Posts tagged with "art"

House Show II

I’m still catch­ing my breath from the awe­some­ness that was the sec­ond House Show. So much plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion, and prac­tice went into one night that I felt like I’d giv­en birth when it was over; I did­n’t know how to feel, or what to think.

Darren came up the day before to hang out, and along with Shane, Blais (his son), and Chris, stayed until Sunday. After the show we stayed up talk­ing, pick­ing Shane’s brain about his com­po­si­tion process and influ­ences. Everything went bet­ter than I could have planned, and I’m thank­ful that so many of my friends were there to share the expe­ri­ence with me.

cupcakes

Meet the cupcakes (from left to right):

Black and White (Belgian dark choco­late cake with vanil­la frost­ing and choco­late sprin­kles), straw­ber­ry (pure straw­ber­ry cake with sweet cream cheese frost­ing and red sug­ar flower on top), hazel­nut choco­late (hazel­nut-choco­late cake with Belgian dark choco­late frost­ing dec­o­rat­ed with a toast­ed hazel­nut on top), vanil­la (vanil­la cake and frost­ing, flavoured with Madagascar bour­bon vanil­la with sprin­kles), and key lime pie (lime-infused cake and cream cheese frost­ing with lime zest).

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House Show II: Invitation

Owing to the suc­cess of last year’s house show, I’ve invit­ed both Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously to come and per­form again next month. Not only will there be awe­some music and an assort­ment of mini-cup­cakes host­ed in my liv­ing room, it’ll also be Jesse’s birth­day par­ty.

This will be a col­lab­o­ra­tion across Eastern Canada, as Shane will be com­ing from Montreal (with a poten­tial secret guest), and Rosie will be trav­el­ing from Halifax on man­dolin to join Audra, Nic (also com­ing from Montreal, as Rockefort F. Loopfrog, the beat­mak­er), and I as part of the Dangerson Famile. However, I don’t think Dolly will be mak­ing an appear­ance because the sheer num­ber of peo­ple in the house last time real­ly freaked her out.

second house show flier

I had a lot of fun mak­ing this fly­er, fea­tur­ing Mr. Cupcake. The great thing about Avenir is that it sup­ports so many vari­a­tions of the type­face, which lets you make movie and con­cert posters in the clas­sic style of a full-jus­ti­fied col­umn of infor­ma­tion.

Transplant

I got the chance to work with Team Emily to doc­u­ment their lat­est artist vision, titled Transplant. The bril­liant con­cept:

This sum­mer, Emily Comeau (a fibre artist from Quebec) and Emily Cook (a book and paper artist from Ontario) will be col­lab­o­rat­ing to cre­ate an immense and inter­ac­tive tun­nel book made from local plant mate­ri­als to install in a bar­ren patch of city.

Transplant is an out­door liv­ing book instal­la­tion. Constructed from found nat­ur­al mate­ri­als both liv­ing and dead, this instal­la­tion is sub­ject to the whims of nature and the designs of man. Each page of this book resem­bles an arch invit­ing the audi­ence to enter the immense tun­nel book. Within the pages are paper pock­ets where seeds will begin to sprout as the struc­ture is grad­u­al­ly beat­en down by the weath­er. Additional arches/pages will be added through­out the exhi­bi­tion as the evo­lu­tion of decay and growth take over. This evo­lu­tion speaks to the ebb and flow of con­struc­tion and decay as the man­made world inter­acts with the nat­ur­al one. The sto­ry of this project is one of trans­for­ma­tion and recla­ma­tion of the urban land­scape by nature. It is the sto­ry of a cycle of decay and rebirth and of a bal­ance that can be achieved when nature’s col­lab­o­ra­tion is desired rather than fought

The sun­light com­ing through the seed­ed paper is such a won­der­ful­ly strik­ing image. This is just the first arch­way, con­struct­ed on the lawn at the Ottawa Arts Court, which is a very high-pro­file place (you can see the Rideau Centre right across the street). More details and orna­ments are planned as the project con­tin­ues over the next year.

My desire to record things comes from the fact that most things in this world are so ephemer­al. This being a struc­ture that can dis­solve in the rain, as well as being an area fre­quent­ed by drunks1 and home­less peo­ple, meant I was pret­ty adamant about doc­u­ment­ing the whole process.

  1. As we were leav­ing the area at the end of the day, some guy just up and peed into the bush­es next to us. [↩]

Art for Haiti

Thumbnail: Art relief

There’s a fundrais­er for Haitian earth­quake sur­vivors at the Cube Gallery hap­pen­ing in two weeks. An auc­tion will be held after the view­ing, and any mon­ey raised from the auc­tion will go to the Red Cross. I’ve donat­ed one of my favourite pho­tos, the very first print of “Carrot Feet” (to which I hold much sen­ti­men­tal attach­ment), to the cause. I’m also going to per­son­al­ly extend this to all oth­er prints from my Fruit and Body series, so if you pur­chase a print between now and the auc­tion, I’ll put 100% of the sale price towards the fundrais­er.

If you have art­work you’d like to donate, please con­tact me and I’ll get you in touch with the appro­pri­ate peo­ple. When peo­ple can walk away with amaz­ing art­work while help­ing those in need, it’s a win-win sit­u­a­tion. I’ll be attend­ing to meet the oth­er artists and hope­ful­ly pick some­thing up for myself if any art­work speaks to me.

From the Cube Gallery web­site:

Haitian Disaster Art Fundraiser

In light of the dis­as­ter that has befall­en the peo­ple of Haiti, Cube Gallery and AfrikArt Konnection, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Paul Dewar, MP are call­ing Canadian artists to ral­ly togeth­er to assist in the efforts under­way to make the lives of Haitian sur­vivors bet­ter.

Event Date: February 9, 2010
Event Time: 6 pm view­ing; 8 pm auc­tion
Location: Cube Gallery, 7 Hamilton Ave. N.

Artwork view­ing: begins at 6pm
Fundraising Auction: 8pm

There will be a recep­tion, music, light foods and enter­tain­ment at Cube Gallery on Hamilton Ave. The event is host­ed by Oni the Haitian Sensation.