The Toronto Fringe Festival starts tonight. I did my part by adding a few bits of colour to fringe-central: the Tranzac Club.
Its kind of hard to see, so here's a few details:
Back in Toronto
Sporadic postings are due to not being at home. I'm housesitting for this little cutie Harry and also doing a few work/art things.
Big News
Yesterday I received a lovely letter from the City of Ottawa that I was awarded an artist grant. Yay! Super Yay! I had been keeping my fingers crossed on this one...Now I've got my work cut out for me for the next little while. I proposed to work on whole bunch of things I've got on all the burners. How exciting to know that the work I am putting out in the world in valued and recognized. Mmmm....I feel like the luckiest girl ever!
Escape
A good way to cool off in the heat is to go to the beach in the evening. I'm just not sure why is was so deserted last night. Oh well, more beach for me!
Lac La Peche in Gatineau Park.
Finally, IMAGES!!!!
Here are a selection of images for the Parkettes show. It was a weekend on fun sitting around the corner of Spadina and Bloor. Lots of people enjoyed the grass! I spoke with so many people about the installation and got a great response. Thanks for visiting and participating.
Now, the long awaited images!
Sod in the car:
Pigeon and sign:
Ah, look at the lovely patch of grass:
Paticipants:
At the end of the weekend, I brought all the sod to my friend Sarah's new shop in Kensington Market called The Rage (13 Kensington Ave). She had a pitiful patch of dirt that is now a luscious lawn. Lovely!
Installation at Gallery 1313. The show runs until July 2nd so there's still time to lie in the grass.
I have so many pictures I can't possibly put them all here. Also, a video of all the installations was made...I'll need to make a little page about it all on my web page. Something to work on the summer. Thanks to everyone who participated and engaged in the installation!
Parkettes
I am off to Toronto for my participation on Gallery 1313's Parkettes: In No Way Removed. My grass sod installation for the exhibition will take place at Matt Cohen Parkette located at the corner of Bloor and Spadina. I will be there from 11-6ish on Sat and Sun. There will be an opening for the exhibition at 1313 Queen St W on Thurs June 23 from 7-10pm. Please visit the Gallery 1313 web page for details on the installations scathered throughout the city. See you there!
Can You Spare a Moment?
As I will be gone for week, my postings my be sporatic. While I am away, please read Tania's blog. She always has cute things to look at :)
Necklace
This is the necklace I made for another installament of Jean Rene's Mozaik at the Ottawa Fringe Festival (which starts today!). The necklace will be auctioned off in support of the Arts Court building later in the month.
Heat
Reading
One of my most favorite books ever was Blindness by Jose Saramago. Get it from the library, you will not regret it! It even won a Nobel Peace Prize. So when I saw that he was town last night for the writer's festival AND Don McKellar was doing a reading AND Adrienne Clarkson was interviewing Jose, I HAD TO GO!!! The pictures are not the best as the the room was dark and I was far away.
Don McKellar...he is making a movie of the book...what I would do make some thing interesting for the movie...
Adrienne and Jose hanging out:
LADYFEST
Tiffany has invited to share a table at tomorrow's Lady fest event at the SAW gallery. I happen to have been playing with Sculpey last week and mindlessly made a bunch of beads. I am pleased to have a surprise venue for them. We'll see how my foray into jewelery production goes!
Grass Sod II
My friend Mike helped me make these cute little posts for the 'fence' around the patch of grass. Mike has a whole wood shop in his basement. Cool. He is making the most amazing patio table and chairs. Oh to have the mind of an engineer :) I can only design wee things like 3 dozen little wooden posts. It was fun painting them too. I love oblivious repetitive tasks.
Don't worry, the grass will be bigger for the installation !!!
Grass sod
The other day I bought a piece of grass sod in preperation for my installation in Toronto (Yikes, on the 17th and 18th of this month...only days away :) Sod is very heavy and a bit messy, but it sure looks cute and it smells so good/grassy. I was doing some 'tests' to see how long it will last in the sun on a sidewalk. This image is the sod on the floor in my studio. I will buy a bunch more for the installation.
Mail Score!!
Tania sent me all sorts of unsolicited cute things!!! Thanks so much!!! I was eyeing that cute pouch when she posted it on her blog. Now its mine! So special. Its also nice to know that the tinsel pompoms are non-toxic. So if I get really hungry, I can snack on them and not worry about toxicity levels. And BUTTONS...where am I going to put those cute things...YAY for MAIL!!! Mail makes me happy. THANKS TANIA!
from a few posts ago, the president of Dr.Oetker added a comment to my Lava cakes incident. So I sent them a nice email thanking them for their good PR.
Street Fun
I had some good street painting fun at Art in The Park on Saturday. It became a painting of Blue vs Pink. I think Blue was winning. It was a fun day of meeting people, painting and being outside on such a lovely hot summer day.
Weekend Fun!
I did a preliminary street painting for Art in the Park today. Tomorow will be even more exciting because I will be doing a huge street painting on Clemow Ave. I've got all the pretty colours mixed and ready to go. I will also be selling my oh-so-popular BUY ART t-shirts and come cute Do-It-Yourself ColourForm greeting cards. The park is located between Patterson and Clemow and between Bank St and O'Connor in the Glebe. The show runs from from 10-5pm.
As if there wasn't already a million things to do this weekend, my studio building will be open to the public for Doors Open from 10-4 on Sat and Sun. It is located at 951 Gladstone and my studio is on the second floor. I will be there on Sunday afternoon. Please come see my space and work. It is so nice!
Sign
I put up this sign on a post near my apt today. you know, just to spice up the neighbourhood.
A lady down the street put up this one a while ago:
It says "Be aware of the children. It could be yours". I especially like the girl on her back in a gymnastic body suit.
Purse
I picked up this cute box for a mere 0.25 cents at a community garage sale on the weekend. I added the nice handle and the little balls on the bottom (made from my favorite new medium Sculpey). The box is only made of cardboard, but I think it will be strong enough to handle girl-essentials: lip balm, wallet, phone, camera.
Chair
Since I have a teensy bit of time before I get busy again, I thought I'd take the opportunity to finally re-upholster these chairs I found ages ago...and have been meaning to recover since. If you can't guess, the chair on the left is the 'before' the chair on the right is the 'after'. I couldn't help myself when I saw the patent black vinyl at the fabric store. It only cost $5 for enough vinyl to cover 2 chairs. I'd say its not too shabby a job for my first foray in upholstering. It kind of turned into a fun cattle-cat-horn-fetish chair.
Sister
When I was in BC, I went to visit my sister and her family. When we were growing up, we were sort of raised as twins (18 months apart). We hated it. We hated each other. Now that we are grown-ups, we kind of like it...and we don't hate each other. We went to a great Value Village near where she lives and I found a pair of pants to match hers and she found a pink to match mine. Then we went home to played 'guess who's your mommy' with her 10 month old daughter. She was not fooled. Sisters are lots of fun!
Dessert Disaster
I bought this package at the Giant Tiger (think Walmart but Canadian, thus small, and pretty trashy/cheezy, but Cheap!). I thought it would make a fun dessert. I followed the directions carefully and this is what I got:
I think these issues may have contributed to the demise of the dessert:
1. First time baking in a new-to-me oven.
2. Light not working in oven.
3. Instructions specifically say bake until "center is still liquid" and the real trouble maker "do not open the oven during baking".
I even tried to rebake the remaining 2 cakes, but had the same results. I am going to send the Dr.Oetker web site an email. Maybe they will be helpful.