Hip One Hop One, Acrylic on Canvas

Time to travel back to the early days at Spark Box to reflect on resident Susan Gardiner Bourlier. In 2009 Susan attended the residency as one of our Emerging Artist Award Winners. She had completed her studies as an architect but after working in the field for a short time realized that it wasn’t for her. Her passion was painting and so she quit her job and set out to work full time as an artist. This was when we met Susan. We could seriously relate to her drive and passion for the arts.

Command Break, Acrylic on Canvas

To give you a little glimpse into Susan’s personality I have posted this write-up found on her website:

“These are the words on a button that I found while living abroad in Barcelona.

 They resonated instantly, prompting me to spend the single euro required to acquire the souvenir. In the years since, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the button and the meaning of its words (or so I thought):

confusion is clarity

 Having spent a great deal of my life in a state of confusion, I think I found this reassuring – but also, and more importantly, true. Although it is one of many, small and inconspicuous, not particularly beautiful, and has no value as defined by the standards of our society, this small object has become a sort of talisman for me. It reminds me to trust my instincts, because they have never failed to steer me in the right direction. Even, or perhaps even more appropriately, when I found out that the line is not a philosophical revelation, but a humorous Spanish phrase, more accurately translated as:

this confusion is very clear

 A small, but significant difference.“

Push One Pull Two, Acrylic on Canvas

Push One Pull One, Acrylic on Canvas

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Katie Bruce (right image taken by Katie)

This week was filled with work but also play. Residents Katie and Jane continued their pieces from last week. Katie brought in a new colour to her embroidery pieces which really highlight the embossed areas found in our old wood floors. Jane started a new print inspired by the many cat pictures she has up in her studio and also finished her prints from last week with glitter and sequins.

Jane Wiseheart

Kyle and I ran a private silkscreen workshop which went really well and we are happy to have two new open studio members at Spark Box because of it! We also met with Kristy from Pathways to Independence in Trenton and are going to be hosting a workshop with a group their later this month.

Cooking at From the Farm

This week also brought a lot of cooking and great food. My mother, sister, grandmother and I went to a cooking workshop at From the Farm where we learned the art of cooking Italian food. We made a four course meal during the four hour. We started with an artichoke dip, followed by handmade ravioli, the main course brought pesto wrapped pork with roasted fennel and arugula salad and finally an upside down apply cake. Amazing!

A Weekend Away

In addition to the cooking, printing and workshops of this week Kyle and I spent a lot of time outside. We went away for two days this past weekend to a friends cottage on the Kawartha Lakes. It was a great little break and a nice weekend with friends we don’t see very often.  We also starting working in the garden which is hard work but extremely rewarding.

Our Garden

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The Lotus Eaters

Recent Queen’s University graduate Pansee Atta attended the Spark Box Residency this past February to work on a number of paintings.

Pansee’s work stems from her upbringing: “Having lived in 13 residences in 6 cities in 3 countries in 22 years, I have never had the privilege of calling one place home, or one tradition my own. Nevertheless, the internal conflict between my hybrid Egyptian upbringing and my Canadian influence has been a primary focus of my art.”

Catharsis

While staying with us she started several paper works for her New Gods series. This “series involves reworking mythologies to find archetypes that cross cultural boundaries. Linking culturally-specific images from different contexts that serve similar purposes for their respective communities.”

Totem 2

Totem

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This week the Business of Art Vault brings this question:

“How, as an artist, can I make my practice relevant to the way contemporary consumers choose to interact with their media?”

From this question I have decided to put together the online essentials for the visual artist.

#1 Create a Website for Yourself!

Why? Because this is going to be the easiest way to get your work out to the public. It is an easy way to show people your work, your artist statement and your artist resume. It is also easy for other people to share, link to, pin on Pinterest, post to social media sites, etc.

Blog vs Website? This is something to consider when starting your website. Do you want a blog, a website or both. I personal would choose both. Your website can be where you show galleries of your work, have your written documentation posted and your contact information. Your blog can be where you show your audience what you are up to, what you are making, how you are making it, the inspiration for your work, the shows you are in, the residencies you are attending … you get the picture.

How? Let’s assume you are like me and you know nothing about coding, website design, hosting and all that other good stuff that comes along with making a website. No problem! There are TONS of sites out there that make this stuff easy for you.

Here are some websites/blog sites that have great templates and will host your website taking all the hard steps out:

BLOG

-WordPress (here is a post about free WordPress templates that are awesome for artists)

-Blogger

-Tumblr (here is a post about the Top 10 Tumblr themes)

PORTFOLIO WEBSITES

-Other Peoples Pixels

-Indexhibit

-Carbonmade

-Krop

-Cargo Collective

#2 Use Social Media.

Why? Because it is a great way to keep people interested and aware of what you are up to. By using Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. you can remind your audience that you are around, working hard and making amazing pieces.

What’s the Key? Post regularly (this goes for your blog too). You have to keep posting new content in order to give people a reason to come back. If there is never new information why would anyone want to follow you on Twitter or fan you on Facebook? So make sure that if you start to use Facebook or Twitter that you are updating regularily.

Important things to consider: how personal do you want to be? What is the “tone” of your online personality? What kind of content do you want to share? Will your audience want to know that you have kids running around the studio? Will they want to know where you went partying last night? Think about what you are going to share on these sites before your start posting. The issue with Facebook and Twitter is sometimes the lines between personal life and professional life become blurry and you don’t want to turn your audience off by over-sharing.

Here is a great post about Social Media Do’s and Don’ts.

Popular Social Media Sites include:

-Facebook

-Twitter

-Linkedin

-Pinterest

#3 Add Your Work to Other Online Websites.

Why? Because you want to be in as many places as possible. The more work you have online in different places the better. This is going to open doors and get your work into the eyes of new people.

What’s the Key? Having great images. These sites are about showcasing your work and without great images posting to these sites is going to be a waste of time. Take a look at our post about taking awesome pictures of your work.

Places to post your work include:

-Flickr

-DeviantART

-Behance

-Coroflot

#4 Think about Opening an Online Shop …

Why? If you aren’t ready to approach a commercial gallery or if you would rather handle the sale of your work this is a great alternative. Selling your work online can also open doors to opportunities depending on who might stumble upon your shop.

What’s the Key? I’ll say it again great images! Having high quality images are going to make all the difference here. Also, being aware of how to safely and properly ship your work is important.

Where? Here are some sites where you can you to sell your work or build your own shop:

-Etsy

-Society6

-Big Cartel

-Saatchi Online

#5 Start Building Your Contact List and Create Newsletters.

Why? What better way to send out your exhibit invites? Or the new listings to your online store? Newsletters are a great way to let people know about your upcoming events, new work and blog posts. Here is a great post with 23 Things to Talk about in Your Art Newsletter.

How? Building a newsletter can be really simple if you use an email newsletter provider like Mail Chimp (our personal fav.), Campaing Monitor or Constant Contact. All of these providers make it easy for you to add buttons to your website/blog and Facebook page so people can sign-up to your newsletter.

I hope these five essential online tools help you to build your online presence and get your work out to a new group of people!

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Katie Bruce taking an embossment of our floor

This week was packed full and left Kyle and I feeling a bit under the weather.

The week started with us happily welcoming our new residents Katie Bruce and Jane Wiseheart.

Katie Bruce joins us from Alberta and will be working on her delicate modified embossment pieces. This week she took an embossment of our living room floor and has started the embroidery element.

Jane Wiseheart, from Boston, drew out the stencils for her first silkscreen piece. If you think this part looks great wait until you see it with glitter! That’s right she “glitterfies” each work.

Intern Nick Taylor working on our new promo material

We also started working with our new graphic design intern Nick Taylor. Nick is a student at St. Lawrence College, he will be working with us for the next couple of weeks. This week he started putting together a new series of promotional material for our workshops, curio shop and open studio.

We got up to a number of other things this week like saying farewell to former Oeno Gallery staff member Ivan Tanzer who is off to work at the Galerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal and hanging some of our new work at Angeline’s Inn for their photo shoot with Toronto Life.

As I mentioned before all of this activity left us both feeling a bit under the weather but I found some links that made me want to drink a big glass of OJ and get working:

-This awesome design magazine Udo Mag.

-Nell Casson’s inspiration for the mural painting for the outside of the studio– Steve Powers.

-My Pinterest Board for Green Spaces (I have also been working in the yard a lot recently … can’t wait to plant our garden)!

-This hilarious and awesome tumblr site by magazine editor Ann Friedman (found on Cup of Jo).

I hope this week is productive and fun!

-Chrissy

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Fox Drop by Kristy Lynn

Cosmic Honey, Books Series, Kristy Lynn

Last week was Kristy Lynn’s final week with us.  She decided to add a little printmaking to the mix and finished two editions in silkscreen. Her prints turned out great (you can see them at the studio in our Curio Shop). We were really impressed the the number of pieces she completed while at the studio. While I was going through the updates she made to her website I noticed the image above, a page from her notebook, which made me feel so happy about the our home and studio.

Woodcut by Genna Kusch and Tamara Sponder

Woodcut by Genna Kusch and Tamara Sponder

Genna and Tamara, both friends from Queen’s, came down to work on a number of projects for the week. They had started a woodcut at the studio two years ago and finally completed it, they also began an installation project which I am curating with them and finally Tamara worked on a series of etching for her Littlest Print Exchange submission.

Workshop with Trenton High School

Workshop with Trenton High School

Near the end of the week we hosted the second half of the Trenton High School Etching Workshop. During this half the students came to the studio to print their etched copper plates. We taught them about the etching process, the inking process and how to use the intaglio press. They each had the chance to work with two different colours and chine-colle. All the students left with at least 6 – 8 prints. We were contacted afterwards by the teacher with a biggest thank you email and an invitation to be the keynote speakers at the school Art Awards (so nice).

To top it all off we got some time in on my nieces new trampoline when Kyle and I (plus two of the residents) went to her third birthday party.

Links for this week:

- I am hoping to get as good as these kids on the trampoline.

- I want to write a convincing letter to Printeresting so we can get a free can of their Gamblin Ink.

- This post made me pretty excited about planting a garden this year.

- I really love the paintings of Jules De Balincourt!

What a great week!

-Chrissy

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We are always using  books as reference here at the studio. They are great resources for workshops, inspiration and trouble-shooting. Here are three of our favourite printmaking books.

The Printmaking Bible

This book lives up to its title covering intaglio, screen print, relief print, monoprint and chine-colle. It is packed full of step-by-step guides, 1,000′s of full colour images and tool/material lists. Sadly, it focuses on traditional (toxic) materials, most of which we don’t use in our studio. We still use this book during workshops to give students a quick guide to what they will be learning. What I love most about this book is the example images. They use contemporary artists to illustrate the processes and all of the images are in full colour.

Print Liberation

This is a really fun book about screen printing. It covers both DIY printing and commercial printing. There is a fun little history section that I love using in workshops. They also included pre-made stencils which not only work as great examples but can be used by someone trying screen print for the first time.

Print Workshop

This is a more recent addition to our resource library. Like the Printmaking Bible this book is packed full of different techniques ranging from relief printing to solar fabric printing, however, unlike the Printmaking Bible this book is all about DIY culture. This book simplifies the processes, highlights the beauty of imperfections found in handmade prints and creates a fun, DIY atmosphere around each process. This approach makes this the ideal book for kids workshops and workshops we don’t host in our studio.

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Works in Progress by Kristy Lynn

Works in Progress by Sylvia Chan

This has been such a fun week. The weather was amazing and I felt inspired and productive. Early in the week we picked up our two new residents Kristy Lynn and Sylvia Chan. Both have been amazingly productive over the week resulting in a studio full of new paintings.

Works in Progress, New Linocut Prints by Kyle Topping

Kyle and I have both been putting a lot of focus on creating our own work. It’s amazing how challenging it can be to get into the studio. Kyle printed his vintage camera series early in the week (they will be going up on Etsy shortly) and began a new series of reductive linocut vintage trailers. I have been working on a new series of bags inspired by my trip around North America in 2008 (finally putting those pictures to use)!

Last week we also went to City of Craft in Toronto. It was so nice to head out of Picton for a day in the city. Ever since meeting Jen Anisef, creator of Toronto Craft Alert and former organizer for City of Craft, Kyle and I have all become interested in participating in sale.  When I found out there was a spring sale I was set on heading to Toronto to check it out. It was a rainy day but a nice afternoon of visiting some of my favorite regional makers:

*Kid Icarus who had these awesome 3D posters of flying Canadian Geese.

*Raymond E. Biesinger who had funky large scale geographic prints of different cities.

*JP King and Kirsten McCrea who had many great prints, postcards and little books of poetry.

* Lines by Davis who had his kitty cat printed bags and textiles, plus these new wax canvas bags (which I loved!).

*Bookhou who had their collection of clean and simply designed textiles (the large pouches are my favorite).

*Field Guided who had a selection of lovely silk scarves along with tote bags and prints.

Hope you had a great week too!

If you like these Ontario artisans perhaps others will too:

This week the Business Blog Vault brings us this question:

“When art becomes your job, do artists get ‘unartistic’ hobbies to distract from work?”

Perhaps the word “unartistic” wasn’t the best, but I think this question is an interesting one. Part of my interest stems from the fact that this implies that art is a hobby. Being an artist, an arts administrator and the owner of an artist-run-space I have never really seen art as a hobby. To me it was always a career choice, even if I couldn’t always do it as my main source of income. I was curious how other artists felt about this question so I posed it to two practicing artists– one a crafter/illustrator/painter and the other a painter/printmaker/performance artist.

Let’s start with the painter, printmaker and performance artist Alice Teichert. I met Alice while working as the assistance curator at Oeno Gallery.  Alice was born in Paris and raised in Brussels, she studied music, visual poetry, visual arts and printmaking in Belgium and France. Her interest in North American abstract painting led her to continue studies in the USA and Canada, where she has been living since 1984. Alice has built an international career with exhibitions of her work in France, Canada, Switzerland and Australia. In response to the question Alice wrote:

“To me the word ‘unartistic’ does not make any sense. Art making to me is definitely not merely just ‘a job’ or a profession, but a life commitment. This kind of work is beyond a ‘ job’ designation . Besides I find myself in constant communication with my art practice which ever I turn, wherever I am … and I seem to carry over my artistic/ creative sense into whatever else I do. I have no need to distract myself from my art making practice, rather I find myself not having enough hours in a day to be able to do what I would want to do in a day … Art making is a journey and has its own rhythm. In connection to my art practice I choose to complement/ balance my life with other creative activities such as cooking, gardening, travelling and recently beekeeping … All these aspects make a full journey, … hm, not sure that I would want to call these other creative activities ‘hobbies’ … they are just other aspects that make my life. I do not differentiate one area from another as everything is connected to create a whole life experience.”

Cute Owl by Kirsten McCrea

Our second artist is painter, illustrator, entrepreneur and crafter (also a past resident) Kirsten McCrea. Kirsten is a Canadian artist with a penchant for pop culture, politicos, and patterns. Continuing on the “P” theme, she is also the Founder & Director of Papirmasse, an affordable art subscription that delivers a monthly art print to people around the world. When not painting on her own Kirsten illustrates and makes collaborative art with Cease and En Masse. As you can see she is up to many things, which is why I thought her perspective on this topic would be an interesting one. To top it all off her partner, JP King, is also a practicing artist. Here was her response:

“This question strikes really close to home – it is one that my partner and I talk about A LOT. We are both artists, and also both workaholics. I’ve been making art as my full-time job for the last three years, and JP works in a related industry during the day, and then makes his own art at night. We talk about art CONSTANTLY. This winter we were craft-fairing every week, and I began to fear that our relationship was devolving into a string of questions about where to source bags and who would get the float money. I actually wondered if we were capable of having a conversation that was not craft-fair related.

So sometimes I ask myself: why do I work all the time? Which then leads immediately to wondering: *Am I* working all the time??? It’s hard to know, because when you do what you love it doesn’t necessarily feel like “work”. For a large portion of every day I am answering e-mails and doing boring art admin stuff, so when I actually get a chance to sit down and paint, it doesn’t feel like work at all. Making art is what ends up feeling like my “off” time. BUT – this can lead to an unhealthy pattern of doing admin work all day, art work all night, and then realizing that you haven’t seen your friends in weeks and can only talk about boring art career stuff with your spouse (really, it’s boring. I promise).

There are a lot of other things I like doing: bike riding, going to the gym, reading, cooking, going out dancing. Being an artist is hard because you have no boss and it’s up to you how much you get done in a day. If you’re like me and have unrealistic expectations about how much you can actually accomplish in a 16-hour period, you may very well find yourself sacrificing hobbies because you feel guilty for not having made more art (and are always aware of how prolific your most admired peers seem to be…).

I have very consciously FORCED myself to take up non-art related hobbies this year. Honestly, anything that is art-related just couldn’t be called a hobby for me. But running isn’t going to build my art practice, nor is going out for beer, nor is reading fiction or going to visit a new part of town – which is why I am trying really hard this year to grant myself permission to do several hours of those things every week.

It’s not necessarily a distraction from work, but it is a way to feel like a more normal, balanced human being. I got totally sucked into an “art all the time” vortex for two years, and I am happy to have other aspects to my life now.”

Conclusion, artists seem to live, breath and talk art. What I found even more interesting was that the “hobby activities” that both of these women enjoy are still creative. I guess this means the answer is “no”.  What also seemed to come out of this question was that creative people are driven, organized and constantly thinking about their practice. Perhaps being a practicing artist isn’t about having a job or a hobby but about having a lifestyle.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you think of art as a hobby? We would love to hear your comments.

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Haunted

Vanitas 2

Israel painter Nava Astrachan stayed with us in February, 2012. Nava made the decision to re-visit etching during her residency stay and combined production with private workshops. The traditional imagery used in Nava’s work was perfect for etching. Her attention to detail and commitment to drawing resulted in rich prints. During her two weeks Nava completed three different plates, each with multiple etchings and aquatint. My favorite of the group was of a Russian ballet dancer because of its tight composition and range of tones.

Modern Dance Group

Pregnant (clothed)

 

Pregnant Girls

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