the four exhibition rooms on two floors. The mood was warm and informal, lots of people coming and going, champagne and truffles for the asking. I am not sure if this is a unique kind of enterprise but I have certainly never heard of anything like it before. A nice place to visit. Current exhibit is open February 24th to 29th from 10am to 12pm and 3pm to 8pm. They are located at 295 Ave Cyr, Ottawa, ON, (613) 746 1964. New exhibits are organized every two or three months and will bring together artists of diverse disciplines. Check their website for details about ongoing events.

Visible time

Hand stitching is slow. It's one stitch at a time. It's thoughtful. It's a repeated caress. It’s visible time. - Judith Martin

I have done some hand-quilting on each of the quilts that I have made since I picked up quilting again in 2006. While I have challenged myself to become a better free-motion machine quilter I am also in love with the soft, ephemeral quality of hand quilting and am determined to do more of it.

I have been reading Judy Martin's blog for some time now and it's one of my favourite places to visit. Rich with images, her posts are usually brief but potent. A Canadian artist living on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada, Judy writes, among other things, about being an artist, teacher, mother and daughter. Two summers ago, I met a young woman who was working in an art gallery in Haliburton, Ontario. We got talking about the Textile Surface Design Certificate offered at the Haliburton School of the Arts, where Judy Martin has taught. The woman, whose name escapes me, told me that if I ever get the opportunity to study with Judy, to jump. Hopefully, someday I will.

Pay it Forward came early

Structures #92
Lisa Call
6" x 6"
2007

In December 2007 Lisa Call posted her intent to participate in the Pay it Forward gig that has been happening in blogland for some time now. I was the lucky third commenter on Lisa's post and above is a photo of what I received last week. Her workmanship is beautiful and I can see why she has the confidence that she does in her art. I hope to see more of it in person some day. Thank you Lisa.

Incidently, my Pay it forward post is here. The third comment spot is still vacant so don't be shy. Although Lisa fulfilled her commitment in a speedy seven days and in the week before Christmas no less, you actually get one year to pay it forward.

Pay it Forward

Today is my lucky day. Lisa Call offered to send a piece of textile art to the first three people who commented on her Pay it Forward post and I am lucky number two, yes! Thanks Lisa. Here's the deal, in return I am joining the pay it forward exchange as follows:

I will send a handmade gift (most probably a piece of textile art) to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

When you leave your comment, please also do one of two things: leave your post address or e-mail it to me.

And now, we're off to my eldest daughter's first piano recital where I will be accompanying her for two of her pieces, at the request of her piano teacher. Wish me a good go because I'm just a teensy-tiny-bit-nervous.