Shelley Savor's Heartland

Bill and I went to the opening of Shelley Savor's Heartland this afternoon at the  Arcadia Gallery on Queen's Quay West.

Each of these hand painted tags has a romantic literary quote on the back.

In Heartland Savor has collected her latest linocuts, watercolours and drawings.

"Pastry Chef"

Savor's superb work speaks for itself.

"After You Left I Started Collecting My Thoughts"

"Dinner at the Canary Restaurant"

"The Wallpaper Knew About Everything That Went On" 

"Pour Your Heart Out"

"My Heart Bleeds For You"

 "The Book You Gave Me Changed My Life"

"Sometimes It Just Stops"

 "Let's Meet at the Bookstore"

"He Was a Real Ladies Man"

 "They Watched Many a Storm Together" (centre)

Arcadia Gallery is at 680 Queen's Quay West at the bottom of Bathurst Street.

You'll find Shelley Savor in fine form tomorrow and the next two weekends.

"He Rose Above the Situation"

"Setting It Free"

"Setting It Free (detail)"

Heartland continues at Arcadia Gallery until March 11th

Saturdays and Sundays from 2 to 5 p.m.

Find more Savor on Flickr.

Sunday at the AGO

When Bill saw that this house didn't have any cars in front of it he took the picture. It is across the street from the Art Gallery of Ontario.

We were on our way to the AGO to look at the Goya and James Gillray etchings and lithographs. Later we got caught up in this room and the one's nearby.

Bill agreed to have a peek at the Contemporary art on the 5th floor, so he got the elevator while I took a picture of this nice furniture.

We love to walk down the Frank Gehry spiral staircase from the 5th floor.

The view is wonderful.

The way the stairs frame the view is wonderful.

Bill composed this fabulous abstraction.

It's always fun to go down these stairs.

Gehry's staircase ends in the Walker Court.

Bill calls this Elmslie Descending a Staircase

Bill

He asked me if the famous staircase reminded me of an umbilical cord or an intestine. Both, definitely.

On our way back to Spadina I had a better look at this boarded-up shop-renovation embedded amongst the crowded shopfronts on the south side of Dundas in Chinatown.

Valentine's Day

Here's my Valentine for Bill: a collage on a store-bought card. Do you know Bill's Flickr identity as Uncle Lynx?

And this is my card from Bill. His cards are always topical. We're planning a trip to Berlin this Spring.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Come to Berlin

John and I now have our apartment and flight tickets for Berlin for May. We have been singing along to Barbara Morgenstern's praise of the city. She shot this video on sites about to be developed or torn down or both in the metropolis.

How she must have laboured over those timeless lines, "Come to Berlin. This place is IN!"

Interior Design Show 2012

Bill and I went to this year's Interior Design Show at the invitation some friends who had created an installation in a shipping container for the How Do You Live? exhibit.

We were last at the Metro Convention Centre for Art Toronto back in November 2011. This time the booths were filled by product and interior designers and manufacturers.

Bill's eye was caught by the bright colours in this sea of white.

I could't resist the look of this woman against this chandelier.

Nor this fabulous crystal chair. Wish I had caught the name of the designer!

We were both attracted to this display of stone garden ornaments. Why be subtle? Go big!

And we loved these chairs folded out of sheets of paper. These were a feature of the fair especially in the lecture hall but I can't find the designer now, though I've been all over the IDS site.

Here's the shipping container designed by Quadrangle Architects. The mural came out much better in this picture then it did in real life. Bill found the room claustrophobic.

Here's the container created by our friends Theresa Casey and Robert Gray. You may remember the fabulous red cube they displayed a few years ago.

They called their installation The Dream Archive and it featured a marvellous multimedia projection and soundtrack. Casey personally glued the all the individual peacock feathers to the wall of the study. Sumptuous!

She used objects and artwork from her own home and those of friends. Even used some family photographs. A dream archive indeed.

Casey took us to say hello to a mutual friend, Lisa Merchant (centre), seen here performing with Ashley Botting in "House Sitters". We wish we had caught more of The Bad Dog Theatre Company who were giving regular comic skits amongst the Miele wares in the Miele Show Haus.

When we got home we checked the IDS website and enjoyed this brief document.