The Art Alley Mural Project

Photo credit: Susan Ashukian   Arts Etobicoke and Amnesty International Unveil Toronto`s Longest Outdoor Poem Please join us on October 19, 2010 at 2 pm at the Arts Etobicoke Gallery at 4893A Dundas St. W. as we unveil a 1000 square foot mural in the alley adjacent to our office. The mural features a newly commissioned poem by Dionne Brand, City of Toronto Poet Laureate. Special guest Mayor David Miller will join Ms. Brand for a "walking reading" of the poem. The event also includes an African drum and dance procession featuring Roshanak Jaberi, an Iranian-Canadian dancer and choreographer who specializes in the folkloric and contemporary dances of West Africa and examines social issues through the art of storytelling. Off the Wall, an interactive and movement-based exhibition that also features artwork inspired by the mural and created by youth participating in our Saturday Storefront Art Classes will be on display in our Gallery. The Art Alley Mural Project is produced by Arts Etobicoke, participating in Amnesty International's Project: Urban Canvas – A mural series celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. www.aito.ca/urbancanvas. Project: Urban Canvas will produce 30 murals throughout the GTA, each interpreting one of the 30 articles of human rights. The Art Alley Mural is the twelfth mural to be developed in the project. We chose Article 13 for the theme of its mural - “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state” The article holds special meaning for the large immigrant population in Etobicoke and for youth, who have worked with Arts Etobicoke to create their own interpretation of the poem. The mural was designed by Susan Rowe Harrison and painted by William Lazos with assistance by Etobicoke youth. Dionne Brand, City of Toronto’s Poet Laureate, was commissioned to write an original poem based on this article. Brand's poem 'Article 13' is reproduced on the websites of Arts Etobicoke atwww.artsetobicoke.com and AITO at www.aito.ca/urbancanvas. "Creativity is bubbling west of the Humber River," says Louise Garfield, Executive Director of Arts Etobicoke. "We are delighted to partner with Amnesty International Toronto to raise awareness of the intersection of the arts and human rights." Elena Dumitru, Toronto Regional Development Coordinator for AITO adds “Partnering with Arts Etobicoke in creating a mural to depict Article 13 enable all of us to bring attention to the plight of migrants and refugees through the combined mediums of poetry and visual arts.” Video and film editor Joel Shecter of AITO's Art in Action team documented the progress of the mural. Click on the link to view the video: http://www.youtube.com/user/AmnestyIntlToronto Arts Etobicoke gratefully acknowledges the support of City of Toronto's Arts in the Hood/Live with Culture, Pierre Seunik, the buildings’ owner and Chair of the Islington Village BIA and Village Paint in Islington Village. Thanks also to volunteer Karina Dahlin for contributing her time and energy to this project. Help support local artists. Join our team as a volunteer. Join the community and promote the arts. See the map of our member organizations.

Project Urban Canvas...

thinking about black for a color...

also chartreuse

..

Project Urban Canvas-first thoughts

Life is the meaning of life-Richard Tuttle

I love Richard Tuttle. I have only had the opportunity to hear him speak twice. Once at the Whitney Museum of Art and again last night at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto in conversation with Michelle Jacques, Associate Curator, Contemporary Art, and Georgiana Uhlyarik, Assistant Curator, Canadian Art. He spoke on Agnes Martin, his long time friend.

I warned my friend that he was kind of an abstract speaker. He is confounding and confusing and often hard to follow but the things he says can take you some place else.

quotes from last night:

Richard Tuttle on Agnes Martin:
"Agnes Martin was a far out abstract artist."
"We are workers in the field of art"

"What is the meaning of life? Life is the meaning of life."




And one with Agnes Martin from 1997 from Chuck Smith:

The Inspiration Pad

Just flipping through behance this morning and saw a very cool project by Marc Thomasset called the Inspiration Pad. You can purchase it online here.
I am not sure what is more inspiring-that Marc has designed a subversive version of the notebook that we all know and love or thinking of how to fill it up.

As Sol Lewitt said in his sentences on conceptual art " 33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea."

Biographical Blip: Rockaway Taco, A Selby Film

Rockaway Taco, A Selby Film from the selby on Vimeo.


Really a cool, strangely relaxing video on a place that I did not really know existed. Definitely plan to visit on my next summer trip to NYC.

Citizen Architect

I just heard on WNYC that director Sam Wainwright will take questions following a screening of his documentary on Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio called the Citizen Architect at the beautiful Cooper-Hewitt.



Blurb about the film from the Leonard Lopate Show Page:

"Hale County, Alabama is home to some of the most impoverished communities in the United States of America. It is also home to Auburn University’s Rural Studio, one of the most prolific and inspirational design-build outreach programs ever established. Citizen Architect is a documentary film chronicling the late Samuel Mockbee, artist, architect, educator and founder of the Rural Studio with never-before-seen interviews with Mockbee himself."

There should be a stream of the interview on the WNYC  page.

Around YYZ

Check out David Court and Josh Thorpe for YYZUnlimited...in a series of 5 audio tours using YYZ as a departure. For the first, Court and Thorpe are joined by artist/architects Scott Sorli and Flavio Trevisan.
to download

And if you haven't already stop by YYZ to see Hadley+Maxwell and Barbara Balfour!

Wow! Thank you Douglas Kelley for todays DKS show listing in my inbox!

In addition to the riot of color that punched me in the eyes and so delighted my soul this morning, there is a really interesting piece that Douglas Kelley has written both on the artist Deborah Kass and an exerpt from a Simon Critchley lecture which I found really interesting this morning. So thank you!

I will include the DK's "disclaimer" and a link to the rest of the piece. Looking forward to more.

From the DKS site. Read the rest here.
____________________________________________________________________________________
"A General Disclaimer.

Despite these accolades it is still my humble opinion that Deborah Kass, as popular and influential as she is, is nevertheless still one of the most undervalued artists in the world. Obviously I'm a fan.

I am not an art critic or even an art historian, even though I have interests in both. Mostly my interest in art is strictly from the point of view of being an artist, and so when I write about Ideas, Trends and Key Individuals Shows, Galleries and History, I feel I am in a collaboration with all of those things. It's sort of a one-sided collaboration, because I never let people read what I'm going to send out with the list beforehand, because that's an invitation to editing and rewriting the material, and the unhappy fact is that I don't consider writing that easy to want to do it over. In fact I find it damn difficult, (I can't understand how critics and art historians by Jerry and Roberta, who I idolize, crank it out by the pound?) So I feel it's always necessary to begin with a blanket apology for any errors, omissions, mistakes or mischaracterizations of people's words, history, politics, quotations or People's personal or private's subjectivities I write about. All opinions are strictly my own and definitely should not be considered representative of the opinions of any individuals mentioned. I'm extremely confident when I am expressing my own opinions, prejudices and ideas, or when I am drawing freely upon the work of someone like Simon Critchley, who I quote freely, because I feel he expresses my ideas better than I do. (That, in addition, to being my biggest influence currently.) I'm planning to use a lot of quotes of his and take my time bringing everything full circle. because in addition to talking about Ms. Kass, I plan on introducing my new personal philosophy, the global art manifesto, and political agenda to save the world, that I have tentatively titled as being: “Synthetic Speculative Surrealistic Anarchistic Otherism," or SSSAO or "Otherism" for short.

These essays are going to be an ongoing weekly project, and I plan to add more maternal about Deborah Kass in the weeks going forward, because this year I want to write about only a few artists whom I think of as values artists. Individuals whose work I feel will be an interesting commentary on our present times 500 years hence.

For those you who don't know Professor Simon Critchley, he is a New York-based, British born Philosopher, who is the philosophy chair at The New School For Social Research. Who is a fan of art, and a popular speaker at art fairs, who has in the past discussed some of the contemporary contradictions in the relationship of art to theory. I am going to mix some his remarks, with my remarks, and maybe with some remarks by Deborah Kass. Here is some of that, little of his ‘terroristic’ model of theory, (in which he real reassures artists they should stress too much about it) as he explains how perhaps that art and theory have not become divorced. We might even say that in some cases they have merged, or perhaps both become attached to a third term, perhaps art and theory have adopted a form of triolism, a ménage a trois?

Negotiating art and theory through a third term is extremely relevant to Deborah Kass's work. whether it's politics, feminism, the Jewish intellectual tradition, Broadway theater in musicals, our many other things, everything has something to do with her relationship with the intellectual Jewish life of New York City."

Koki Tanaka at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco

If you are in San Francisco, check out Koki Tanaka's exhibit at the awesome Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. I met Koki in Toronto when he showed his work at YYZ Artists Outlet where I am on the board. I love, love, love the poignancy and purity of Koki's work. I hope you will too. He currently has a video on view at the Japan Foundation if you are in Toronto.

The Citizen Architect

Just a follow up on The Citizen Architect. You can stream the video on the PBS.org website. My husband and I watched it a few weeks ago and it is amazing. I have so much respect for the work that Samuel Mockbee started. I think that it must be an amazing experience for a young architect to work with the Rural Studio.

BTW, another great series of videos from PBS.org is the Craft in America cycle. It is worth a dip into the series of videos which again you can stream from your computer.

If you feel generous, think about giving a donation to your local PBS station.