IDS & Studio North

Lots Of Openings Tonight!!!

I only have a few minutes to write this blog post before I am off to work for the opening at Harbourfront Centre's newly renovated and incredible space, York Quay Gallery. I will be working at the opening part way into tonight, after which I am planning on shooting up to Dundas West to hit up a couple more openings before they finish for the evening! I urge you to come down and check out the amazing new space at Harbourfront, as well as take in the seven new exhibitions opening. It's a sure bet to see some great work!
Also on the itinerary for tonight is Not Forkchops at Loop Gallery, and Shiny, Pretty Things at Cooper Cole Gallery. Well, looks like that's all for now! Hopefully I can find the time to photograph each of the openings and post back here shortly! Have a great friday, and GO SEE SHOWS!!!!!

Tonight - Toronto Design Offsite Opening Party!

Toronto Design Offsite, Festival Opening Party

@ Lightform, 267 Niagra St.

Wed, Jan. 23rd. 8pm-12am

Come join us tonight to help celebrate the opening of the much anticipated Toronto Design Offsite Festival, at Lightform's Toronto showroom. See what the festival is all about, meet local designers and craftspeople, and check out some amazing installations by local ceramic artist, Grace Eun-Mi Lee, installation artist Xiaojing Yan, and multimedia artist and photographer Gwen Lim-Brydson!

Here is a sneak peek of some of their work, Please come have a drink, meet interesting people and listen to tunes spun by DJ Joe Blow. Hope to see you there!

Above, image of work by Grace Eun Mi Lee, below images by Xiaojing Yan.

Trade School Toronto: TO DO 2013 Edition

A while back I posted about the awesome barter-based workshop and education program Trade School Toronto! I am excited to see that they have kept the momentum going and are now taking part of TO DO 2013, by hosting a series of courses and workshops for barter during the festival!
Each of the workshops on offer will be hosted by the generous Centre for Social Innovation and Gravenfeather Studio. Here is a bit more information about Trade School Toronto and a list of classes currently about to start:

Trade School Toronto is an alternative learning project that runs on a barter system. Pay for a class with a barter item (like food, supplies or help) that your teacher requests! The Trade School model started in New York in 2010, and since then Trade Schools have been popping up all around the world. In the fall of 2012, a group of local artists and community organizers banded together to organize Trade School Toronto.

In its first season, TSTO successfully ran 30 workshops over the course of five days in Fall 2012. Now, it is continuing its mission of promoting access to education via alternative modes of currency by facilitating multiple design-focused workshops throughout TO DO, exchanging practical knowledge for practical items.

Challenging traditional notions of expertise as tied to formal education, TSTO opens up the educational floodgates to the many Torontonians who gained their expertise through independent learning and hard work. Celebrating practical wisdom, mutual respect, and the social nature of exchange, TSTO is open to all – anyone can be a TSTO teacher, just as anyone can be a TSTO student.

Current workshops include:

Monday, Jan 21, 2013; CSI Spadina, 215 Spadina 4th Floor, Think Tank
Visual Learning 101 – 6:00pm to 8:00pm
The Design of Human Interaction – 8:00pm to 10:00pm

Wednesday, Jan 23, 2013; Graven Feather, 906 Queen Street West
Dating by Design: The Basics – 10:00am to 12:00pm
Learn How to Wire Crochet – 12:00pm to 2:00pm
Duct Tape Creations – 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Learn How to Crochet – 4:00pm to 6:00pm
The Evolution of Media: A Guided Discussion – 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Design a Festival – 8:00pm to 10:00pm

Thursday, Jan 24, 2013; CSI Spadina, 215 Spadina 4th Floor
Learn the African Net Weave with Seed Beads – 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Collaborative Consumption: Design your life to be more collaborative – 8:00pm to 10:00pm

Friday, Jan 25, 2013; Graven Feather, 906 Queen Street West
Human-Centered Design: A Primer – 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Designing Transformative Problem Statements – 8:00pm to 10:00pm

Check the TSTO website for more details about specific workshops, and how you can get involved. All workshops are being generously hosted at Graven Feather on Queen Street West near Trinity Bellwoods and The Centre for Social Innovation.

Tonight: PechaKucha Vol.20

PechaKucha Vol.20
@ the Gladstone Hotel, Melody Bar
Tues. Jan. 22nd, 2013. Doors Open at 8pm
Admission $5

It appears that tickets are Sold Out on the Eventbrite page for tonight's PechaKucha, at the Gladstone Hotel, however, I think it is definitely worth it if you still wanna try to score some tickets at the door. Here is some more info on tonight's speakers and the PechaKucha series.

Originally founded in Tokyo in 2003, Pechakucha Nights are informal and fun gatherings where creative people get together to share their ideas, works, thoughts, holiday snaps and just about anything really - in the PechaKucha 20 images x 20 seconds format.
PechaKucha Toronto is the official chapter of the PechaKucha Organization, a volunteer-run organization with regular events spanning 600 cities around the world.
Come join us at the Gladstone Hotel's Melody Bar tonight, to celebrate the 20th edition of our PechaKucha Night Toronto!
The number 20 is a special number for the PechaKucha family, and the age of 20 is also a turning point for Japanese people. In Japanese culture, 20 is the age when they legally become an adult, also known as 'Coming of Age'.
To celebrate, PechaKucha Toronto's 'Coming of Age', we want to make this a very special evening. There will be giveaway's, snacks and even cupcakes.
All advance ticket holders will be welcome an hour early (7pm) to enjoy some snacks, mingle and meet people before the evening begins.


Here is a list of presenters for the evening:

Bi-Ying Miao / Matt Compeau - HotPop Factory
Connor Dickie - Bio Entrepreneur
Erin Lewis - Wearable Technology Artist
George Kourounis - Stormchaser
Jake Hirsch-Allen - IP / Startup Lawyer
Jay Wall / Sean Martindale - Designer / Artist
Kyle Baptista - Designer
Melanie Egan / Paul McClure - International Jewelery Design Festival
Raymundo Pavan Gutierrez / Dana Seguin - BADD - Architects and Design Strategists
Sinead Cormack - Performer and Creator

Tonight: OCAD U - Design With Dialogue

January 22nd, 2013. 6-9pm

OCAD U, 100 McCaul st. Rm 187

Admission: Free, RSVP

What design practices facilitate the creation of culture?

How do we learn and teach from design process itself?

How have we learned to improvise or hack design practices so that we personalize design thinking with our own experience?

How might we build on eachother's practices to make something new happen?

Design with Dialogue presents a special workshop for the Toronto Design Offsite for participants to experience culture building through design process. We will have an open space exchange of learning and generative framing through design participation. If you are a designer or participatory culture artist, we invite you to attend and share in this workshop a method or practice for small group envisioning, scenario or model making, or group sketching type practice.

Culture building is the re-creation of artistic and social evolutionary practices that enable continuous learning across generations. The workshop asks people to share their own design processes in small groups to co-create cultural artifacts, such as a learning experience, an interior, a song, a plan, or a website or publication. Our goal is the participatory process itself, and learning from one another ways of revealing collective wisdom and aliveness in co-creation.

Design with Dialogue (DwD) is a Toronto-based open community of practice. This special workshop is a collaboration between Gelareh Saadatpajouh and Markus Doerr with Peter Jones from DwD. DwD gathers monthly to convene workshops to discover how to lead organizational and community change and drive meaningful action in our organizations, our communities our projects and ourselves. We learn and play together through participatory design, strategic dialogue, creative arts and emerging facilitation methods.

This is a special free (sponsored) event. To confirm your attendance, please register via Eventbrite or email gelareh@todesignoffsite.com

The Brothers Dressler: Ash Out of Quarantine

Following a recent exhibition in the project window at Harbourfront Centre's York Quay Gallery, the Brothers Dressler's latest project, Ash Out of Quarantine - Tumbling Ash, New Growth is now on view at the Junction's ARTiculations, as a part of Toronto Design Offsite, Junction Kick-off Week.
Here is a link to a recent interview with the Brothers Dressler in Toronto Standard, be sure to check out their upcoming show the Brothers Dressler: 10 Years and Beyond, hosted at their studio @ 225 Sterling Rd. Unit 16 - Jan 23rd - 27th, 2013.
Here is some more info about Ash Out of Quarantine, and some images from the opening which happened at ARTiculations this past saturday...

Ash Out of Quarantine - Tumbling Ash, New Growth
@ ARTiculations, 2928 Dundas St. W.

Saturday Jan. 19th - Feb.17th, 2013
Opening Reception: Sat. Jan. 19th, 6-9pm

Toronto is in the midst of a foreign invasion. Close to a million ash trees will wall over the next five years due to this invader. A stowaway of globalization, the emerald ash borer beetle traveled to North America in a shipping container over a decade ago and has since left a path of destruction across numerous states and provinces. With little that can be done to stem the inevitable elimination of every ash tree, focus must be put on what to do with the carnage. Brothers Dressler are embarking on a journey to bring the potential of ash to the public eye. We are focusing on much of our new work on bringing Ash out of Quarantine. 

Tumbling Ash is a first step to promote the use of this material and its properties. A cascade of branching limbs tumble down the wall cradling budding fruit of hand-blown gloves softly lit with LEDs. Using our branches system comprised of steam bent wood components with nodal connections as a starting point this piece is meant to evoke thought about material use and an awareness of resource life cycles. Mixed with the ash parts are some elm from a Toronto tree lost to Dutch Elm disease and walnut sap wood which is usually discarded in the milling process. This modular system of assembled parts can continually evolve and expand as will our awareness of the materials and resources that surround us and their limited nature.

ALSO Collective

The opening for our show Workplace Affairs this past Saturday turned out to be a huge success with tons of people coming and going as they stopped in at each of the venues for Junction Kick-off Week along the way!

While I was there, I had the chance to speak with the guys from ALSO Collective, who are currently putting together a video project for the Toronto Design Offsite Festival. 

While doing an interview with them on camera I may have froze in nervousness and probably turned a bit red in the face too, but I really enjoyed some of the questions they had to ask me about the perception of Design in Toronto and Canadian Design at large. 

And although I didn't have immediate answers to a few of their questions, I feel as though it charged some great conversations among new acquaintances and people at the gallery.

I am excited to see the edited video after the festival is finished as well as hear what other people have to say. Here is some more info about ALSO Collective and a look at some of their design work.

ALSO Collective is an emerging multi-disciplinary design studio in Toronto. Founded in April 2012 by designers, Antonio Lennert and Symon Oliver, the studio has received recognition from the local and national design community through multiple awards.

The team is composed of a mix of graphic and industrial designers, printmakers, photographers and videographers. The projects produced by the studio vary from branding and print design to interactive design, video and data visualization.

In spite of its short history, the studio has already established a remarkable clientele that includes Post Media, SickKids Hospital, OCAD University, OCAD U Student Gallery, Sustainable Design Awards, as well as local artist Shannon Gerard. To complete that list, the studio has become a sponsor (and are collaborating with) the Toronto Design Offsite Festival. The ALSO crew will be documenting this year's edition of the festival to produce a promotional video.

A few visual identities designed by ALSO Collective

Symon Oliver and Antonio Lennert, founders of ALSO Collective.

Jon Sasaki @ Jessica Bradley Gallery

Jon Sasaki - Solo Exhibition

Jessica Bradley Gallery

1450 Dundas St. W.

Exhibition: January 12th, - March 16th, 2013.

Toronto artist Jon Sasaki is known for his original, quirky and fundamentally serious work. Sasaki's 2011 exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario's Young Gallery launched a series of work inspired by Canadian art legend Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven's forays into nature to depict Canada's wilderness. In his recent work the grand themes of nature and the cosmos emerge in the microcosm and the banal. Sasaki's survey exhibition Good Intentions was seen in numerous venues across Canada in 2011-2012.

Here is a look at some of his current works on at Jessica Bradley Gallery. For more information check out his website here.

Jon Sasaki, Microbes Swabbed From a Palette Used by A.J. Casson, 2013. Digital Print.

Jon Sasaki, Microbes Swabbed From a Palette Used by Frederic Varley, 2013. Digital Print

Jon Sasaki, Microbes Swabbed From a Palette Used By Tom Thomson, 2013. Digital Print

Opening: Telephone Booth Gallery, By the Dozen

In a nod to local Junction artists, neighbours as well as the customers of Baker's Dozen Donuts across the street, Telephone Booth Gallery will be hosting part-two to last years exhibition 'Local Call'.
Aptly titled 'By the Dozen', the exhibition includes the works of eight local Junction artists. As one of the first shows to open Junction Kick-Off Week, please come by and help get the festivities started!
On a ironic side-note, it appears as though Baker's Dozen may have just closed its doors for good, slated to become a new Tim Hortons?
wanh wanh...

By the Dozen - part II of Local Call
@ Telephone Booth Gallery
3148 Dundas St. West

Exhibition: Jan. 16th - Feb. 17th, 2013
Opening reception: Tonight! Friday, Jan 18th 6-9pm

By the Dozen is Part II of our 'Local Call' exhibition last year.
This diverse exhibition features established artists that live or work in The Junction or Junction Triangle neighbourhoods of Toronto. the idea for this neighbourly exhibition stemmed from a conversation with two local artists that happened to pop into the gallery one Saturday afternoon, David McClyment and Tim Whiten. The exhibition provides the opportunity to bring together the local arts community and exhibit some of the amazing talent in the area. By the Dozen also provides the opportunity to highlight the neighbourhood's 'small-town' community feel within the city, including a nod to the regulars at the Baker's Dozen coffee shop located directly across from the gallery.

Including works by:
Michael Antkowiak, Clint Griffin, Daniel Hutchinson, Linda Martinello, Anders Oinonen, Luke Painter, Orest Tataryn and Badanna Zack.

Be sure to check out telephoneboothgallery.ca for updates.

When you drop by, I take a suggestion of milk, no sugar. thx

ArchiTEXT: Grapes & Chips

This sounds like a fun project/workshop/collaboration I just read about on the Toronto Design Offsite blog which will also be hosted at East of Keele one evening during our exhibition Workplace Affairs.
If you like interactive projects, this sounds like the event for you!

archiTEXT: Grapes & Chips @ East of Keele
2830 Dundas St. W.
Monday Jan. 21st, 2013. from: 6-8pm.

Admission fee: "Grapes" and "chips"

Put down your pens, take your eyeballs off your screens, banish those Monday blues and join the archiTEXT team in the two things we do best: EAT and PLAY. Monday, January 21st between 6-8pm we launch the Design Week edition of Grapes & Chips at 'East of Keele'. Simply bring in your favorite definition of a 'grape' and a 'chip' from there, engage with us in a creative challenge that will be sure tot get your design week kicked off to a crazy start!
We will be asking the question: What Would You Do If You Lived In A Shoe? How will you answer it? Show off your creative skills and vote for your favorite creative answer. At the end of the evening, the top 3 Viewer's Choices will receive a prize (shh, it's a secret!)
Take a look at some of archiTEXT's previous collaborative projects below and be sure to look for more projects across the city!

To participate, please RSVP: sherry@architextinc.com

Opening: Workplace Affairs

Hello everybody, I am excited to announce, I will be participating in two separate exhibitions coming up as a part of the Toronto Design Offsite Festival 2013. The first exhibition entitled Workplace Affairs will be opening this Saturday Jan. 19th at a new space called East of Keele. 
Don't be confused by the name, because it IS East of Keele. 
The exhibition has been put together by the lovely Christine Leu and Alan Webb of LeuWebb Projects. Here is a quick sneak peek of my work in the show, please join me for the opening an help celebrate Junction Kick-off Week before the madness of the Toronto International Design Festival descends upon us! Hope to See you There!!!

LeuWebb Projects: Workplace Affairs
Opening @ East of Keele 
2830 Dundas St. West

Exhibition runs Jan. 19th - 27th, 2013
Opening reception: Saturday, Jan. 19th 2-5pm

Some make do with a laptop and a kitchen table, taking care not to spill tea on their keyboards. Others prop open garage doors to vent hazardous chemicals while applying a coat of shellac. And there are those fortunate enough to have a studio of their own in which to create, even if it is unheated. The creative process will not be denied due to a lack of proper space but it may be shaped by those physical constraints. Likewise an artist may remake their workspace in their own image. The artists participating in ‘Workplace Affairs’ demonstrate their own particular relationships to space and work, with a range of practices that cross disciplines and a variety of spaces where work gets done.

‘Workplace Affairs’ is an exploration of the relationship of space to the creative process, examining the artefacts of production and documenting the workspaces that enabled their creation. Curated by LeuWebb Projects, the exhibition documents the workplaces of artists and offers up artefacts from these spaces for interpretation.

Featuring the work and workplaces of Melissa Fisher, Patrick Svilans, Joy Charbonneau, Lizz Aston, Patrick Yeung, Clayton McMaster and Jyhling Lee.

leuwebb.ca