babelfish

I love babelfish. I went to the Tokyo galleries website, and translated the little blurb they have beside my name. It came out saying this:

The Canadian edition mania artist who loves ジャパニメーション. The ancient abvssal fish and the birds and beasts the fine hand drawing of motif become popularity, expand the fan to with North America, Europe and Asia.

Thats what I do with my time when I can't sleep...

open studio + tokyo

A couple things going on... If you are in Toronto on Thursday, I'll be working with a technician to produce some screen prints during the Open Studio open house (in the 401 Richmond building). I'm not sure exactly what is going on, but from 6 - 9 theres a silent auction, selling off some of the Open Studio members' prints, and I think the technician and I will be making some of my screen prints on the spot... I'm not much of a pro at screen printing, so we'll see how they turn out. I guess thats why I'm working with a technician...

If you're not familiar with Open Studio, go to their website. I'm not TOO sure what goes on in there, its a massive room filled with every printmaking device I knew existed, and they have memebers, and they make prints...

I'm not too sure what I'll be printing, I was thinking one of these two images that I drew last week:



The second one is a small pen and ink version of the crocodile image from my show in September, the first one is a iguana finch of some sort... the originals are both draw on the same page, and make up a larger composition... man, I just typed so much boring stuff in a row..

I typed that stuff this morning. Now it's night. I met the technician today and he seems like a really nice guy, he and Jill, the woman that asked me to participate helped me out a lot with preparing my image today... Working with nice people is pretty great...

Here's the flyer for the night..


OKok, Tokyo. I'm in a group sow in Tokyo on December 2nd. Tomolennon, a Tokyo born artist living here in Toronto is putting on a group show of Toronto artists in a gallery in Tokyo that he co-directs. The gallery is located within a bath house, which I think is pretty awesome. I went to he website, and its a bunch of Japanese text I can't read, and photos of people getting massages.

And like the people at Open House, Tomolennon seems like a really great guy, he was really courteous and patient when we met...

So yes, I'm excited, this is my first time showing in Tokyo, I get to show with a bunch of artists that I have a lot of respect for, some really strong Toronto talent. I won't post my work on here again, I sent a set of the grid prints that I've already posted on the blog twice, so you can scroll down and see them if you are interested...

ok, here is the link to the space: tokyoganbanyoku

And here is the press release:

Art x Life gallery, Tokyo Japan is pleased to announce "Toronto Underground" An art exhibition of Toronto's most promising emerging artists.
If you know of someone who might be interested in this information, please pass this note on to them.


Art x Life gallery in Tokyo presents
Special exhibition
Toronto Underground
Selection of Toronto's most promising emerging artists

-tomolennon
-Fiona Smyth
-Kirsten Johnson
-Christopher Hutsul
-Nicholas Di Genova
-Harvey Chan
-Gregory John Hern


Art x Life gallery will present an exhibition introducing, for the first time in Japan, 7 of Toronto's most promising emerging artists at a crucial time in their career.

Toronto is the largest financial, cultural and entertainment centre in Canada, named by UNESCO as the world's most multicultural city, but the city's native culture is still unknown. Diversity of race, religion and lifestyle help define and set Toronto apart from other world cities. Toronto is considered one of the world's most diverse cities wherein over 100 languages are spoken. The nature of Toronto's multiculturalism is reflected in its wonderful mosaic of distinctive neighborhoods, a global village of Mixed EWorld Heritage.

Now, for the first time, Japanese can experience the rich cultural diversity of Toronto through contemporary art. The exhibition includes work by tomolennon, a Japanese-born artist well known for his large-scale figurative portrait series called Sleeping Beauty, innovative in its approach of combining art and fashion. With more than 21 years of experience, Fiona Smyth is a leading representative of Canada's contemporary art scene. She was born in Montreal and moved to Toronto in the late 70's and became an all-round artist, making paintings, illustrations, murals and comics. Kirsten Johnson is a Toronto based visual artist whose work appears in private and public collections all over North America, Europe and Australia. Her work often involves a fusing of her visual work with her strong background in performance. Christopher Hutsul is a British Columbia native artist, writer, and emerging film director. His humorous but "cutting-edge" quality of drawings appears everywhere around the city from local galleries to newspapers and magazines. Nicholas Di Genova is a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design. He is known for his illustrations of flora and fauna that　will populate this planet millions of years after the Apocalypse. Harvey Chan is a Hong Kong native. After graduating from Ontario College of Art and Design, Harvey pursued his career as an illustrator. He has illustrated many children's books and has been short-listed for the Governor General's Award twice in his prestigious career. Gregory John Hern is a young Toronto born photographer, just graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design. He is best known for his large domestic tableaux using himself as the family archetypes.


Toronto Underground
Curated by Cojac, Centre of Japanese Arts and Culture
Guest curator Rafi Ghanaghounian

toronto underground

Exhibition date: December 2nd, 2007 to January 31st, 2008

ART x Life GALLERY
Tokyo Japan
Sponsored by TOKYOGANBANYOKU


Address: Pearl Center 2F, 1-36-4 Sanko bldg., Asagaya Minami, Suginami-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Hours: AM10:00~PM10:00
TEL: 03-3311-8211
Website: http://www.tokyoganbanyoku.jp/
Media contact: (Tokyo) Saeko Ando shop@tokyoganbanyoku.jp
Media contact: (Toronto) Studio 2/artic info@tomolennon.com


[Art x Life gallery]
Located in the Tokyoganbanyoku, the largest, exclusive and luxury SPA center of Japan, Art x Life gallery is the newest concept contemporary art gallery offers programmes of changing exhibitions and supporting events to increase interest, understanding and involvement in contemporary art.
Art x Life gallery adds the exciting works of contemporary artists to Tokyo's thriving cultural scene.

[COJAC, Centre of Japanese Arts and Culture]
Centre of Japanese Arts and Culture (COJAC) formed in 2005 dedicated to generating new bonds of understanding of Japan and the Japanese through art and cultural programs. COJAC contributes to local communities culturally and socially by supporting artists who introduce and share Japanese culture with local communities, and by creating a place for artistic activities through the organizing of exhibits, educational programs, and providing networking services. This contribution helps to foster a mutual understanding of one's own culture while it also promotes the creation of culturally active communities.
It is our intention to support various Japanese and non-Japanese artists whose work relates to Japanese culture by affording the artists the opportunities to exhibit or perform their artistic activities.

old road of knives...

I was just scanning previous entries, and for some reason the road of knives page I did previous to this one is not showing up... Uh, maybe it is just my computer, but I'm going to post it again anyway...



Also, in case you miss the link on the right, you can see all the action here.

new road of knives...

I just finished my new road of knives page... We are trying to put more emphasis on setting, so I drew Zak's Medusa lady leaving her house...

I can't draw people.

everything's coming up nick...

A while back I was contacted by Belio Magazine out of Spain. They asked if I would be interested in putting a book together with them. I said shit yes, I sent them tons of images, they put a ton of work into editing and compiling the book, and now its coming out very soon.

I'm not sure how much it will cost, exactly when it will be released, or where it will be available. I do know that it will be 192 pages, full colour, and 14 cm x 15 cm.

It is part of their Die Young Book Collection, and you can see other books in the series here.

thank god for graval

Its been a good couple of weeks. I did two artist talks and they both went well I think... Man, I get so nervous for those things, like 'on-the-verge-of-throwing-up" type of nervous, but once I get up there its not so bad... One of the talks was for Ed Pien's class at OCAD, he is one of my favourite artists, you can look at his stuff here

There's a bunch of other links to his work on that page as well...

I've been spending a lot of time getting the new studio in working condition, the walls and floor are looking good now, and I have most of my stuff moved in...

Hmmm...earlier today I finished my new page for the Road of Knives: Uh, click on it, it looks better big...



I went to Canzine and TIAF a couple of weekends ago...Maybe I just don't like zines and art, cause neither of the fairs really did much for me... except I met a couple of gallerists from Marseille, they seem like nice and honest dudes and I'm going to be sending them some work for a couple of upcoming art fairs:

Dukan & Hourdequin

Uhh... I thought I had more to write than this... I'm going to save what I have and finish tomorrow...

OK, its tomorrow now, I remembered something that I forgot to include last night, I have a profile in this months Juxtapoz, thats exciting. Well, for me anyway...



The issue is so-so... I'm not that big on Shepard Fairey but Saelee Oh has a feature in this issue as well, I think she's pretty fantastic...

Ok, last couple of things. Andrew and I moved the rest of the stuff out of my old studio...




We thought it would be awesome to throw my roll of bubble wrap off the 8th floor fire escape. I got this photo of Andrew up there but you can't really see him. Then I didn't get any photos of it coming down, but it wasn't very awesome anyway, it just landed neatly beside andrews car. It was a really big letdown...



Now I'm pretty much set up in the new space, it feels good to have a place to work again...






Then andrew dressed up as a ghost and we drove around in his car...