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“Foam” by Kohei Nawa

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Some of the best installation work can make you believe, even for a split second, that you have entered another world, or a place totally alien or unfamiliar. Artists have made naturally occurring phenomena like clouds appear in a gallery setting using a handful of tactics, but this work by Kohei Nawa uses foam to achieve it’s cloud-like effervescence.

The installation reads like a greyscale landscape of primordial ooze, with mountain-like ridges and valleys suspended on a layer of black sand. It’s lit in such a way that some portions of the foam take on the appearance of clouds, while some remain ambiguous, melting blobs.

via: Colossal

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All Images: Foam, 2013. Mixed media. Photo by Nobutada Omote, courtesy of SANDWICH.

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We’re Featured in Artcite’s 30th Anniversary Exhibition, Opening Tomorrow Night at 7:30

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“30X30 – Artcite 30th ANNIVERSARY SHOW pt. 2”

An Invitational Group Show featuring Works by Emerging Artists Nominated by Artcite Alumni and Members

Opening Reception – Friday, September 13, 7:30 PM at Artcite (109 University Ave. W, Windsor)

We’ve just recently been selected to take part in Artcite‘s 30th Anniversary / 30×30 exhibition, which opens tomorrow at 7:30pm. We contributed a series of posters which deal with issues we confront and negotiate with on a nearly daily basis (collaboration, creativity, time, resources, direction, etc.)

I know it’s short notice, but if you’re in the area, please stop by. There’s a ton of interesting work from 15 Canadian and American emerging artists. We hope to see you there!

The exhibition runs September 13 to November 16, 2013 – Wed-Sat 12-5 or by appointment

Featuring works by:

Daniel Bernyk (Windsor, ON)
Broken City Lab (Windsor, ON)
Michael Paul Britto (Bronx, NY, USA)
Katyuska Doleatto (Toronto, ON)
Hans Gindlesberger (Blacksburg, VA, USA)
Arturo Herrera (Windsor, ON)
Adriane Little (Kalamazoo, MI, USA)
Ella Dawn McGeough (Toronto, ON)
Susy Oliveira (Toronto, ON)
David Poolman (Toronto, ON)
Maayke Schurer (Ottawa, ON)
Andrea Slavik / Alicia Chester (Windsor ON, Rochester, NY, USA)
Owen Eric Wood (Windsor ON)
Nicole June Wurstner (Buffalo NY, USA)
Jade Yumang (Vancouver BC, Brooklyn, NY, USA)

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Civic Space Studio Digest for December 13: on t-shirts and white walls

A look at our little corner of Civic Space. This is where we’ve been spending the majority of our time lately. For the record, the high shelves (those really nice ones with the Letter Library letters on them) were installed by Kiki. The lower shelves were hacked together by me. They’re very shoddy, but they hold many things.

As we’ve been hosting our 1W3KND Residencies, I love coming in on Monday and seeing the little re-arrangements made. Last weekend (I think) the coffee maker and tea kettle got a new home.

Hiba was away, so I got together the little instruction set for the writers in residence and put it back in the big red 1W3KND case.

Meanwhile, Laura took on the task of repainting the walls. After two great exhibitions from Catie Newell’s class and the Green Corridor, the walls were in need of some repairs and touch ups.

One can of paint got us about 80% through. One wall left, will have to pick this up on Monday.

After painting, we spent the afternoon doing some more tests for this t-shirt project. The mangled shirt above features a number of test-sites of vinyl with various temperatures and times on the heat press.

But, before we could do more tests, we had to go back to the drawing board and get a better sense of the size of the potential texts.

We also played with a highlighter look instead of just straight text.

Our new weeding tools makes the vinyl cut process a lot faster.

Remember, cut in reverse for t-shirt vinyl!

Laura weeds.

Then, we place the design…

… and head to the press.

Laura is the master of this machine. I actually don’t even know how to make it do anything aside from plugging it in.

Laura picked up with the same time / temperature settings that we left off with before.

The vinyl seemed to go on no problem, but I think the temperature was still a bit hot, as it left a faint mark where the press hit the shirt.

We also played around with some ideas for the online forms that we’ll eventually make for this project.

Above, the blue shirt on the wall.

Detail of the vinyl.

For the sake of true comparison, we also cut the same text in standard Helvetica bold. We also set the temperature a bit lower in hopes of avoiding the marks from the press.

We’re pretty sure this looks better. I think we had discussed grey shirts before, we’ll see…

We ended the day doing some more comparisons. I’m going to wash the shirts and make sure that the temperature / time changes don’t effect the vinyl adhesion. More soon.

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The Public Space Gallery At Eastern Edge

On Monday, some of us will be heading off to St.John’s Newfoundland to participate in Eastern Edge’s annual AM Festival!

While there, we’ll be creating a project called the Public Space Gallery. This project combines traditional elements found in a gallery space and places them outside in more untraditional public locations. Through a series of workshops, we’ll be collecting stories to interprete and curate into a public gallery. The gallery will contain different collections that will be summed up in a “walking tour” map that festival visitors can choose to experience on their own or take the gallery tour with the Broken City Lab art interpretors and tour guides.

Josh works on the walking tour pamphlet.

An example test shot of how the gallery cards would look outside.

It’s interesting to try and put these up outside and properly frame the space the card pertains to.

The 11 x 17 inch cards definitely have a better presence than the 8.5 x 11. It’s kind of interesting to me that from a distance, it just looks like a white disruption of space.

From a distance.

There are still a lot to decide on and more to create/design before we leave! Back to work. More soon.

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New Exhibition: Unrest Everywhere (Tools for Playing with Halifax)

Just back from an incredible week installing at Eye Level Gallery for our show, Unrest Everywhere (tools for playing with Halifax), which runs until May 12, 2012. The show features a number of multiples and interactive works, all of which are yours for the taking and borrowing.

The premise for the show was to create a series of works that could directly or indirectly suggest access points for re-encountering the city and your role within it. We created works that aimed to be highly distributable, playful, and allowed a bit of critical commentary on the ways in which a sense of place comes to be planned, articulated, and established.

Below is a huge pile of documentation of the process — but first — we’d like to extend a huge thanks to all staff and volunteers at Eye Level, especially Michael and Matt, and to Emily and Kaley for the place to crash!

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Halifax: Bikes, Projectors and Maquettes

I spent my Sunday afternoon trying to work through how the bike/projector project for Eye Level can function and look. I went to the dollar store and bought some pretty random supplies in the hopes of developing an awesome maquette.

At first, I started sketching some really rough drawings of what size this thing could be. My thinking thus far is that it should be no taller than the bike tire. If we do make it out of wood and load it with extension cords, it will be super heavy and hard to manoeuvre.

I think the way that this contraption straps on to the bike is really important as well. Bolts? I can’t really think of anything else. I wonder if it’s necessary for the strap to move? Or should it be static to give the bike more control on how the projector box moves?

I started building this maquette with weight in mind. My thinking is that if we build a really simple frame and then surround it with fabric or something, would that make it easier to push on a bike.

Close up. Yes, those are mini skateboard wheels. Dollarama is awesome.

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Had a little fun with this one. But in all seriousness, canvas could be something cool to wrap it in. I like the DIY aesthetic of it.

The second maquette I made has more of a treasure chest feel to it. The top of it has a window that looks into the box, with a hole at the front for the projector to seep through.

These are just my thoughts! I know we’ll be able to work out more things when we start building tomorrow. I feel like this piece has a fair amount of flexibility so I’m not too worried about it not working out. I’m excited to start building!

 

 

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Installing at Forest City Gallery

We spent the weekend in London, Ontario. We were installing for our upcoming exhibition at Forest City Gallery, while also briefly wondering about what it would be like to not do site specific work. Anyways, you should plan to come to the opening on September 9th!

We’re working on an installation using our “…and then the city” framework for exploring and unfolding the layers of narrative that go into shaping a place. We’ve pulled together some historical overviews of London, but have really enjoyed using an online questionnaire to hear about some of the narratives on the ground here. Huge thanks to Forest City Gallery and London Fuse for helping to spread the word. All of the answers have fed into the installation in some way, so it’s been a really effective way to get to some of the overarching stories about this city.

The show will run until October 21, 2011, and, in the meantime, what’s more fun than a peak of the install process?

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Constructing a City of Boxes

Box City in the Gallery

After a long day of classes and studying, a few friends of mine wandered into the Lebel gallery to let loose and make ridiculous things out of heaps of cardboard boxes. The creating of the ‘box city’ was open to anyone curious enough to take part. Of course the essentials (boxes, scissors, coloured tape, paint and brushes) were supplied and all that was required was a bit of imagination!

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New City Reader And The Return Of Print Media

“Read All About It“, “Hot Off The Presses“, these are not the stereotypical calls of a long-gone era of children calling on street corners, they are headlines about the recent rise in popularity of print media.

In an article by Alissa Walker for Good.is, entitled There’s a Newspaper Being Made, Right Now, in a Museum, she discusses the publication that’s creating this particular buzz — New City Reader, which is also a part of the exhibit The Last Newspaper, held at the New Museum.

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