Hello, Wide Open Spaces: Kara Uzelman talks Saskatchewan Moves at Canadianart.ca

Earlier this month, my interest was piqued when I saw a release from Saskatoon's AKA Gallery stating that artist Kara Uzelman was residing in a small town in Saskatchewan.

I had thought of Uzelman more as a Vancouver- and Berlin-based artist, having seen her work at the Power Plant, Red Bull Projects and Mercer Union here in Toronto and read about a project where she excavated her Vancouver backyard.

Why, I thought, would someone younger and so evidently growing audiences in these art centres be drawn to a town of 450?

Well, this week, Uzelman kindly indulged my curiosity about her move in a phone conversation from her new home in Nokomis, Saskatchewan, where she lives with her partner Jeffrey Allport. We also discussed she and Allport's first collaborative exhibition, which is currently taking place at AKA Gallery. 

Some of that conversation ended up in a kind of previewy item at Canadianart.ca, where I work part-time. Here's an excerpt:


“I feel like my work is really somehow based in Canada,” Uzelman says over the phone from her new home. “I didn’t really want to live in Germany permanently, and Vancouver was just getting too expensive to be able to both live and travel.” (By contrast, the house she and Allport purchased cost just $28,000 while remaining in easy driving distance to Regina, Saskatoon and their international airports.)

Uzelman is known for an archaeological approach to her practice—she once dug up the backyard of her Vancouver house—as well as her interest in found materials. She notes that both these tendencies, and her family background and high-school years in Saskatoon, are also part of what made the move a good fit. 

“In a foreign country, I just didn’t feel totally comfortable [using found materials] because there’s a whole history and culture there that I’m not intimately aware of. Here, it’s somehow a little more comfortable working that way.”

You can read the rest over at Canadianart.ca--where I also note some of the other contemporary Canadian artists who have been drawn to the frugal pleasures of small-town SK living. Residing in Toronto as I do, I have to say I envy the amount of space they have, which is a factor that likely drives my interest in stories such as these. 


Oh, also to add to my envy, they live near North America's oldest designated bird sanctuary, Last Mountain Lake. It's part of the inspiration for the title of their AKA Gallery exhibition, Warblers.

(Image of Uzelman & Allport's Warblers installation @ AKA Gallery by Devon McAdam via Canadianart.ca)

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Author Photos Article out in July/August Quill & Quire

 Who reads a book based on its author photo? Not many readers, I'd say.

But who looks at the author photo on a given book? And gives it some consideration? Likely most readers.

The current July/August issue of Quill & Quire features an article by yours truly about the tricky, slippery matter of the author photo.

Some exhibitions of late—like Shelley Grimson's show of early Atwood and Ondaatje portraits in Toronto, and Barry Peterson and Blaise Pascal's ongoing travelling exhibition of West-Coast author photos in Vancouver—have demonstrated some of the public's interest in this form of imagery.

At the same time, few publishers are willing to pay anymore for professionally done author photos, even as they recognize their importance in engaging readers and media outlets. 

To find out more—and see some unusual author pics—check out that current issue of Quill & Quire, on newsstands and in libraries now.

(It's a good reminder to me, actually to update the photo I use on Twitter and this blog—got some new glasses recently and am sporting a few more gray hairs to boot!)

(Image: Shelly Grimson's circa-1970 portrait of Michael Ondaatje via Torontoist)

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Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally Read: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

So this week, I fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally read Marilynne Robinson's prizewinning 2004 novel Gilead.

Gilead has little, if anything, to do with visual art, but it has some terrific observations in it about reading and writing and their potential roles in people's lives. The book takes the form of a long letter than an elderly reverend is writing to his young son for him to read long after his death, so it's apropos that these kinds of thoughts come up.

Praise for Robinson's eloquent, gemlike writing style has been delivered by the ton already elsewhere, but I have to reiterate it; Robinson manages to condense a lot of wisdom and cogent observations of human life into a relatively slim volume.

I particularly enjoyed the parts where Robinson's narrator discusses reading and writing in relation to solitude and loneliness.

At a presentation for York University grad students a few years ago, I tried, by much slimmer means, to make a related observation about art writing, or arts criticism in general—that beyond providing a service to the readers (telling them whether or not it might be worth their time and energy to go see an exhibition or movie or play, or read a given book or listen to a given album), criticism can be about not being alone with one's observations about an exhibition, movie, play, book or album.

This can, if we extend Robinson's observations below, be true whether one is writing the criticism or reading it. It's obviously not the only impetus behind reading and writing, but it is one I'm glad she acknowledged.

Here are some passages on this topic from the book:

For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn’t writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone. I feel I am with you now, whatever that can mean, considering that you’re only a little fellow now and when you’re a man you might find these letters of no interest. Or they might never reach you, for any of a number of reasons. Well, but how deeply I regret any sadness you have suffered and how grateful I am in anticipation of any good you have enjoyed. That is to say, I pray for you. And there’s an intimacy in it. That’s the truth.

--

… I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering far more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp.

Thank God for them all, of course, and for that strange interval, which was most of my life, when I read out of loneliness, and when bad company was much better than no company. You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human, which I devoutly hope you never will have. “The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry sould every bitter thing is sweet.” There are pleasures to be found where you would never look for them. That’s a bit of fatherly wisdom, but it’s also the Lord’s truth, and a thing I know from my own long experience. 

Now I need to read Robinson's Housekeeping,  first published in the 1980s. She took a long time between the two books, but the wisdom is still packed in there, for sure. 

(Image from MacMillan USA)

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Worth Consideration: Doug Borwick on Questioning Institutional Assumptions

I already RT'd this on Twitter, but wanted to call attention on the blog as well. Over at Artsjournal, arts-engagement consultant Doug Borwick has written a brief post about the value of reexamining some basic arts-engagement assumptions: namely, the belief that art need the be-all and end-all of an art institution's focus.

As Borwick writes,

the deification of art removes (or at least distances) it from its role in human experience. And it is that role that is crucial. Isn’t it the power the arts have in our own lives that drew us to the field? In addition, and this is the important part with respect to engagement, focus on the art as opposed to its role in individuals’ lives makes it easier to (unconsciously) ignore the fact that many are not moved by what we do. The art-focused view has the subliminal effect of supporting the “If we build it . . .” mindset. This impedes the potential for community engagement. 


(Bolding is the author's.)

Though I really love the way art objects manage to speak directly to various people through space and time, I appreciate the point he is trying to make—that my overvaluing the object in a material sense, we may be downplaying the human experiences around it which give it other kinds of community and individual value.

Read the whole post over at Engaging Matters.

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Le Cultural Access Sad: Ontario Science Centre hikes adult admission, becoming most expensive museum to visit in Ontario

Much as I would *not* like to rag upon museums a little bit more on the access front, it behooves me to do so again today.

As of July 1, adult admission at the Ontario Science Centre has been raised from $20 to $22. (HST included.)

Granted, it was the Ontario Government, of which the OSC is an agency, which mandated this change, not the OSC itself. Sadly, however, it gives the OSC the dubious honour of being the most expensive museum to visit in Ontario (as far as I know, feel free to correct me)--a mantle once worn by the ROM, which was $24 for adults to visit until it dropped its prices last fall.

Also, there are no free hours at the OSC to provide community access, though it does participate to a limited extent in the Toronto Public Library's Museum Arts Pass program.

It is especially sad to me that an institution which trumpets "40 Years of Innovation" can't innovate to improve its community access.

(Image of the OSC from its website)

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Free Museum Admissions on Canada Day: Time to Step Up Beyond the Holiday

I was happy this week to hear that the National Gallery of Canada would be providing free admission to its permanent collection on Canada Day. I was also glad to hear the Art Gallery of Alberta would be providing free admission to both the collection and temporary exhibitions on July 1. I haven't done much further research on other museums that normally charge admission providing free access on the upcoming holiday, but I can only presume there are others.

Yet, at the same time as I'm glad about these patriotic public-access gestures, I feel some disappointment or disbelief--definitely, at least, some ambivalence. The collection at the NGC belongs to all Canadians every day of the year, so trotting out free access as a one-off holiday "extra" tends, in my view, to reinforce the idea that public access is really not a something the public should expect in the long term. Ditto for Albertans vis a vis the Art Gallery of Alberta's collection.

It is also disappointing to me that our major public art museums in English Canada do not, by and large, even honour the tradition of free museum admission on or around International Museums Day. Montreal has a strong program of this kind, which is no surprise, some might say, given the different ethos and funding situations there. The NGC has also stepped up, offering free admission this year on May 20. But the AGO, the AGA, and the VAG don't seem to take part in this outreach effort, let alone non-art museums like the ROM and the Glenbow. (I could be wrong, and would be happy to be corrected!)

Perhaps this lack of International Museums Day isn't a surprise given that the Canadian Museums Association itself, though giving a nod to the possibility of free admission, suggests that for International Museums Day museums should invite in a local MP rather than the wider public.

I write this post with some trepidation given that it is unpleasant for me personally to focus on such disappointments. To state the obvious, it is not always fun to be a negative voice.

This is especially true when there is a lot to be proud of in the Canadian art community--like the fact that many galleries and museums, public, private or otherwise, do offer the public free access to art every day of the year. I simply continue to feel regret when the institutions charged with growing and maintaining "publicly owned" collections fail to provide the public with adequate free access to them. I also feel disappointed that many of our institutions can't seem to get it together to do at least something along the lines of New York City's Art Museums Day (another Intl Museums Day related event).

I do wish everyone a terrific holiday! I'll be headed to the beach, hopefully.

(Photograph taken by Jared Grove (Phobophile) and posted at Wikimedia)

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Fiiiiiiiiiiiiinally Read: An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Prompted by my colleague David Balzer's excellent summer reading list generated for Canadianartschool.ca (Canadian Art's student and careers site), I have fiiiiiiiiiiiinally read Steve Martin's 2010 novel An Object of Beauty.

Set mainly in the commercial side of the New York art world from the 1990s to the date of publication, An Object of Beauty certainly does have a kind of light, gossipy dishiness to recommend it (though that's not all). I am quite unfamiliar with the commercial and auction parts of the art world—much, much less familiar than Martin, who is a prolific collector and, fortunately for the reader, a great observer and conveyor of human social dynamics—and it was entertaining to read scenes of a dealer sticking to her monied client like glue, for sure. He also does a great job of mapping out various strata of the NY art realm, as far as I can tell: uptown vs. downtown, East Side vs. West Side, modern vs. contemporary, etc.

(Publishers Weekly put this observation much better: "Martin (an art collector himself) is an astute miniaturist as he exposes the sound and fury of the rarified Manhattan art world.")

I also enjoyed the ways in which Martin conveys, in this book, the different ways that dealers, auction houses, collectors, and critics attribute or signal value in art. Is this value monetary, spiritual, acquisitive, social, human, humane? All of the above, or none, depending on the character and context of the individual.

Also, the fact that the narrator of the book is a critic prompted both a sense of thrill and embarrassment for me, as I empathized with his peripheral role to the art world (including the one of his own narrative), with his small, tiny publication triumphs, and most centrally, at least for this novel, with his need to get the himself the hell out of the way of the story, while also being enmeshed in it in a way.

In fact, I found this choice of narrator somewhat curious, whether a critic or not--it's rare that I read a novel (well, these days, it's rare I read at all, so I'm no expert) where the narrator has such a peripheral role to the narrative, and alternates between an individual perspective and a slightly more omniscient (or as he puts it at the beginning, a more imaginative) point of view. Could this be interpreted as a kind of reading of art criticism in general? I don't think Martin intended it as such, but criticism does tend to reach across that whole spectrum of voice, from first-person memoir to third-person "objectivity" or omniscience, so... fun to think about, I guess.

Finally, let me say that Martin is very good at conveying the dynamics in a courtship/relationship where one person is much more invested than another. It kind of made me think, man, who could really have turned down or burned Steve Martin so bad? Dude plays the banjo and has been attached to a bazillion famous things. Also, he prolly has a really nice art collection. A reminder that in matters of the heart, we are all vulnerable and imperfect, I suppose.

Overall, not a must-read, but very much a nice-to-read, especially if you are involved with art in some way, shape or form.

(Image: Image of the book's cover from Stevemartin.com)

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Artwatching vs. Birdwatching: A Highly Nonscientific Comparison

Over the past couple of months, I have been getting a teeny tiny little bit into birdwatching.

By this I mean that I have enjoyed biking to the Leslie Street Spit here in Toronto and keeping an eye out for different species. I also have purchased a laminated Ontario bird guide. And I enjoy excitedly telling friends and co-workers when I have spotted and identified a species that is new to me.

Now, from what I see out on the Spit, I understand I could be standing on the precipice of (or already beginning to slide down) a very slippery hobby slope. By the end of the summer I could just be the owner of a three-foot-long zoom lens, floppy Tilley hat and pricey binocs.

Which—you know what?—would actually be plenty fine because I really enjoy spending time in this slightly postapocalyptic pocket of nature taking back some of the wastes of humankind. (NB for the non-Torontonians: the Spit was originally built as a breakwater using landfill excavated from Toronto construction sites.)

Spending a little time on the Spit has also prompted me to think about the similarities and differences between Artwatching and Birdwatching. Here are some of my highly nonscientific observations:

1. Both Artwatching and Birdwatching are highly visual activities which one could argue engage an appetite for the spectacular.

2. Both Artwatching and Birdwatching can engage a visual analytics of identification. How many times have a stood in a gallery or stared at a page trying to identify an artwork without looking at the caption or wall label? That is, trying to identify a "species" of work purely through visual means? Or learning to do the same? Well, the same or similar skills are used in Birdwatching--just like a certain palette or texture identifies a certain painter, certain patternings or colours identify a bird.

3. However, Birdwatching can also regularly engage an aural component. Though I am not skilled (yet!) at identifying bird calls, I know there are guidebooks out there to this effect. Though there is such a thing as sound art, it is not usually necessary to tune in to an artwork's aural component in order to experience it or identify it. Canvas is pretty damn silent, ya'll!

4. Artwatchers have an advantage in that the objects of their focus typically do not move, or do not move with any great degree of speed or agility. This is quite different from the conditions that Birdwatchers encounter, where one might have only a few seconds to get a good look at the object of one's focus, or even less. This lends a kind of urgency to the birdwatching experience; artwatching allows for more lassitude, in a sense.

5. Both artwatching and birdwatching can be enjoyed as singular experiences and competitive/accumulative contests alike. In my experience, I have enjoyed looking at both objects of art and at birds as kinds of opportunities for transcendence—a way to move beyond the everyday. Yet I have also had experiences (often at the same time) where the looking can take on a competitive or accumulative quality. "Okay, I've seen a Killdeer/Olafur Eliasson work. While thrilled at first, I now find it familiar and kind of boring. I want to see something else next." There can be a kind of "onwards and upwards" or "I haven't seen that yet and I should" tendency. (I know both these qualities of looking have more to do with me than with art in general, but I thought it was worth noting.)

6. Both artwatching and birdwatching subcultures have their own distinctive customs and styles of dress. I am not indoctrinated fully into either subculture, I think, but I can say you don't see a whole lot of all-black outfits out on the Spit. A lot more earth tones and quick dry materials.

7. The cameras are a lot bigger in the birdwatching community. An iPhone just ain't gonna cut it!

If you want to find out more about bird species at the Spit, check out the Tommy Thompson Park website.

(Chickadee-riffic image via Birdwatchingclub.net. I would basically freak out, in a good way, I think, if I was the person in this picture.)

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Happy Arts Access Moment: TSO Plays First Free Outdoor Concert in More than 10 Years

Though I haven't written about it in a while, I still do think a lot about arts access issues.

So I was happy this weekend to attend (with a few thousand other Torontonians) the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's first free outdoor concert in more than 10 years. It was part of Luminato's closing events.

Even though rain threatened to end the event before it started, most of the audience members held fast. The rain then mostly cleared, and the audience enjoyed a range of popular favourites from ET (dedicated to the cyclists of  Toronto by director Peter Oundjian) and the Lord of the Rings (did you know scorewriter Howard Shore was Canadian and used to play saxophone in Lighthouse? I didn't.) as well as a premiere of an overture by Philip Glass and Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture.

There was a kind of War of 1812 tribute thing going on (not unusual for Toronto at the moment) which led to some weird touches like the audience being instructed to sing the Canadian and American national anthems, but the audience generally seemed to enjoy it.

There were also fireworks and cannons at the end for the Tchaikovsky, as well as a big round of audience-approval noise for the idea that the TSO will do more free concerts in future -- I certainly hope this is the case! Much needed and appreciated by the public.

(Photo of the audience holding steady during a rainshower at the free TSO event by yours truly.)

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From the Tara Bursey files: Notes on our Cultural Condition, Sort Of

Earlier this spring, I was flattered when artist, blogger and OCAD University student Tara Bursey asked for my feedback on some career-related questions for a class of hers. The list of questions included some general ones from the class (everyone in the class was doing these sorts of interview requests) and some individual ones.

I thought I'd post my response to the class questions. In a way, they are the questions I was the least capable of answering, so they got me thinking more broadly than I usually might. I'm just posting them here for fun.

Thanks again to Tara for inviting me to participate in this project. Here are the class questions and my responses:

1. What characterizes our current cultural condition?

I’m not in any position to comment on what characterizes our current cultural condition, because I don’t study such things. I often feel that when I am commenting on something publicly, it is on my own response to a small set of works, or to a single exhibition, rather than commenting on a wider cultural condition.

I know that subjectively I experience our current cultural moment as overwhelming in terms of the amount of information being generated and distributed through various media.

One Canadian artist I spoke with in the past few months, Kate Armstrong (whose practice addresses media and the Internet) told me that something like 90% of the information in the world has been generated in the past 10 years.

I don’t know if that statistic is accurate, but it speaks to the kind of overwhelmed feeling I experience. As much as I love the democratization and wide distribution of media brought about by the Internet and related tools, I personally don’t feel capable of digesting the volume of information properly.

2. How does this condition manifest in art and design practices?

Again, I don’t presume to know what our current cultural condition is, so I can’t really say what kinds of art and design practices that it manifests in.

I can say that I find myself increasingly drawn to sculptural works, particularly ones in textile and ceramic.

And sometimes I attribute that attraction to the fact that I spend much of my work life staring at screens and interacting with computers and images—interacting with virtuality, basically. (That virtuality also includes, in a sense, that wider media I mentioned as being overwhelming to me.)

Of course, I’m a writer, and I studied photography, and I’m happy to acknowledge that words and images are kind of virtual things to begin with. But given the predominance of digital, many of the concrete and embodied aspects of these practices have been done away with. (No more pen to paper, no more hours spent loading and shaking film-development canisters.)

So, given that I now have this subjective attraction to 3-D, nondigital objects, preferably ones in very tactile materials like clay and cloth, and given I attribute this attraction in part to the fact that there is an excess of digital or virtual inputs in my work and leisure time, I do sometimes wonder if there is a romance in our wider culture at the moment with things that are very analog or tactile or embodied in nature.

I guess if I was thinking more broadly, I’d wonder if the return to craft practices by some artists, which has been identified by some critics and curators, also relates to a feeling of wanting to get away from the digital and virtual which so dominate our work and leisure lives nowadays.

I also sometimes wonder how digital/virtual overload in the wider culture might influence fashion and home décor. It’s been very interesting for me in recent years to see the resurgence of decayed or worn textiles in fashion. There are many other possible influences for this resurgence – a look back to punk and grunge, say, or a desire for elites to “hide” their wealth in a time of economic recession – but I do wonder whether there’s some reassurance to be found in the tactile and the decayed, or maybe even just a desire to be reassured that there is still a part of life which is tactile and vulnerable to age/wear/weather/the basic laws of physics.

But again, just to conclude, I’m well aware that this sense of being overloaded is my subjective experience. It doesn’t mean necessarily that others/the wider culture/cultures are experiencing that too. That would require study I haven’t undertaken. If you find out, please let me know! : )

(Image of an Anthropologie store, near-irresistible source of tactile, pre-decayed wares, via the Style Spy)

 

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One Paint Chip, Two Solitudes

What art-text writer and editor doesn't get a kick out of perusing paint chips? The names that these colours get are often way above and beyond even the most imaginative critic's terminology for hue.

Of course, a cutesy name can sway specialists and nonspecialists alike. (I once suggested a friend use an boring off-white on her walls because it was called, irresistibly and absurdly, "Cuddle.")

Interestingly, when I was looking at swatches again recently, I noticed one Benjamin Moore paint colour whose name had quite different meanings in Canada's two official languages. In English it was called "Toronto Blue"—which is kind of amusing in itself, as I don't really associate this bright blue hue to my everyday life in Hogtown. But in French it was called "Outremer Francais." One colour, two solitudes—perfect (or fractious, perhaps) for your favourite bilingual couple. Mon dieu!

(Image from Artquiltmaker)

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Diane Borsato feature up at Canadianart.ca

Yesterday, Canadianart.ca posted my feature on Toronto artist Diane Borsato's current show at the AGYU. An excerpt:

A white beekeeping outfit, complete with netted veil and hood. A pair of bright red Coleman coolers next to silver sachets of tea. Well-thumbed copies of Euell Gibbons’ Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust. Grow lights shining on rows of tiny tomato seedlings; a table overflowing with spider plants; some multi-sided dice resting on a high shelf; and a half-moon bedroom doubling as a wood-fired sauna.

These are just a few of the treats tucked into Walking Studio, the centrepiece work in Diane Borsato’s current solo show at the Art Gallery of York University.

“I was interested in field laboratories as a model for a way of working as an artist,” Borsato explains during a tour of the show. The 11-foot-by-18-foot structure, designed by the artist in collaboration with Adrian Blackwell and Jane Hutton, is “a mobile building that functions as a studio-slash-field-lab” to accommodate practices that are social, site-responsive, peripatetic and relational.

Beyond its immediate appeal as a cute, rustic, cabin-like getaway, Walking Studio may well read as a significant material marker of the way Borsato’s many ephemeral works—from 2001’s Touching 1000 People to 2011’s revolving Walking Studio residencies at Don Blanche—have gelled into a very concrete art career.

To find out more, read on at Canadianart.ca.

(Image of Diane Borsato's Walking Studio by Michael Maranda, via Canadianart.ca and courtesy the artist and the AGYU)

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Anthony Redpath Q&A out recently in National Post

British Columbia is a beautiful place, but the sights that most appeal to Vancouver photographer Anthony Redpath aren't ones you'd see on a postcard. For the past few years, Redpath has been trying to pay homage to the blue-collar side of Pacific coast life in his large, meticulous prints.

With an exhibition on at the Rooms in St. John's, Redpath talked with me about the decline of the fishing industry, the rise of ecotourism and the buildings that tell the tale of both.

The resulting condensed Q&A was published in last Thursday's National Post. An excerpt:

Q How did you get into photography and art in the first place, given that you worked in the national parks in your twenties?

A One of my influences would be my parents; my dad was an amateur photographer. In addition to that, he used to draw a lot; he's an architect.

Plus my mom's a landscape architect. I spent a lot of time looking over their drawings when I was kid. The buildings I photograph are often broken-down structures. They're not great architectural works, but I try to find something in them that's interesting.

Q What else would you like viewers to know about these photographs?

A Probably that these buildings reflect the socioeconomic status of the region, as well as the climate. They wouldn't look like that in downtown Vancouver, because they wouldn't exist; they'd be torn down because the land is too expansive. If they were in the prairies, they wouldn't have the same textures in terms of the paint and surfaces; the air would be too dry. These are buildings that really speak about a place. And I do this work because of an attachment to that place, I guess.

(Image of Anthony Redpath's Trailer Park Party courtesy the artist)

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Why Art is more Foundation than Frill: Profile of TO Curator Marsya Maharani Now Up at Yonge Street Media

In the last of a series of arts-related profiles for Yonge Street Media, I look at young Toronto curator Marsya Maharani.

Though just 25 years old, Maharani is gaining ground in breaking traditional silos between art, craft, design, fashion and DIY.

She is perhaps best known for her monthly exhibitions at Freedom Clothing Collective, but is also branching out this month with an Ontario Arts Council–funded trip to Indonesia to research textiles there.

There's a lot to be impressed about in terms of Marsya's drive, curiosity and organizational acumen, but I was particularly struck by her comments around the value of textile art in particular and the arts in general.

Here's an excerpt:

"The history of textile making has been very gender specific," Maharani explains. "I think that has a lot to do with the fact that it hasn't really been seen as a form of art. Essentially, textiles are beautiful things, and they mean a lot to culture and society."

Maharani knows the depth of textiles' cultural power firsthand. At 14, she faced a huge transition when her family (mom, dad and younger brother) immigrated from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Dufferin and Steeles. Getting involved in fashion events—from organizing Newtonbrook Secondary School's annual show to volunteering at the Fashion Design Council of Canada—was vital to making the move successfully.

"Reconnecting with people through the arts is a big deal," she says. "Being involved in the fashion show [in high school], for example, or collaborating with people in different projects really helped make Toronto my home."

Her response to those who say art is a frill, especially in tough economic times? "But that's when I turn to arts: when it's really hard, you know? I think that's what keeps you going."

To read the entire profile, including Marsya's thoughts on the tough job market young grads like her are facing, visit Yonge Street.

(Image of Marsya Maharani at Freedom Clothing Collective by Tanja-Tiziana for Yonge Street Media)

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Now, the Mendel; Next, MASS MoCA: Q&A with Clint Neufeld at Canadianart.ca

Over the past five years, the ceramic engine sculptures of Saskatchewan artist Clint Neufeld have won increasing recognition in the Canadian art world.

In addition to being featured in MASS MoCA’s upcoming “Oh, Canada” show this spring, Neufeld has had solo exhibitions at public art galleries across the country and was first runner-up for the 2011 Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics.

Last week, while he was installing a solo show opening at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, Neufeld talked with me on the phone about his military start, farm heritage and more.

Here's an excerpt from the condensed interview published on Canadianart.ca:

LS: Because your engine pieces are often positioned on chairs and couches, I end up feeling like they’re portraits of some kind—that they stand in for figures. How do you respond to that interpretation?

CN: I can respond a few ways.

One way I’d respond is that, you know, I’ve never really liked to be too specific about what my intentions are or what I want people to get out of my art. I think that’s sort of the beauty of art objects, is that they’re really open to all kinds of interpretations.

Part of the reason I went with the furniture was I’ve never really liked the pedestal. It’s never been my favourite display mechanism. And I had these fancy, ornate objects; I thought, What works for displaying these?

I think that the furniture aesthetic or end-table sort of thing that I mashed with them comes from my grandmother, who was an immigrant from England after the war. Being a sort of proper British lady, she had her shelves of trinkets displayed very nicely on doilies or on fancy tables and these kind of things. And for me, that kind of furniture seemed to be a good fit for the objects that I was dealing with.

There’s another thing I like about using the furniture: the engines that I work with tend to be older—they’re mechanical and somewhat obsolete in today’s automotive industry. So I like this idea that they’re sort of lounging or relaxing. And I think you’re right, it certainly lends itself to some kind of personal stand-in. The idea of a portrait is a nice way of looking at it.

To read more, head to Canadianart.ca.

(Image of Clint Neufeld at his Mendel show by Troy Mamer via Canadianart.ca)

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Scratching Beneath the Surface: Q&A with Andrew Querner out in today's National Post

Many art careers begin in the sheltered confines of college classrooms.

Not so for Andrew Querner, who started by photographing his own vertigo-testing rock-climbing expeditions.

Eventually, Querner forsook carabiners for cameras, taking assignments for Time, Monocle and the Wall Street Journal. Recently, with his first museum exhibition on at the Whyte Museum in Banff, Querner talked to me about his work.

The resulting condensed Q&A came out in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q You founded your art and photo career in an unusual way: by shooting your own rock-climbing expeditions. What, if anything, do photography and rock climbing have in common?

A They offer different things, in some ways. With climbing, you’re really in the moment. In photography, there’s a lot more pre-planning you have to do before you can get to that place of being in the moment. And climbing is a very selfish kind of pursuit, whereas I hope the photography I do in the future can contribute in some small way [to other people’s lives].

Q Your current exhibition focuses on Kosovo’s Stan Terg mine. What drew you to this place?

A It started with my longtime interest in international current affairs. My dad is from Austria and my mother is from Japan; I think, growing up in Canada, I had an awareness of what was going on beyond my own borders. More recently, a friend pointed me to Kosovo, the first place I’ve ever worked abroad. Originally, I’d hoped to look at the resurgence of blood feuds there, but that didn’t work out. However, visiting Trepca, the home of Stan Terg, aroused curiosity; there was so much more to it than what lay on the surface. The history of the mine also seemed to reflect power struggles of the region; whoever controlled the region controlled the mine. I thought this might be an interesting point of access to explore larger issues flowing through the nation’s veins.

And here's one more quote:

Q In general, what do you think makes a photograph worth taking or displaying?

A In my photography, vulnerability is the main quality that I’m looking for—whether that be in a portrait, a person, an inanimate object, a still life, or a landscape. To me, vulnerability offers a point of access, a human quality, something other people can relate to.

To read the rest, look to today's National Post Arts & Life section.

Also, if you want to find out more about Querner, I really enjoyed reading the posts he wrote for the News Photographers' Association of Canada blog. It's got some great excerpts of work from his climbing days and reflections upon the transition to other kinds of photographic work.

His website also has links to other interview he has done.

(Image from Andrew Querner's series The Bread with Honey via Photo Life)

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Valérie Blass Q&A Out Today in National Post

I'm not going to mince any words here: I love the work of Montreal sculptor Valérie Blass. Seeing her current show in Montreal at the MACM was one of the highlights of my winter.

While in Montreal, I had the privilege of talking with Blass about her work. A condensed version of that exchange was published today in the National Post.

Here's an excerpt:

Q What life experience of yours has been most influential on your artwork?

A Well, it has to be the experience of creating the art itself. I start out with some ideas and visualizations, but it's only through working with materials that a piece really comes into being. One of my motivations for making artwork is to end up surprising myself.

Q You use clothing very effectively in a lot of your sculptures. How does fashion affect your process?

A Two things come to mind. First, I like fashion; I look at its images, colours and aesthetics on a formal level. It's not like, "Oh, hemlines are rising this year. I'd better go buy a new dress!" Second, working with clothing is a way of talking about the body without actually showing the body. Classical sculptures often concentrated on the form of the body alone. Contemporary clothes, accessories, hairstyles and fabrics are things that hide the body, but at the same time transform it. It's a way of creating a rhythm, a theme, and speaking a bit about humanness without showing it in a very academic way.

Also here is the slightly embarrassing (for me) question I wanted to ask Blass the most, and her response:

Q A lot of good contemporary art makes me feel bad about life. But your art, which is good, makes me feel good about life. What do you think of your art having this kind of life-affirming effect?

A Well, I do hope it's kind of funny without being naive. When you're young, you think that happiness is an absence of disagreeable things. But in fact, it's about a contrast: there being pleasure in life, but pleasure along with pain, along with difficult things, along with sexuality, along with desire. I hope my work contains all those things - including love, and a little bit of irony, too.

For more about Blass' past in movie-prop making and her new obsession with body-painting (in her art!) read on at the Post.

(Photo of Blass' Femme Panier by Richard-Max Tremblay courtesy the MACM)

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Can a Secondary Market really be created for Contemporary Canadian Art? Q&A with Concrete Auction's Stephen Ranger at Canadianart.ca

Last night, one of Canada’s oldest auction houses, founded in 1850, launched what it calls “the first truly contemporary auction of Canadian art ever held for commercial purposes.” On March 8, Waddington’s slick, new, poured-cement space on King Street East hosted the debut gavelling of its latest venture, Concrete Contemporary Auctions and Projects.

Though there is much that is fresh about Concrete Contemporary Auctions and Projects—like its emphasis on post-1980 Canadian artworks, and its creation of an “acquisition fund” program that covers 50% of select public-institution purchases—it is also home to a familiar face on the national auction scene. Waddington’s created Concrete in partnership with Stephen Ranger, a former president of Ritchies who has more than 20 years’ experience in the Canadian auction business.

In an interview posted yesterday before the auction at Canadianart.ca, Ranger (now president of Concrete and vice-president, business development at Waddington’s) talked with me about current challenges, past scandals, and trying to grow stronger markets for Canadian art.

Here's an excerpt:

Leah Sandals: With this auction, you’re trying to initiate a secondary market for contemporary Canadian art—something regarded by many Canadian arts professionals as nearly impossible, and something that seems particularly daunting given the economic slowdown of the past few years. Why is now the right time to try to develop this market?

Stephen Ranger: The short answer is that there’s never going to be a perfect time. And, although times are tough in a lot of places, the art business has, on many levels, been insulated from that.

As a longer answer, I’ve been thinking about doing this project for at least a couple of years, if not more.

Looking around the world, I saw thriving secondary markets for contemporary work—not just in major markets, like New York and London, which are the obvious ones, but in places like Chicago and Los Angeles, in Amsterdam, in Italy, in Australia, pretty much everywhere.

My longtime involvement in a number of charitable sales, like the Casey House Art with Heart Auction that I’ve been doing for 19 years, was really what tweaked my interest in contemporary work. It seemed to speak to people of my generation and younger.

I care about contemporary art. It’s work that speaks to me. So to be able to put together an auction like this is a real thrill and honour. Having seen so many people come through auction halls and previews through the years, I thought, Why aren’t we doing this here? There’s no good reason. Somebody just had to do it!

LS: On a slightly different timing issue, the Concrete auction is set for March 8, the same day as the opening of the 2012 Armory Show. As a result, most of the serious contemporary Canadian collectors will be in New York on the night of the auction. How are you dealing with that scheduling glitch? Why did it happen?

SR: That was an unfortunate coincidence. We picked our date way back; it just was a date that worked for us here logistically.

Not all the action at auctions happens the night of. In fact, most of the work is done beforehand. That’s why we’ve had lots of preview time—at good auctions you generally have a pretty good idea what’s going to sell before the sale. And I think our community is small enough that we’ve managed to get the word out.

Also, there are some people who don’t like going to galleries, who are intimidated by galleries. Then there are some people who don’t like going to auctions, who are intimidated by auctions. We’re trying to get at least the former in here.

For the full interview, read on at Canadianart.ca.

As the Globe and Mail's James Adams reported this morning, sales last night ended up being disappointing on many counts, though there were some works that sold above their estimates.

In the Canadianart.ca interview, Ranger says he is in for at least three to five years with this endeavour, so it will be interesting to me to see if results can improve over that time frame. We'll see!

(Image of a visitor at one of the Concrete Auction previews via Canadianart.ca)

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Q&A with 15-year "Overnight Kidslit Success" Cybèle Young in Latest Quill & Quire

Cybèle Young may have seemed like an overnight kidlit success when her most recent picture book, Ten Birds (Kids Can Press), won a Governor General’s Literary Award last fall, but the Toronto-based artist actually began working on it more than 15 years ago.

Young first made her name in the art world, where her miniature paper sculptures have attracted galleries and collectors in Vancouver, London, and New York, and landed her a recent residency in Paris.

In the March 2012 issue of Quill & Quire, Young talks with me about how her art informs her literary work, the transporting power of story, and what readers can expect next.

Here's an excerpt from a short version of the Q&A published on Quillblog:

It might surprise some to learn that you trained as a sculptor. How did you get into publishing?
From a very young age, there was no question in my mind that I was an artist. At the Ontario College of Art, I did all sculpture courses. But in my final year of school, when I was pregnant with my daughter, everything shifted. I took a book-arts class and discovered that books were sculptural, too, on a private yet accessible level. I found myself going to kids’ book sections a lot more than I would go to galleries. And I still do.

You started Ten Birds in 1996. How did it finally come to fruition?
I drew most of the pictures for Ten Birds right after my daughter was born. I went to Groundwood Books with it 15 years ago because co-publisher Patsy Aldana is a friend’s mother. Then I illustrated a bit for Groundwood while focusing mainly on art – I felt I could only have one focus in addition to parenting.

Three years ago, after Groundwood had agreed to publish another picture book of mine, A Few Blocks (2011), I thought, “Well, I already showed this to Patsy, and we’re working together on something else,” so I showed it to Kids Can publisher Karen Boersma, whom I’d met at Groundwood. It clicked. We added one or two pages at the beginning and one or two at the end, but other than that, we used only the original drawings.

I have to say, I find it quite remarkable myself that the drawings Young won her GG for were created when she was just out of art school! A good reminder not to throw early projects away, perhaps!

For more answers from Young, read on at Quillblog, or seek out a hard copy of the March 2012 Quill & Quire.

(Image of Ten Birds' cover via Kids Can Press)

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Connecting the Arts and Business: Sonia Sakamoto Jog profile up at Yonge Street Media

One great thing about doing arts-related profiles for Yonge Street Media is it opens my eyes to a variety of different people working in the Toronto arts scene.

My latest profile, published this week, had me meet up with Sonia Sakamoto Jog, a Rotman MBA and Computer Science BA who went the somewhat unlikely route of helming a small nonprofit arts festival after graduation—the Reel Asian Film Festival.

I found Sakamoto Jog, who has increased partnerships and sponsorships for the fest by 40% in just three years, to be very articulate around potential connection points between business and the nonprofit arts community. Here's an excerpt from Yonge Street story:

"I think it's easy in the arts to start to see yourself within a silo, and maybe not appreciate how complex industry as a whole can be," Sakamoto-Jog tells me when I visit her at Reel Asian's sunny 401 Richmond offices. A long to-do list sits in the middle of her desk, while a sponsorships flowchart, dotted with colourful Post-Its, hangs on the wall behind her. When she talks, it's with confidence and no small amount of energy.

"There's a lot of common goals within [the arts and business]," she says. "But I think that we in the arts can feel like we're on opposite sides of the equation, like 'We need this from you. How can we sell it to you?' rather than 'What are you trying to do that we we're trying to do, and that we can do together?'"

To find out more about Sakamoto Jog and her perspective on arts management, read on at Yonge Street.

And if you want to join a conversation with Yonge Street about emerging leadership in our city, cultural and otherwise, be sure to RSVP for its free March 22 panel on the topic.

(Image of Sonia Sakamoto Jog by Tanja-Tiziana for Yonge Street Media)

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