Toronto Design Offsite Show

Last Friday night John and I met Shelley Savor at the Gladstone Hotel for the opening night of their annual Alternate Design Show, Come Up to My Room. When we arrived at the 2nd floor lobby for the exhibition a cool projection of visitors in the lobby had just been set up on the balcony overlooking Queen St West.

Visitors were already smoozing and viewing artwork with drinks in hand in the Public Spaces. The show incorporates 11 private rooms as well as the public spaces where artists, designers and architects displayed their works.

In Room 206, for instance, VAERY Studio, a collaboration between two University of Waterloo Architecture students, Richard D'Alessandro and Sonja Storey-Fleming created a surrealistic, architecturally-inspired change to the space.

In Room 201, architectural designer and artist, Wendy W. Fok, of Studio-WF, created dramatically-lit wall and floor installations that connected outlines of cityscapes. You can see the shadow of a cityscape at the bottom end of the installation.

In the public space, John looks up into a hanging installation, Firmament, made up of discarded electronic parts by collaborators, Matthew Blunderfield and Skanda Lin.

Here, I've caught a visitor in front of Sonja Tyagi's wall hanging, Building Ties, made up of numerous bow ties.

After viewing Come Up to My Room on the second floor, we three continued up to the third floor to see Hard Twist 2011- Obsession, an Annual Juried show of Textile-based art. We all loved the original lobby furniture.

We also all loved Keiley Stewart's big animal heads made of felted wool and flax. The heads were complimented across the hallway by photos of people wearing them in parkland along the lakefront.

There was lots to see, Bill and Shelley couldn't resist a little rest on the funky chairs  at the 3rd floor landing.

and John couldn't resist a shot of the old elevator reflected in a stairwell window as we descended to the ground floor lobby.

Gareth Bate's Jewel Net of Indra

Our favourite "room" at the Come Up to my Room show at the Gladstone Hotel was our friend, Gareth's Jewel Net of Indra; a wall of circular mirrors and over 300 portraits of people Gareth considered iconic.

As you can see those people ranged from Osama bin Laden to Geronimo and, of course, the viewer is also reflected in the mirrors behind the acrylic paintings.

John and Shelley had a great time admiring the portraits and exclaiming about the ones we recognized.

Congratulations, Gareth! A wonderful concept beautifully executed. Certainly the piece is "Best in Show" in our opinion.

Hyungshin Hwang at the Art Bar

Bill, Shelley and I had just left the Gladstone after enjoying Come Up to My Room. We were attracted to some wood sculptures in the Art Bar gallery. The artist and his friends beckoned us in and opened the door.

It was fun to meet the artist, Hyungshin Hwang.

He was showing three life-sized sculptures

and a lovely still-life of materials given to the artist by a lumber company, his tools (we love the bags of bolts), and groups of finished pieces left over from making the sculptures.

We are very happy we saw this show!

Change the Sheets

This new song and video by Kathleen Edwards suits our mood perfectly. We like her and we hope this will be her breakout album. She produced the album with Bon Iver.

In Memoriam Len Kimber

Today we celebrated the life of Bill's big brother Len who died last week at home in St Catharines at the age of 69.

There was standing room only as Len's family and friends crowded the small Church of Christ in Fenwick, Ontario. It was one of the most moving and comforting memorials we have ever attended. Bill and I will miss our dear Lenski!
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KIMBER, Leonard John - Passed away peacefully on Friday, January 6, 2012 surrounded by his family at the St Catharines General Hospital in his 70th year. Beloved husband of Merla for 47 years. Dear father of Kelly (Bruce) Greenlaw, Craig (Tivie) Kimber and Ryan (Danaka) Kimber. Dear and loving grandfather to Sam, Ryan and Lily. Sadly missed by his mother Reta Kimber, his mother-in-law Zeta Ostrosser, his brother Bill and sister Kathy and their families. Cremation has taken place. The family will receive friends at the Church of Christ (765 Welland Road, Fenwick) on Wednesday, January 11th from 10:00 - 11:00am. Memorial service to follow at 11:00am. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Kidney Foundation of Canada or the Fenwick Church of Christ would be appreciated by the family. (from The Standard, St Catharines)

Red Type Ink

Every time Bill and I drop into Balfour Books we ask Lewis what he's been up to with Red Type Ink. We've already fallen in love with this brilliant collection of  notecards in cool packages.

Today Lewis showed us a freshly silkscreened, hand folded bag.

He also showed us the planning stages of a line of individually packaged notecards.

New pictures, not included in the boxes.

Bryan Gee is the genius behind Red Type Ink's graphic identity. I love his stuff.

Lewis's card. How cool is this? 

Marc Audette at Gallery 44

Bill and I dropped into Gallery 44 this morning while Marc Audette was installing his new show.

This large photograph, printed on cotton cloth, is about to go up on the wall.

 This cellphone picture will give you a sense of what the finished installation is going to look like. Mark is planning to animate the legs with projections.

 He gave Bill and I a copy of the catalogue.

 Marc Audette "Art Class 010" at Gallery 44. We'll be at the opening reception this Friday.

American Art Museum

OK, we promised to get Washington, DC up by the New Year and here it is January 1st. We have one more major museum to show you. On F Street in the Penn Quarter join Bill and I at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

It's in the wonderful old US Patent Office Building (1836)  which also houses the National Portrait Gallery. I would advise two trips to see both. The collections are vast!

Bill and I headed directly up to the second floor to see the collection of Contemporary Art. These visitors are examining Duane Hanson's realistic, life-sized sculpture, Woman Eating, 1971 in the huge, open exhibition space.

We had never seen any major Nam June Paik video installations before. The American has two. I loved the advisory at the entrance to Megatron Matrix, 1995.

I loved Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz' installation,  Sollie 17, 1979-80. I remember seeing pictures of this piece in my undergraduate art history textbook.

The Kienholz team collected several rooms from a derelict,  residential hotel before it was torn down and re-assembled them as a work of art. Brings to mind the 99% that we hear so much about lately. Very moving.

Here's Bill with Thomas Ruff's jpeg de01, 2005. Ruff took a low-res photo of the ruins of the World Trade Centre off the net and enlarged it to make something out of the jagged compression artifacts.

It's nice to see these two nudes side by side. To the left, Eric Fischl's What stands Between the Artist and ..., 1994, and Phillip Pearlstein's Two models in a window with cast iron toys, 1987.

Bill and I are big fans of Phillip Guston's work. This is Transition, 1975.

Look at these voluptuous brushstrokes!

The great collection continues on the 3rd floor in the 20th Century rooms. That's Hugo Robus' sculpture, One and Another, 1934 in front of Thomas Hart Benson's huge, mythic Achelous and Hercules, 1947. In the background we can see a Marsden Hartley. All three show the influence of Art Deco.

There are lots of discoveries to be found in the collection. We've never seen Theodore Roszak's rather surrealistic work before. Bill shot this nicely turned-out student studying Roszak's Recording Sound, 1937.

In the 19th century rooms Bill liked the decoration of this piano by painter, Thomas Wilmer Dewey. Mr Dewey was part of the Cornish Art Colony in Cornish, New Hampshire whose members tried to incorporate art into their daily lives. Nice daily lives!

The jewel of the 3rd floor is this three story arcade that houses the Luce Collection of American Art (about 3500 works).

Before we left the museum we wandered the ground floor galleries where changing exhibits are installed. Here's a fine David Hockney, Savings and Loan Building. 1967.

How about these palm trees!

By the time we got to the Folk Art collection on the ground floor we were almost too  exhausted to continue, but the art was too wonderful to skip. Bill liked this thoroughly modern woman admiring the work of Howard Finster. Left to right we see The Lord Will Deliver his Children Across Jordan, And the Moon Became as Blood and finally, Then Shall BE Earth qUAKES. All 1976.

When we finally returned to F Street, Bill waited patiently on the plaza so I could catch these fast moving sailors. We wondered if they were visiting from nearby Annapolis.

Happy New Year!!

Wishing all our followers and visitors the very best in 2012!!

John and I celebrate our anniversary every New Year's Eve. He invited me to his New Year's party on the eve of 1984 and I arrived (late) and never went home. 28 Years ago! Ever since that night, I've made John an Anniversary/New Year's card every year. Here's this year's card.
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