sneak peeks - new artist sets from andrew zangerle and sandi falconer.

looky, friends! here are some special peeks at some buttons i have been working on - a set of charms by sandi falconer, a quintet of country homes by andrew zangerle and some to-be-punched custom buttons for my buds at laugh sabbath*.

i was excited to negotiate a few fall button set releases over my summer of touring. now that i am home, it's even more exciting to be back at my work desk watching them come alive!

i am hoping to have sandi's sets all packed and ready for sale after i get through this thanksgiving long weekend. drew's set should be coming out with another architectural set the week following. i love the newness. i also really love having such talented friends.

oh, and while you are waiting for all that stuff to get released, why not go grab some laughs on queen street?

*laugh sabbath logo by the incomparable emma segal.

white night.

harbinger by ryan livingstone

for those not from toronto, nuit blanche is an annual, city-wide (kinda), all-night art party. from sunset to sunrise, the city is encouraged to stay out and do stuff. some events are official and some are just chaotic ad-hoc happenings. it happens in the fall and usually i am away somewhere. but not this time! fresh back from tour, aitor and i decided to take in some night sights to welcome ourselves home. we both agreed that planning and research were recipes for disappointment and decided to just walk from roncesvalles east along queen street until we got tired of it and then come back. easy peasy!

the last year i was around for nuit blanche, i remember parkdale being a total wasteland. don't get me wrong, i prefer wastelands to club districts but it was really nice to find out about the parkdale bia's leitmotif cube van artist installations. the programming was all over the map as far as style, quality and realization (in my eyes), but i liked that about it. most pieces, even those with heavy concept, provided an easy entry point for observers/participants. a program that spans everything from white noise to a capoeira circle really expresses the community nature of bia activities. in this way, the vans provided a wide range of engagement to the actual community of parkdale, families included.

brian's songs by caroline and gord langill

infinity in the palm of your hand by quality slippers

all night stitch and bitch at the workroom

chromatic high five by amanda browder

the vibe totally changed after we crossed dufferin. it no longer felt like the programming was for the community it was in, the streets were jammed with taxis, drunk people were screaming at aitor about his moustache and the 'art' felt like a thin decorative veneer over the normal drinking that goes on at all the bars that have overtaken the strip. in spite of all the really lovely things going on at the smaller galleries and spaces (like the knit cafe), the might of the big bars was winning out. by ossington, i was getting anxious and everyone was pointing cameras at aitor. our nice date was turning ugly. we strolled back along side streets and relaxed immediately upon crossing dufferin again.

the giant, flaming, bloody altar at queen and dufferin has progressed somewhat. a woman was now scrubbing the entire concrete seating area on her hands and knees, the foamy red spill-off trailing onto the sidewalk and into the sewer. everything smelled like lavender.

after bemoaning the growing night club culture of our neighbourhood, we found a party that was more our speed:

your special day by brette gabel

yup, brette gabel's your special day at gallerywest invited folks in from the street with balloons and signs promising an awesome party just for you. once an hour, the gathering became a surprise party for whoever walked through the door next - complete with sparklers, people singing, homemade cake, a pinata and a fresh-delivered pizza. up there is our birthday boy breaking his pinata. such a wonderful way to end the night - a party about people instead of posing and drinking. we went home beaming and said goodnight to the neon crow at the top of our block.

working in pairs (or the fabricate show at freedom clothing collective).

this evening, i managed to stop by freedom clothing collective to catch the closing reception for fabricate, a show co-presented by freedom and meredith keith gallery. conceived from the current overlap of art, craft and design, the show paired makers of different disciplines into collaborations. since most of the programming was at the other gallery, i only got to see the collaboration between lizz aston and jen kneulman (the ghostly and structured woven pieces pictured throughout). i wish i had time to see the whole show. this particular discussion is a very interesting one to me at the moment. plus, the images i saw online of the other pieces communicated some great skill and curation. freedom's head curator, marsya maharani, wrote an interesting note about the origins of the show and how it fits into the overall complexity of the freedom project and contemporary art/craft/design interplay here. full show write-up is here. great work, everyone! man, it is nice to be back home.

home run.

running doesn't even begin to describe how i hit the ground upon returning to toronto. the city of craft jury session was the afternoon after our late-night return to toronto. the jury session is a joyful slog. but returning home to a crazy mess is not. yes, after six years of exceptional luck with summer subletters we finally terminated the 2011 endless bummer tour with a rude awakening. tupperware used as ashtrays, broken bowls in the cupboards, tea towels burned right through, filthy walls and floors, spills, grime, toe nails, boogers, broken and missing art, trashed furniture - it was pretty disheartening.

i was upon until morning before the jury session just scrubbing the bedroom into a state that felt clean and clear enough to sleep in.

don't get me wrong, i am still really happy to be home. broken possessions and a general sense of thoughtless invasion are pretty nominal concerns on a global level.

after cleaning the bedroom, i began to establish it as our oasis while we work on the rest of the place (between work obligations). it was really satisfying to assemble a collection of art and objects from this trip and before in the hopes of creating some calm in the storm. pictured in this bedroom vignette are works by shannah burton, bernadette greule, tara bursey, gold fools, rcboisjoli and erin dollar (click on the images to find out who made what).

hammer time.

so we cheekily planned the end of our tour to stop off in hamilton. why is this cheeky? in good traffic, it is only half an hour from toronto, especially with our west end home. it's like coming home from a night out and falling asleep on your front lawn. that said, our pals mike and jen bought a house there and moved in while we were away, so we wanted to visit. and it felt good to keep a one-day buffer between crazy driving days and crazy home time.

while the boys sorted tomatoes and smoked pipes, jen and i got to have a little outing to eat on a patio, sip wine and then visit some of the sights on james street north. below is the vestige of the massive knit facade that the beehive collective made to cover the brain for the recent supercrawl. we also visited some awesome retail shops like mixed media and white elephant (way below). i hope jen and mike don't get sick of us because i totally want to come back to the hammer when my mind has cleared a bit to take in the lovely indie scene in a less dishevelled manner.

it's alive!

photo by cortney heimerl

after all the hard work (and no small amount of picky photography by cortney), edition #001 of the awards for nothing project is now up and for sale in the printshop forever shop. i owe cortney a big debt of gratitude for figuring out how to release this huge edition. also, for being so articulate and complimentary in her release post about the project. thank you also to faythe and aaron for hosting our real-world awards launch, for documenting and for posting about it. also, big thanks to lish for posting on the craft: blog.

now, go and browse it up, buds!

at last.

100 awards, all done, packed in a box and ready to jet off to milwaukee for full packaging in the morning. of course, i had to test out the packaging right away. that accounts for the two on top. it all works!

below are the last additions to the run. it is too bad that i only came up with the notion of ligatures at the end of the process. next time there will be more!

awards for nothing, edition #001 will be available in person tomorrow night at sky high gallery in milwaukee. as of september 15, the rest will be released for purchase via printshop forever.