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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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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How to re-stretch mesh onto an aluminum frame:

1. First, take the broken screen and cut a ‘plus’ sign into the mesh. I found that this gave me a good starting point to ripping the mesh off. When I tried using a X cut from corner to corner, it left a lot of remaining screen debris towards the corners. Rip the mesh along one edge towards the corner, then rip the other edge towards the same corner, now rip the corner section off. Repeat this for all the edges.

2. You may see that there are bits of mesh still remaining glued down near the corner, try to remove what you can by picking at it and hopefully you can pull it off. I found that using a utility knife helped in removing the last bits. Don’t worry too much if there is some remaining, when we grind the frame it’ll come off.

3. If you can, go outside and set-up a work table. You will be grinding aluminum and thus creating dust, so doing this process inside the studio was a big ‘no go’. You will need several tools. A metal grinder with a grinding disk, palm sander with 80-120 grid sand paper, particle respirator (not a dust mask, a real respirator, protect your lungs), gloves, clamps, and safety goggles.

4. I clamped the screen down to the table, and begun lightly grinding the frame. The idea is to remove all the glue off the frame and at the same time give the frame tooth to accept a new layer of glue. When you’re grinding the frame you’ll want to be careful not to spend too much time in one spot otherwise you may grind a pit into the frame, and that’s not good.

5. Afterward I used the palm sander to quickly run around the whole frame, this cleaned up some (not all) ink stains, hardened emulsions, or weird glue deposits from tape. When finished rub the frame clean with a rag.

6. Set-up a large station inside, I had to push to a couple desks together. I recommend that you avoid using the floor as a work surface, the mesh is oddly charged with static electricity and will pick up all the dirt off the floor. The stretcher we bought came disassembled in 8 pieces and was really easy to build following the manufacturers instruction.

7. Once the system is set-up and the frame in place, coat the frame with a layer of glue. We purchased the glue from the same company that sold us the stretcher, it is clearly an extremely strong contact cement. I recommend that you open a window and wear a vapor rated respirator mask.

8. It takes 8-10 minutes for the glue to become ‘dry to the touch’. At this point lock into the stretcher your desired new mesh. Crank all the clamps down onto the mesh and begin stretching each side a little bit at a time. You can buy a tension meter which will tell you exactly what tension of the screen is or I compared the tension to another commercially stretched screen we had in the studio.

9. When you’re happy with the tension cut a piece of cardboard slightly smaller than the interior of the frame and place it on the screen. Now apply a second layer of glue to the frame. The cardboard prevents any stringy bits of glue from falling onto the middle of the screen. Like I mentioned earlier the screen has a lot of static electricity and so it tends to attract the stingy glue. Once done let the frame sit for 25 minutes.

10. When you loosen all the clamps and remove your newly stretched frame cut off the excess screen mesh. Finally, use metal foil tape (purchased from a hardware store in the duct working aisle ) to cover the glued side of the screen. That’s it, finished.

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This week the Business of Art vault brought this question:

Where is contemporary art being made in Canada?

To this I say: Everywhere.

Contemporary art is being made all over the country. There isn’t one geographic area where it is all happening. What this question made me realize is that maybe there isn’t a great resource showcasing some of the amazing things happening in the Canadian art scene. I have compiled a short list of some of the awesome Canadian writers, bloggers, spaces and artists that I visit or support.

• The MOCCA: The mandate of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art is to exhibit, research, collect, and promote innovative art by Canadian and international artists whose works engage and address challenging issues and themes relevant to our times. I always catch really great shows here when I visit Toronto, Ontario.

• Magic Pony: Magic Pony is dedicated to the exhibition and promotion of the best in young contemporary art. We operate as a studio, gallery and retail environment, combining elements of art, design and popular culture to create a unique shopping experience. This is an amazing place to find new and exciting young Canadian artists. Tt is always on my list of places to stop into while visiting Toronto, Ontario. 

• Toronto Craft Alert: A great resource for crafters and craft enthusiasts this site lists upcoming sales, calls for submissions, educational opportunities and featured articles about amazing crafters from all over. 

• The Hamilton Art Crawl: Hamilton is starting to make a name for itself in the Canadian art scene, making their monthly art crawl must see event.

• Forest City Gallery: FCG’s mandate is to serve as a forum for local, regional, national and international artists through the presentation of relevant contemporary practices in visual/media arts, performance, literature and music. A great space offering interesting exhibitions and events in London, Ontario.

• Modern Fuel: Modern Fuel aims to meet the professional development needs of emerging and mid-career local, national and international artists, from diverse cultural communities, through exhibition, discussion, and mentorship opportunities. This is a great gallery space in Kingston, Ontario showcasing many talented Canadian artists.

• En Masse: Montreal, Quebec based art initiative EN MASSE is best described as an ongoing exercise in irreverent, improvised collaborative drawing — a boundary-blurring cocktail of high and lowbrow culture, pop imagery fragmented like shattered glass in a spontaneous, multi-genre, black-on-white collision.

• Poppytalk Handmade: Poppytalk is a Canadian (Vancouver, British Columbia based) design blog collecting inspiration and dedicated to promoting emerging design talent. I visit this site regularly for inspiration.

• Booooooom: Amazing art blog from Vancouver, British Columbia artist Jeff Hamada.  Booooooom was created in the hopes of fostering a community of people excited to go out and be creative! This blog is great for learning about contemporary artists from Canada.

• Khyber Art Centre: The Khyber, est. 1995, is a non-profit, artist-run centre located in an historic, three-story building in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia. The centre presents contemporary art exhibitions, artist lectures, panel discussions, performances and offers art classes to youth.

• Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art: Located in Winnipeg, Manitoba the Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art is a nationally recognized leader in Aboriginal arts programming and one of the foremost venues and voices for Aboriginal art in Canada.

• Art Central: About Art Central is a visual art complex at the corner of Centre Street and 7th Avenue in downtown Calgary, Alberta. Art Central aspires to be the axis of the visual art scene in Calgary: the place where artists conjoin with galleries and art aficionados, the stimulus for the production of excellence, innovation, and new ideas, the place where art intersects with the community, enlarging its experience and enhancing its perception of art.

• UPPERCASE Magazine: Another great source of information surrounding talented people from all over, Uppercase Magazine is a quarterly craft, fashion, illustration, and design journal published by Janine Vangool in Calgary, Alberta. 

I would love to hear of any other places (as I am sure there are many) so please feel free to add your favorite Canadian art place, space or person to our comments section.

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Last week I went on the road to New Orleans for the South Graphics Conference. This was the first time attending this conference, actually this was the first conference Spark Box Studio has ever attended, needless to say I was pretty excited. Sadly, since we had residents booked in I had to make this trip alone, which meant a lot of long days and lonely travelling. Lucky for me tons of like-minded printers attend this event every year so the loneliness was short lived.

The trip began early Thursday with a 4 am drive to the Toronto airport. With just one minor hang-up with customs, I was quickly jet-setting to Louisiana. I arrived early afternoon, dropped my publisher booth stuff off and headed to my accommodations (which I found on Air BnB). The rest of Thursday was made up of searching for groceries and relaxing on the roof top of the loft I was staying in.

Friday was day one of the conference. Spark Box had a booth in the publishers fair so I left early to set-up my table. I took a walk through the beautiful, yet very smelly, French Quarter to the Sheraton Hotel where the conference was being held. I was the first publisher to arrive … which made me feel like a silly eager Canadian. But my eager attitude paid off leading me to meet so many nice people and share information to them about our studio and residency. Because of that minor customs hiccup I wasn’t allowed to sell any prints … but I did get to speak about them and the great printmakers who created them. I was set-up near the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Program and got to met Chris Dunnett and Phil Sanders. I now hope that I will get some time to go to NYC and check out their space.

I left the publisher fair early that day to attend one of the demonstrations being held at Tulane University. The demonstration was being done by our university print professor Otis Tamasauskas. The drive to the demo was longer than I thought so I only caught the tail-end but made plans to go out with Otis later in the evening. We met up at the hotel and together with Gravity Press owner Brandon Graving we went to the evenings art walk. My camera died by this point so I didn’t get any pictures but the night was great. We stopped at the Community Print Shop, the exhibit at the Healing Center and Deborah Cornell and Barbara Putnam’s exhibit at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.

Saturday was another early morning walk to the hotel in order to re-set-up the publishers table (they moved us for day two). I decided the smell of the French Quarter at 7AM was a bit too much so instead I walked along the river. Day two of the publisher fair was held in conjunction with the portfolio sessions.  It was a great day. I split my time standing at the table and walking around looking at all the amazing and talented printed works. Splitting time between the table and other events was a challenge since I was by myself but next year Kyle will attend as well and we will have more time to go to the lectures and demos.

Past resident Josh Dannin came by the booth just as I was packing up and we headed to the Wolfbat Railroad event that he had been participated in over the week. The BFT Wolfbat Railroad was another printmaking project going on at the same time as the Southern Graphics Conference but not in conjunction with it. Wolfbat Studios (Dennis McNett) & Woodcut Funhouse (Sean Starwars) teamed up with Vans Custom Culture to host a three day customization event that was 100% free and open to the public. As the organizers explained it “The event included the construction of a wooden train consisting of 1 steam engine & 20 box cars. Artist, educators, and college students from across the U.S. tricked out their boxcar with screen prints, woodcut prints, flags, paper mache structures, and what ever else they can come up with. Each artist or team worked with at least 2 local high school and/or middle school kids.”

Saturday evening was the culmination of this three day event and was celebrated by taking the train on parade through the Marigny/Bywater area. After the parade there was a party with a great brass band and tons of dancing printmakers. It was a great time and a wonderful way to end the weekends events.

Sunday was my last day in New Orleans and I spent most of the day hanging out with Josh. We did a ton of tourist like things – walk through the French Quarter market, check out all the great street performers, eat beignets at Cafe du Monde and walk around Bourbon Street. After Josh headed back to Philadelphia I went to the botanical gardens with my accommodations host Andrea and then out to dinner.

It was a great trip and I am happy that we decided to participate in the events this year. We are definitely going next year in Milwaukee.

-Chrissy

Kyle and I just finished a bunch of new work for our two-person exhibit at the John M. Parrott Art Gallery. For this show we decided to create a new body of printed work. Kyle took a very traditional approach working with copper plate etchings while I took a more experimental approach combining silkscreen with encaustic painting and collage with watercolour monoprints. For this post I wanted to write about the monoprint because I think monoprint is a pretty unappreciated technique.

I first tried monoprinting when I was attending Queen’s. Our second year print professor, Jan Winton, had us work in this process for several months. With the pressure to pull great prints that would later be judged by faculty and fellow students I was easily frustrated with this painterly print method. Having worked mostly with paint prior to this experience I expected monoprinting to be no sweat but there was more to it then just putting ink onto copper. I quickly started to appreciate the attention to colour required and the way positive and negative space needed to be approached. You really have to consider space, layers, collage and texture so much more than with a painting. The “surprise” element that comes along with printmaking was also something that took some time to get used to but also became a highlight to this process.

Since that class I have used monoprint sparingly in my work– introducing it from time to time to bring a bit more life to my etchings. However, for this latest series of work I used it as one of my primary methods. Instead of using ink I choose to use watercolours. While this process takes a bit more time I wanted the washy, transparent qualities you can achieve with watercolour paints. I took the prints cut them up and collaged them together, finalizing them with embroidery and stitching (sorry for the terrible image once I have others I will update this post).

I appreciate what can be learned from monoprinting as a beginner. During my second year I was unsure why Jan had decided to start with monoprint rather than something “cooler” like silkscreen but now I can see her reasoning. Printmaking takes so much more planning, consideration and attention. Each step significantly effects the end result. Since monoprinting is a much faster and more forgiving technique than most other processes it gives you the chance to play around in the print studio. This speed allows you t understand the printing inks, to use a printing press and to consider how colour, layering, pressure and paper play a huge roll in the final print.

If you are interested in learning about monoprint consider signing-up for a workshop (find out more by clicking HERE).

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Carl Wiens’ silkscreen pieces are near completion with just one last layer. Can’t wait to see them all finished! Looking forward to seeing some more people working in the Open Studio including Nicole Armour. If you haven’t seen Nicole’s handmade books you really should take a look, they are beautiful! She also has a very insightful blog about books, movies, music and friendship called The We of Me.

We are excited to start another month and invite new people into our home and studio. On Wednesday we picked up our newest resident coming to us from Israel and staying for two weeks. Nava Astrachan will be working on three etchings during her stay. (image below taken from HERE).

On Thursday Kyle and I got to see all of our work up at the John M. Parrott Art Gallery and share the moment with our friends and family. The evening was a success and we were so happy to see friendly faces out for an evening in Belleville to support us and our work.

The end of this week finds the end of Sarah Burwash’s residency with us. It has been great having Sarah at the studio. I love her work and will be sad to see her go. I mean just look at this map she made of the area … awesome!

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