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:

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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