I love production days! Here's a time lapse video of my work day at the studio yesterday. I am making a bunch of fuzzy gaiters for this weekend's Idle Hands Craft Show (
Show at Textile Centre
I've made a photo album of pics from the exhibition of sleeves at the Centre Contemporain de Textiles de Montreal. It is quite a nice show to be in, and such a beautiful table full of sleeves.
Magical Dreamworld
In keeping with the show that's opening tonight (Magical Dreamworld at LPM Gallery), my cat Pandora has been having a magical dreamworld of her own. For three days in a row this week, she has been consistently burrowing under a pile of blanket on various beds in the house. Its too cute. Maybe one day she can have her own YouTube channel and book like my fav internet cat Maru from Japan.
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Friday:
...and you thought November would be dreary...
When November dayz are dreary, cold, and getting darker, all we need is a bit 'o Kaleidopscope Art to cheer us up. Here's what I'm up to this month:
La Petit Mort, Magical Dreamworld, Ottawa 306 Cumberland Street, Ottawa, November 6 - 29, 2009 I'll be showing my Pink Orifice Creatures fresh from their show at Toronto's Hysteria Festival
Pleins Les Bras at Montreal Centre for Contemporary Textiles 5800 St. Denis Street-espace 501, Montreal From November 11-December 18 2009 Vernissage November 11 at 5:00pm "MCCT will host in its gallery an exhibition entitled Plein les bras. The object of this exhibition is to display ornaments designed to embellish our arms, authentic works of art specifically designed to be worn. Works are produced through various techniques of textile construction: knitting, weaving, embroidery, felting, sewing, lace, fulling etc. " I'm thrilled that my sleeves were selected for the invite! SWEET!
Idle Hands Craft Show at Patrick Gordan Framing 160 Elm Street, Ottawa November 29 11:00-6:00pm Local crafty mavens gather to sell their handmade treasures. I’ll have sweet sweaters, lovely sleeves, brooches and you-can’t-through-winter-without-them-Fuzzy GAITERS! I’ll also be taking orders for custom letter pillows for christmas gifties. All details soon to appear on the www.patrickgordonframing.ca website. Look for Kaleidoscope Art on the invite around town!
Vernissage Friday November 6 / 7 - 10pm
Ottawa curator Missy Marston-Shmelzer has invited artists to find their happy place. “This show is the result of an open call to artists to produce work, in the medium of their choice, that represents a perfect world, a place of dreams, where anything is possible. Invented landscapes, creatures, or machinery, and the participation of both the living and dead were encouraged.” www.lapetitemortgallery.com/
Organisms and Orifices at Toronto's Hysteria Festival
These cute and cudley creatures, the Pink Orifices, will be joining their Organism Creature friends at Toronto's Hysteria Theatre Festival from Oct 22 to the 31st. These fibre sculptures will be part of an installation in the lobby and lounge of Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, at 12 Alexander Street. Although the Pink Orifices look adorable and sweet, they have been known to have a temper and be vicious if provoked. Thus, please do not touch or feed the animals.
Hysteria website at www.artsexy.com
Video of TEXT-ING at DUMBO
Here's a quick video of some the TEXT-ING activity this past weekend at DUMBO.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbMpiA1xxhA&hl=en&fs=1&]
DUMBO arts Festival! THIS weekend!
I'm just about ready to go to Brooklyn next weekend THIS WEEKEND! to exhibit at the Dumbo Arts Festival. I'll be exhibiting my TEXT-ING project on Plymouth Ave btween Main and Washington Streets. I have been studying the area with google Street View, how handy is that? That's the Brooklyn Bridge in the background to the left and the Manhattan Bridge on the right.
So just imagine the image below on the street down somewhere there.
I'm not planning on taking the fencing, and changing the tarp to astro turf (still need to find :). and I need to sew up just a few extra letters like 'o' and 's' and 'n', you know the ones that come in handy when there's a spare.
Now here's the cool part. I have set up a Flickr site for this exhibition. The festival has created an ipod app so people can get info on the artists and exhibitions in the palm of their hand. So I sent in tiny pics and a wee video for my profile. I also included an email address: font24move@photos.flickr.com
that people can use to upload a photo right to the flicker account. So then, when people are taking pics of the pillow TEXT msg, they can send it right them and there to the interweb flickr account.
So if you're perusing my blog during the weekend of Sept 25-27, there may be some new photos being uploaded every once in a while. I'll likely be adding some of my own pics at the end of each day.
holidays are good to take
we took a wee trip east this month: New Brunswick is where its at these days. It had been while since we've had holidays, and it turns out they are very relaxing and enjoyable: camping, visiting family, swimming in the ocean, hiking a mountain, you know, the usual vacation things. Plus we had great weather too.
ah, beachy-ness
A tiny baby bird. So Cute!
Beach excitement
Hiked Mount Carleton, the highest peak in the maritimes, beautiful view!
Pretty mushroom, don't eat it!
Nests
I was commissioned by SAW Gallery to make a few nests for their Animal House exhibition that opens this Saturday, link to fcbk grp.
First, I made a sculptural form chicken wire and plaster/fabric swatches combination.
For the first nest, a Sun Bird, a little bird from Malaysia, makes nests from detritus and garbage and often uses bright and colourful materials to attract a mate. This nest is pretty tiny, maybe about 1' long. I collected scraps from the streets and fields and for a few moments, felt like a bird looking for nesting materials. I added the bird at the last minute, and with a little beak job (not in this photo), looks quite like the real Sun Bird
For the Weaver Bird nests, I found this product called coco liner that is used to line flower boxes, and it is the perfect Weaver Bird texture material. I covered the forms with the coco liner and turns these nests into nooks that I'd like to take a nap in. Sweet! These ones a much bigger, the larger one is about 4' long.
The exhibition runs to end of September, so there's plenty of time to swing by and take a peak at all the animal art. Link to SAW Gallery site.
July July and more July
Oh my, my, where has the time gone. One moment, its June, and the next time you look, its already the end of JULY???? How can this be??? I have been keeping myself busy with a few jobs here and there, website re-design, business card ordering, general re-branding, etsy shop set up, and throw in a cottage sejour, a camping trip, family visiting, its been a great month of work and play.
here are some pics:
New business cards above, and take a sneak peak at the newly re-designed website at
www.KaleidoscopeArt.com (I have been experiencing a few difficulties in uploading, it may or may not work :) and at the same time, I thought it might be nice to refresh the look of this here blog.
I have finally got my act together and got on the Etsy banwagon.
Only a few items in the shop right now, but more to come.
Click the widget at the top right or here to get to Etsy.
Cottage moon rise:
Camping sunset
Spinning my niece on parliament hill:
Summer time good times!
Blink Gallery Re-Cap
My show at Blink Gallery ended a few days ago, and I have been gathering images for photo album. It was a great venue to explore my Word Jumble Pillow Project (AKA: TEXT-ING) and have people interact with the art. It was fun to see people get creative and come up with words/text and document them. I was also able to add a few letters to the project: i, t and g, part of the residency portion of the show. It was like having a studio in a glorious park for 5 days, plus people came through to chat, peruse the clothes and have fun with words.
I have make a photo album of the exhibition on this blog. Some of the images of previous documentation of Word Jumble are here.
There is also a Fcbk group for the exhibition and project. If you took photos at the show and want to post them somewhere, please do!
I got a lovely review on the Ottawa Citizen on Saturday June 13 and an online review at g-Gallery.
Now all I want to do is:
Blink Gallery opens tonight...there will be cake!
Word Jumble (AKA: TEXT-ING) at Blink Gallery
My show at Blink Gallery opens next Thursday evening. I'll also have my clothes and be artist-in-residence from Wednesday to Sunday. Come and make your favorite word in pillows! Hope you can make it!!!
Studio Video...Camera is dying
Video footage of my studio and in-progress art projects. My camera is dying. It is all fritzy and confused...and creating very interesting effects. I am trying to get the most out the the dying days of my Sony Cybershot, after being dropped or jangled around a few too many times.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKXmNVe-Gvs&hl=en&fs=1]
ArtPark=Success
Had a great day at ArtsPark, despite the chilly weather. (note: I'm wearing a winter coat + a down vest!) Atleast there was no rain. Here's a pic of me and my 'booth'. Thanks Cecile for the tent loan! And thanks to all who perused, purchased and supported my handmade, one-of-a-kind clothing!
ArtsPark This Weekend, May 10
I’m a vendor at ArtsPark in Hintonburg this coming weekend.
On Mother Day, May 10, from 10:00-4:00pm
I’ll be selling my clothes and accessories
All One-of-a-Kind garments: shirts, hoodies and skirts, hair accessories and brooches
Can’t wait! See you there!
(Bring Cash!)
oh, and I also have a piece in the art exhibition
All the deets at:
http://www.hintonburg.com/artspark09.html
FREE FALL at Gallery 101
Here's a pic of my FREE FALL work installed at Gallery 101. I also found out that night that Isabelle Pauwels was the artist who assigned me the piece. It was a busy night...thank you BC artists, for bringing a great party to the Ottawa art scene. We needed it!
BC Scene + SWARM + FREEFALL
I am part of Gallery 101 + Helen Pitt collaboration for BC Scene. The Exhibition opens on Tuesday, April 21 with a gallery SWARM starting at 6pm. Galleries from across the city are exhibiting the art of BC artists. The Gallery 101 + Helen Pitt collaboration, 5 artists in ottawa and 5 artists in Vancouver were assigned to develop an art idea or concept to be created by an artist in the other city. I was assigned something rather vague and open ended. A photo of it is located here, on the Helen Pitt site.
So what do you do with that???? Was I to go skydiving? Should I jump out of plane? Ottawa, Illinois is home to the largest skydiving school in North American. I spoke with several people about this idea, jostled ideas around, which then lead to an interview with a woman who had recently taken up skydiving (41 jumps in 2 years, and she had just bought her first parachute, true commitment to the sport). One of the questions I asked her was how would she describe skydiving as idea/concept. She explained it as a spiritual experience, and developing a new relationship with the sky. The free fall portion of the jump is fast an windy, and yet weightless and 'floaty', like swimming in air. I thought that was very intriguing, to be part of the sky in a new way, and it was on this idea that I developed the installation I am exhibiting.
In creating the work, I researched the perfect sky blue paint by gathering many paint chips from Canadian Tire, Home Depot, etc... I did some paint tests in the studio and on canvas to make sure I could sew painted canvas. As I have been working on a Word Jumble Pillow Project, I created the words FREE FALL in letter pillows out of painted blue canvas and shiny metallic fabric (for glitter and sparkle). In working with other artists in the show, we all settled on spaces to install in the gallery and everyone agreed that I ought to use the skylight. Last week, I was up on a tall ladder painting in the sky light and hanging the letter pillows. Here's pics of the painted skylight and the pillows in-progress in the studio. I'll post some pictures of the installation after it opens this week.
This has been a challenging and exciting show to be part of... in developing work for someone else to make (a whole other blog post :), creating work based on someone else idea, the logistics of exhibiting/installing and working with the other artists in the show. The show runs until May 30, at which time there will be a publication launch and artist talks. See you at SWARM on Tuesday!
Spring Studio Workshops!
What Do Pie, Cornwall, Skydiving and Brooches have in common??
Pie? Cornwall? Skydiving? Brooches? A rather disparate set of ideas, and yet they are all part of the spring art explosion for Kaleidoscope Art.
Cherry Pie Women’s Networking Event
I’ll be conducting a demo on on brooch making (see more below on Brooches) and meeting other business women in the city for networking and inspiration.
Lagos restaurant, Dow’s Lake
MArch 31, 2009 7pm
Tickets: 15.00 ea or 2 for $22 (students $8)
Catherine 819-776-5161 RSVP to catherineknows@videotron.ca
Cornwall Regional Art Gallery
I’ll be doing an artist talk on April 5 at 1pm along with woodworker Norman Pirollo, and metalsmith Cairn Cunnane. The Gallery is located at 168 Pitt St, Cornwall, 613-938-9619
Masterworks East Tour of Eastern Ontario organized by the Ontario Crafts Council
March 1-April 17
http://www.cornwallregionalartgallery.ca/
Tour Dates and Locations: http://www.craft.on.ca/OCC_News/Regional_Update
Skydiving?
How did this one happen?
Transcontinental Divide is a collaborative group exhibition with Gallery 101 and Helen Pitt Gallery (Vancouver) and is part of BC Scene. The 5 Ottawa artists in the exhibition were assigned to develop an art idea/concept that would be swapped with 5 Vancouver artists to create. In turn, we are creating works Vancouver artists to be exhibited at Gallery 101. My assigned was skydiving. Did I jump out of a plane? You’ll have to attend the exhibition to find out...
Opening April 21, 6pm-11pm, part of the Swarm Galleries Tour
Gallery 101, 301 Bank St, 2nd floor
Brooches
I will be conducting some spring Brooch and Hair Accessories workshops at my shiny-newly expanded studio. These fuzzy and cheerful brooches will add fluff and delight to any spring wardrobe. Fun and funky hair clips will also be demonstrated. And the best part is you made them yourself. Grab a gal pal and pick a workshop time that works for you.
Thurs April 23 from 7:00-pm to 9:30pm
Sat April 25, from 2:00-4:30
Wed, April 29, from 7:00-pm to 9:30pm
Other dates to be announced in May...
Cost $40, includes all supplies and materials.
contact Karina to register, or sign up with you come to the Cherry Pie event.
613-266-5936
Studio 155b Lorretta Ave, Ottawa