Yeah... the New York kids are pretty cool what with their dumpster/swimming pool parties. Actually, making a pool from an old dumpster seems incredibly appropriate for Toronto this summer seeing as the civic workers' strike has closed public pools and canceled garbage pick up. The solution? Fill a dumpster with water of course. This idea comes courtesy of Macro-sea all in the name of reclaiming unused urban space. Geesh, couldn't you just plant a couple of trees or something?
Tonight I watched Truffaut's 400 Blows at the local Revue theatre. It had been awhile since I last saw the film and I'd forgotten several scenes. For example, the puppet show scene shown below. It's one thing to watch it on DVD at home from your couch but seeing it on the big screen with an audience is an especially unusual moment. There you are, with a mostly adult audience staring at a screen full of children's faces staring back at you. Oddly, it really reminded me of a piece of video from the New York Times where a photographer filmed kids playing video games. It's worth opening the New York Times video in a new tab in your browser for a side by side comparison of kids separated by 50 years.
Lately I've been experimenting with a link repository/bookmarking services and dug up an older link that I'd forgotten about but I'm glad it remained oddly fossilized in my browser bookmarks. A site that seemed dormant for many moons has recently come back to life. ArtsandCulture.com is a great reference for information about authors, artists, performers and designers, made even more valuable by it's visual-thesaurus-like network map. The shiny new bit of the site however appears to be its aggregation of relevant blogs and members' profiles. Yeah, okay, I know, the whole social networking thing might be getting old but it can also be tremendously valuable (unless you of course you're like a total MyFaceBookSpaceTwickr hater – and why wouldn't you be?)
To really dig into the site you are required to request an invitation but mine only took a day and registration was simple enough. I plan on finding fascinating things about Art Stuff so I can sound smarter. I'm hoping this will offset the fact I get my news by glancing at RSS feeds and making assumptions based on the headlines. Probably won't. Can't hurt though. Perhaps, like Liz Lemon, you will "want to go to there."
Thout's "forkedUP", wall tile for storing your utensils
It's been a busy week in T.O. for design shows. A lot of smaller galleries create shows to take advantage of the design buzz created by the larger interior design show. For the last few years I've avoided the trade show and its fish bowls full of business cards and taken in lower-key shows like Made Design's Radiant Dark and The Gladstone Hotel's Come Up to My Room. A bonus this year was Thout's temporary showroom space of new furniture pieces. The convenience for us has been all of these shows were within a few minutes walk of each other on West Queen West. As chain stores like H&M, Zara, The Gap etc etc replace independent book sellers and vintage clothing shops on Queen West, the blocks West of Shaw that make up the West Queen West strip continue to be a great way to find secular inspiration on a Sunday afternoon.
Snowcover blanket by Angela Iarocci. The blanket's pattern was created using thirty years of snow depth data of a dozen Canadian cities from Environment Canada.
Made Design's Radiant Dark '09 is currently on show in Toronto. Radiant Dark seeks to showcase new works of Canadian design by building an exhibit around a general theme. This year's theme: Elegant Corruptions.
What struck me most about this exhibit is how Made has assembled a unique cadre of uniquely divergent but strangely like-minded designers who are exploring not just new materials and forms but also new roles for designers. See more photos here
Like Yussou N'Dour, Montreal artist Peter Flemming is shaking the tree in his kinetic art piece "Reject". Unlike N'Dour, Flemming's work "emphasizes the absurdity of the life cycle of an Xmas tree".
I think for many people who grew up enjoying Christmas, there's nothing quite as depressing as seeing a discarded pine or spruce tree, dying in a dirty January snow bank. The last sad shreds of tinsel clinging to the branches while reddened, dried needles pile below are all reminders of a post-holiday consumer hangover. It's been said the best way to avoid a hangover is to never sober up. Maybe instead, before the Christmas ads go into hyperdrive in a wild thrashing attempt to save our economy (like a drowning man), we could have a pre-holiday hangover. At the very least it will gird us against the painful crash to come.
With that in mind, it's only fitting that this piece which underscores our throw-away consumerism is being exhibited this November, merely weeks after the collapse of our credit-driven markets, and weeks before our annual orgy of spending.
The story of Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1889-1951) reads like a Coen brothers script. Photos from a lecture at the Powerplant Gallery in Toronto
A young go-getter Emanuel Julius begins working at the Socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason where he meets and marries a wealthy heiress. Eventually he buys 25% of the paper with the heiress' backing and starts publishing public domain classics in pamphlet format. When EHJ discovers there is a voracious appetite for the pint sized books, he quickly starts churning out pamphlets consisting of re-printed classics and commissioned originals from notable authors such as Upton Sinclair and Clarence Darrow. Not all of Haldeman-Julius contributers were as esteemed and the quality of the Little Blue Books, as they were later called, quickly deteriorated. The following titles attest to the range of work published:
1507. A Rational View of the Sex Issue [by] Harry Elmer Barnes. 1508. What You Should Know about Poisons [by] Heinz Norden. 1509. The Gay Chronicle of the Monks and Nuns [by] Joseph McCabe. 1515. The Love Affair of a Priest and a Nun (Abelard and Heloise) [by] Joseph McCabe. 1516. Facts You Should Know About Gonorrhea [by] Heinz Norden. 1517. Land, and Old Man and His Wife [by] Konrad Bercovici. 1523. How to Avoid Catching Venereal Diseases [by] Heinz Norden. 1524. Famous Eccentric Americans [by] J. V. Nash. 1534. How to Test Your Urine at Home [by] B. C. Meyrowitz. 1535. How to Throw a Party [by] Heinz Norden. 1536. Facing Death Fearlessly [by] Joseph McCabe. 1537. The Essence of Unitarianism [by] L. M. Birkhead. 1538. A Rational Sex Code [by] E. Haldeman-Julius. 1545. Why I Do Not Fear Death [by] E. Haldeman-Julius. 1546. An Encyclopedia of Sex [by] E. Haldeman-Julius. 1553. Beneficial Exercises for Nervousness and Indigestion [by] C. O. Benson and Dr. C. L. Smith. 1560. Why I Quit Being a Prohibitionist [by] Harry Hibschman. 1564. Homosexuality in the Lives of the Great [by] J. V. Nash. 1565. The Danger of Catholicism in the Public Schools [by] E. Haldeman-Julius. 1566. How to Conduct a Love Affair [by] Betty Van Deventer. 1567. Making Men Happy with Jams and Jellies [by] Elizabeth Palmer.
Of course, some of the more popular titles involved titillating topics of sexuality or the conduct of the sexually active (or deviant). Yet these pamphlets, sold mostly through mail-order for 20 for $1, made E. Haldeman-Julius wealthy. He became a man about town, which couldn't be that hard in a town like Girard, Kansas. Eventually though, his wife, Matrice ran off with his alcoholic assistant leaving Emanuel alone to womanize and write many, many, many, many, many, many more Little Blue Books.
In the end, it was E. Haldeman-Julius' writing that may have been his undoing. In a book about the FBI he outed J. Edgar Hover as a homosexual which of course didn't go over too well at the Bureau. The FBI already had a file on Haldeman-Julius due to his role as a publisher of socialist literature and as they dug deeper they discovered EHJ's unpaid taxes. EHJ was charged and found guilty of tax evasion but he died before he served any time. In 1951, he was found dead in his pool, or as many locals believe, the FBI murdered him.
His printing house was left to his son but on July 4th, 1978 errant fire works landed on the roof catching fire and burning the building down.
While FishNet may be gone, it's far from forgotten. After all, the National Post named the exhibit one of the Top Five Things to do in Toronto (right after Star Trek: The Musical). The exhibition ended June 22, but some of the remaining fish are on display in the Harbourfront Centre's shop, Bounty. The shop will also continuing "releasing" the fish as explained by Angela in this interview from May for the Ontario Waterkeeper's weekly podcast:
"Nothing Is Lost, Nothing Is Created, Everything Is Transformed" could be the title of my collected financial records but instead is the title of the upcoming Québec Triennial . I'm not sure what it means or how it relates to the work on exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain in Montreal but I'm keen to find out. According to the Globe & Mail Quebec artists have been toiling quietly without notice – or at least unnoticed by Sarah Milroy. If you've felt as though you've been missing out, then take this opportunity to catch up. The Triennial runs from May 24 to September 7, 2008.
Arnaud Maggs Contamination 2007 As part of Toronto's Contact Photography Festival, Susan Hobbs Gallery is displaying a new collection of photos by Arnaud Maggs called, "Contamination". Maggs is well known for his serial pieces (grid-like arrangements of black & white portraits, such as his "48 Views Series" – a "9-foot-high, 31-foot-long collection of photo-booth-type pictures of 162 people, each photographed 48 times") and this show continues to build on his earlier work. Arnaud Maggs came to fine art relatively late in life. While having a successful career as a graphic designer working in advertising and typography, Maggs, at the age of 40 decided to pursue art instead. It's this background that informs so much of his photography. Perhaps it's his designer's eye applied to his artistic pursuit or the other way around, his artistic eye guiding a highly skilled and meticulous technique yet whatever the case, the images seem to have particular interest to designers. There's something in the process of contemporary artists that fascinates and more crassly put, something from which we hope to glean insight and put in our own work. In this latest exhibit, a collection of images of empty mouldy sheets from a Gold Rush era ledger, each image forms a sectional view of the three-dimensional mould as it spread through the stack of pages, not unlike tree rings of a cut log. There's also more than a hint of sadness that accompanies the beauty of these images; as if someone's story was left untold and neglected through all those years. If you are in Toronto, then visit the gallery and see for yourself. For additional information listen to Julie Glick from the Mass Art Guide interview Arnaud Maggs from February, 2008 (run time: 22 minutes):
photo: Bernice Iarocci Our colleagues, Angela Iarocci and Claire Ironside at moimoi design have been busy. Really busy. Busy on a project that expresses the diversity and fragility of the Great Lakes bioregion. Over 2000 students, educators, artists and designers have been brought together through Project Fishnet to create over 1200 textile fish now exhibited at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. Angela and Claire have been working at a pace that would make James Brown look like lazy. That pace hit a fever pitch in the last two weeks as volunteers were culled from every corner, photos were Photoshopped, graphics were printed and fish were strung. The show opened last Friday and from everything I saw it was a hit. I think some of the hard-core art folk were a little taken aback by the presence of so many kids, though that didn't stop them from polishing off the punch bowl (oh yeah, ol' skool punch bowl).
Check out the Fishnet Web site, and gallery of fish crafted by artists and kids alike (including your humble author).
Museé d'art de Joliette: 19,800 seconds, 2007 Code: DR1
For over two years now, Dave Ross, a good friend of ours, has been engaged in a futile task. He has been photographing darkness. Not just any darkness, but the darkness of artists' storage spaces. The surprising thing about darkness is just how much it reveals. The results of these long exposure photographs (and I do mean long — sometimes days in length) are often amazing and mesmerizing. The images are made by the almost imperceptible drips of light that, over time, eventually saturate the film and are not only a document of the unseen but of the passage of time it took for the image to be created. Looking at the photos you become increasingly aware of the emerging detail you begin to see, in much the same way your eyes adjust to diminished light in say, a dark room. The longer you absorb the blackness, the more your mind wonders what you are in fact seeing. You may even feel as though you are actually only looking at black and the details are more like the after image burned on your retina. Then, if you've been staring long enough, the image becomes an after image that you see even when you've looked away — as if your own eye is behaving exactly as the film did, slowly having the room interior burned into your rods and cones.
This summer, eight of the images will be exhibited at the Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal as part of the Quebec Trienniale. Yet the cost of photographing, printing and framing these pictures is noteworthy. To offset these expenses the artist has made available two smaller scale prints for $125 each. To order prints contact Dave Ross before March 21st and indicate which of the images shown here you're interested in. Find out more about the project here.
Museé d'art de Joliette: 1,260 seconds, 2007 Code:DR2
On occasion, I've been known to mistype a URL in my browser and end up in an entirely different place than I had hoped (never, ever do an image search for "hand or fist graphic") and sometimes my browser auto-fills an address long ago cached in memory. My first response is usually, "How long does the browser store this junk?" and the second is usually, "I haven't been there for awhile." Such was the case when typing in "IM..." (about to go to IMDB) when the auto-fill completed Imaginaryforces.com. This influential design firm was probably best known for a series of title sequences created for films such as "Seven" in the late 90's and I curious to check in on their site. Thankfully I did and one of their featured projects was this short film about the work of Paul Rand Let's call it a happy accident.
I've been doing a project with Carla of Evolution Design recently which has involved creating images using a dot pattern. We've all seen some very sophisticated versions of this kind of thing over the years (particularly using half-tone patterns on glass etc.) and I'm generally mystified over how the results are achieved - not the fabrication but the artwork. My usual assumption has been someone had created a unique software solution rather than doing it by hand or with brute force. Faced with the same dilemma, I've ended up using a very non-innovative nor intuitive series of steps in Adobe Illustrator which caused me to wonder whether I should either learn how to code a solution or abandon it. Then Carla sent me this link, to an art project by Frédéric Eyl and Gunnar Green whereby they are using a wall of motorized camera shutters (apertures) connected to light sensors to generate what is essentially an interactive version of the still images we are creating. Interestingly, the principle is the same - "darkness" is a small opening, "lightness" is a large opening - though it the sensor that makes this conclusion in their case. Their highly technical implementation, made me feel as though my own attempt, which used an Illustrator filter combined with a lot of hand revision, was a quaint though equally effective method.
A new exhibit at the Harbourfront Centre explores Canadian ethno-cultural diversity by visually expressing the 2001 census data in a band of colours that stretches some twenty feet long. Long time Creative Leapist, Angela Iarocci and moimoi colleague Claire Ironside started this project some 12 months ago and are now seeing the fruits of their labour realized in the Service Canada display space. Oddly, when the piece was at the printers it provoked some controversy. While Angela and Claire saw the project as a positive statement of Canadian diversity or even an interesting and objective window into Canadians’ declaration of their ethnic origin on the census questionnaire, others view it as an objectionable and divisive comment on divided national loyalties. Whatever your view, it will hopefully make clear the often murky statistics the Canadian census provides (no mention of how many Canadians declared their religion as “Jedi Knight”?)
