4th Year XPACE Show

The 4th year art fair at XPACE took place December 18th- 19th where students from all of the art departments were invited to submit work to raise funds for their respective departments. I posted earlier that I was submitting three pieces and later brought four other pieces. One of them I already had, and the other three were drawings that I framed for the event.

Artists who submitted work to the show include Chelsea Jamieson, Kristen D'Aquila, Michael Dawson, Eric Euler, Natasha Gouveia, Carly McAskill, Kayla Altman, Caitlyn Chisamore, Krista Smith, Charlie Bierk, Ryan Bastedo, Shanna V, and Callum Schuster. Sorry if I missed anyone. But thanks to everyone who came out to the show!

These are the other four I presented.

A Glimpse of the material art and design display.

The photography department

   

News!

Hello fellow bloggerites!

Sadly this is not a post about new artwork. However, it is a post shamelessly promoting a show I will be participating in on December 18th and 19th. It is a fundraiser for OCAD's 4th year drawing and painting students (which includes me). I'm going to be submitting three of my older works to the show in hopes to raise some funds!

The show is at XSPACE at 58 Ossington Ave. On Saturday the 18th it will be open from 12- 6pm and Sunday the 19th from 1- 5pm. I should be there the entire time both days. 

I'm going to bring these. Well not all of them, I'm going to pick out three. If anyone who reads this blog can go, they should go!

In other news, I am a huge slacker. Since school ended I have not produced any art, but I have been relaxing. But, I hope to make some new stuff soon!

End of the Semester

To be honest, the past month has been incredibly stressful. I've finished my critiques and assignments and am really looking forward to a bit of a break. I'm still planning on making some art through the break, but definitely not the same amount. I finished my last two critiques this week and I think they went well. Part of me is really sad that the semester is over just because it means another year is going to be over soon. I get really nostalgic around this time of year.

As I mentioned in the last post, my studio space has transformed from a somewhat messy hovel into a dark cave of dusty doom. This is the outside of my fort.

This is the inside, there are a bunch of small tests on the wall. 
 

This is me working on a drawing.

Drawings on mylar for a drawing class.

Thesis Drawings

Me in the critique room after my critique. 

The Studio Space

The 7ish ft. space I was allotted in the studio has changed a few times, here are a few photos of the space in the beginning of the semester, along with some experimental stuff I was working on.

So this is some work I did at the beginning. I was playing with the creation of lines through erasure and indexical mark making. I used tape to lift off charcoal to make some drawings.

The studio is pretty neat, most of the time people just go there to hang out. It's a great environment though, it's great being surrounded by fellow artists because you can get a lot of feedback on your work as you work.

The Beginning of the School Year- A Good Place to Start

Clearly I did not create much work through the summer. I was working a lot and then I went to Florida for two weeks! (My first ever vacation out of the country). There is a big change in the work I've decided to produce this year. It's all drawing based. Yes that's right, I've put away my paint and brushes for a bit. The drawings posted are 5- 7 ft long, 4ft wide. They are charcoal and graphite on paper. I made them for a drawing class and they're abstractions from photographs of buildings in Toronto fused together.

I'm Sorry Blog, I've Neglected You.

Hi there blog and blog followers!

 I want to apologize for not posting a thing in months. There have been a few reasons for the neglect.
- Criticism from a career adviser that my blog was too "chatty"
- Me trying to set up an actual website
- Me being busy

A lot has happened since I last blogged. I've created some art, I quit my job to focus in school, I'm in my last year and I'm in the thesis program. Even though I plan to start up my website sometime soon, I've decided to keep this blog going because I actually enjoy and miss blogging. So, here are two pieces I created over the summer. This past October they were in a coffee house charity event for a friend's charity "Your Life Counts". Right now the work is being held at a coffee shop in Toronto called Coffee Co. on Queen and Parliament.

It's Been A While

I havn't posted anything in over a month! It's terrible I know. Well I have still been keeping busy and today I will post some art that I have been working on.
All of them are done in acrylic and are a lot smaller than I usually work. Most of them are images of my train track photos that were abstracted.

Painters Block

"Art is a business". That was the primary message at an information session I attended a few months ago at school when a few gallery owners came to OCAD.  I guess it is a business, the production and selling of goods- luxury items I suppose. It's the business part of art that pays the bills, but its also the same part that makes me weary of making new art. Maybe I'm just making excuses.

If an artist is supposed to keep on top of art history, contemporary artists and movements, new trends in art,  local galleries, big galleries, galleries for new emerging artists, gallery owners, art aficionados, web presence (blogs and websites), advertising and branding yourself, keeping on top of "customers", shipping and handling, installation, price lists, storage, overhead, profits and art making, there really is no room for anything else. It's a daunting task and I wonder if its right for me.

I've put a lot of time, effort, and money into making art, but apparently there is a whole other side I've neglected to think about. I know I should just make some art and worry about this after, but I just find it so frustrating. The more I think about all of the things that lay ahead of me, the more I wonder if I can handle being an artist. I don't want to make anything if I have to constantly worry about how to please the "customer" and how I can sell more. If pleasing people is my career of choice, I would just stay in retail.

Although art is a business in so many ways, art's initial purpose is not to be sold but to be contemplated on.

No one ever told me that being an artist would be easy, but does it have to be so unattainable?

Upcoming Events

So I just want to let everyone know of a really cool event I will be attending tomorrow. It's called Art Battle and it's taking place in downtown Toronto on Queen. Basically what happens is two groups of four artists have twenty minutes to create a painting and the audience votes which one is the best. Then the two winners duke it out. All of the losers paintings are ceremoniously destroyed. All of the paintings are auctioned off, and those that are not sold are ceremoniously destroyed. Last time they sold 9 out of 10 paintings! And 75% of the money goes to the artist. Check out their facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/#!/artbattleto?ref=ts  and their website at: http://artbattleto.com . They will also be featuring The Keyhole Sessions, "Life drawing with and edge". Check them out at: http://thekeyholesessions.com/tag/life-drawing-toronto .

Now here is the best news of all! I WILL BE TURNING 21 THIS THURSDAY! I'm not really doing anything special, just getting a sweet ice cream cake and eating it with some close friends. But I think it's a noteworthy event!

Things I Should Have Posted Earlier

So I was looking through some of my pictures on the computer and realized there were some school projects I never posted. So today I will post them!

The first image is acrylic on canvas. It was actually the first project for my abstract class. The assignment was to abstract from nature, so I chose the human figure as my muse.

The next image is a painting for my Critical Issues in First Nations Art. Our final assignment had to be a work of art regarding one of the issues we talked about in class. This piece primarily has to do with land issues. One of the things I found interesting while studying Issues revolving around Aboriginal people is that many of the issues have to do with land rights. The land is so important because not only is it part of the identity of the First Nations people, but it's part of the "Canadian identity". ("Canadian identity" is in quotations because whether or not Canadians have an identity or what that identity might be is debatable ).
The bands going through the piece act as a reference to the profile of soil- suggesting that this piece is about land. Also, within the layers of "soil" I have embedded lines from The Indian Act that had to do with land rights. The Indian Act is probably responsible for the majority of the restrictions that affect the First Nations. Embedding lines from the Indian Act is significant because in a way I am burying this document, suggesting the Act needs revisions, or needs to be replaced.

The last two photos are the same project I did for my Critical Views in Painting class. I compiled images from a few fashion magazines and created a story (about 30 pages long) from the images. The whole idea was to re- contextualize glamorous images and juxtapose them with a strange story. Although I had a lot of fun with this one, it took a lot longer than I expected.

Athlete vs. Artist

So I just came back from a run on a glorious day in the GTA. And when I say run, I mean half jogging half walking. By no means am I athletic, but I want to have some kind of a healthy lifestyle... even though "running" once a week probably does not mean I am in shape, it still makes me feel good about myself.
Anyways, I had an idea of something to post here while I was out. Comparing an athlete to an artist. While both are talented in their own fields and must practice to maintain their skills, they are essentially different. Athletes usually lead a healthy lifestyle and are always in good shape. However, as they age they do not perform the same way as they once did when they were in their "prime". An artist does not necessarily lead a healthy life (the stereotype being a crazy hedonistic lush) but their skills only improve as they age (that is if they regularly practice). And although I would love to be in better shape, I am happy to be an artist instead of an athlete.
Speaking of practicing, I've included some paintings and drawings that I did in the past week. These, once again, were done for pure enjoyment and to "warm up" after lazing about for the first few weeks of the summer.
The first one is a small oil painting on wood of a little bronze boot I found lying around in my basement. I havn't used oil paint in a while so I decided to try it out on a small scrap of wood I found.
The second painting is also oil on a piece of scrap wood. This one was actually supposed to be a still life that I set up. But I became frustrated with it, and I just painted this angel candle holder I found.
The next are a bunch of popcorn drawings (with charcoal) on 18x 24" paper. I was watching "Coco avant Chanel" which is a pretty good movie, even if you're not into fashion. Now, I like slow movies, movies that are considered "boring". But the film was aesthetically pleasing and moody and so it kept my interest. Anyways, I had some popcorn left over that I didn't want to eat. I remember doing drawings of popcorn in school at some point. It's pretty challenging because they are so intricate, but it's definitely a good exercise and you come out with some neat drawings.
The last one is also a popcorn drawing, but I used white gouache for the light parts and charcoal for the shadow. This one is done on stained paper I had lying around from first semester.
Anyways, I should go shower. I guess I could have waited to write this entry, but it's what I felt like doing. :)

If You Like Things That Are Good...

Last Friday I went to the 95th annual OCAD grad show. I wish I gave myself more time to look at everything, but the evening came to a close before I had a chance to explore the entire school. There was a wide range of work and a lot of it was very interesting. I had originally written a long post about the event and I deleted it by accident, so this time I'm just going to post some cool websites. Unfortunately not everyone has a website or blog, so I'll note some artist's names too. I'm not going to post any photographs because I'm not sure how appropriate it would be to post other people's work here.
Susie Park- http://susieparkart.com
Winnie Truong- http://www.winnietruong.com/work/work.html
Liza Lacroix- http://lizalacroix.tumblr.com
Karen Grosman- http://karengrosman.blogspot.com
Jasmine Hum- http://jasminehum.ca
Evin Collis- http://www.evincollis.com
Dianne Davis- http://diannedavis.ca/home.html
Hugh Scott Douglas- http://hughscottdouglas.com

Other cool pieces I saw were from:
- Andrew Delatolla
- Alison Collings, "My Brother and I"
- Kieran Brent, "Trip Wires"
- Andrew Frneyhough, "Death of Space Age"
- Jennifer Globush, "Price of Gold"
- Jennifer Austin, "Memory Loss"
- Tina Lam, "Dijon, Narcissus No.2"
- Andre Ozga
- Maya Gallarday, "IMG_0809"
- Tara Westermann, "Transformography"
- Darren Rigo, "Tea"

Quickies

Today I spent some time at home doodling. I havn't really done anything artful since school ended so I decided to do some quick sketches just for fun.
The first drawing was done on some news print with coloured graphite on top of an old gesture drawing.
The second one was a traced gesture drawing that was coloured in. To me, it looks like a robot- superhero.
The next four are drawings of stuffed lambs on newsprint with coloured graphite.
Although none of these took very much time to make, they were a lot of fun. And I love an excuse to draw my stuffed lambs! 

Spring Cleaning

Yesterday I was going through a bunch of really old art and came across some assignments I made in my first year. Now I'm not one to throw things out, especially things that I make, but at this point it's a matter of space. I found quite a few pads of gesture drawings and figured I really don't need all of these. I kept most of them and salvaged some mediocre gestures as well.
I absolutely love gesture drawings- I love creating them and I love looking at them. There is something about its immediacy that breaths life into the drawing. Gesture drawings are energetic and interesting. I've always been fond of "incomplete" drawings and paintings, I think it lends itself more to the conversation of process. It's the process of Art that artists fall in love with, not necessarily the finished product.
I think I may try to use my gestures for something, I don't know what though. I've included some photo's of some of the gestures, they're all 18x 24 on bond paper with charcoal. 
The last drawing was in pretty bad shape in terms of the proportion and stuff so I doodled on it with pen and threw some paint on it for fun.

Upcoming Events

This isn't going to be a traditional posting of my work. Instead I'm going to post an important event that's coming up in Toronto. It's the Grad Show at OCAD; this is where the fourth year students display their work (after slaving away at their thesis projects). http://apache.ocad.ca/events_calendar/eventdetail.php?id=1896
It's a great way to see new emerging talent and to see what my school has been up to. It opens up on Thursday and ends Sunday, I will be attending on Friday to catch the Aboveground Tent Event! I rarely get a chance to go to the tent event (a great sale from a great art supply store), which is going on from Friday to Sunday. So that's pretty nifty! https://www.abovegroundartsupplies.com/
And in other interesting news, OCAD (the Ontario College of Art and Design) is changing it's name! The president, Sarah Diamond wanted it to be "The University of Imagination", as horrible and childish as it sounds, but instead it will be "OCAD University", which isn't so bad. I think the name change will take place sometime this week. I'll try to take some pictures on Friday to show everyone the cool happenings in Toronto.

Third Year Work

I've been enjoying the time off from school and work, so I havn't posted anything in a bit. This is a piece I made for my Language of Abstraction class in the year that just ended. I came up with the idea by taking photos on the train going to school and cutting them up and combining them together. The last piece I made for this class was made in the same way. I think I want to make a series from this idea. The pallet is very neutral, like the scenery. I rather like this piece because of the repetition of irregular rectangles. Perhaps that is my ultimate concern in these works; the relationship between the irregular rectangle in comparison to the precise rectangular surface the image is on.
Hopefully I will start to make some new work soon!