Toronto

I'm back in Toronto now and once again settled into working away in this studio... I like my studio here a lot, I have a massive drafting table, a bunch of smaller tables, a million books, a bathtub, and a couch to sleep on... So I'm working away but I thought I'd post on here because its been awhile...

I don't have a lot to post... I was at that Carte Blanche 2 book signing and took a bunch of photos with my phone, but my phone broke since then so they are gone...

I did a Road of Knives page a little while ago, its not the best drawing in the world but it makes sense within the story... We are approaching our 100th page, and I think we might release the first volume in book format soon...


Also, HandMade Posters in Norway has just released a 6 colour screenprint of one of my images. Its an edition of 100, and is available for sale through the HMP site here.


One last thing, I got a profile posted on Blogto, you can see it here. Check it out if you want to see some studio shots and a little write up...


Ok, thats it for now, now that I'm back I'll be posting a bit more often I think... I'm going to take some studio shots if I can borrow a camera off one of my buds...

Prints and Postcards Available

It seems like I should have done this a long time ago, back in August. When I had the book launch at Magic Pony, we came together to produce 3 limited edition Giclees, and a postcard book, all of which are available through Magic Pony. If you live in Toronto, you can go on in and see them. If not, they have a great online store set up...

The prints are an edition of 50. You can see them here, here, and here.

The postcards come in packs of 10, and you can see them here. I sent some to my mom, and she liked them so maybe you will too. Ok, only the first half of that is true. I did send them to my mom, but when I asked what she thought of them she awkwardly changed the subject and it hasn't come up again...

oh joy...

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.

Catching up...

Birds are Terrifying Creatures comes down next week, thanks to everyone who came out. The opening went well, art was seen, booze was drank...Here are some images of the work in the show... I didn't take any photos at the opening, but my buddy Rose did and I'll post them once she sends them over...

It was a crazy summer. Carolyn and I went our seperate ways somewhere along the way, Andrew and I crashed in the studio almost every night, I eventually moved in with my buddies Team Macho and I'm just getting settled in now... When I'm working hard on a show I tend to neglect every other element in my life, so now I'm done, but my phone has been shut off, I missed the last 5 months rent on my studio, and I've got 2 collection agencies calling me up. Well, they were calling me up before my phone got cut off, now they are mailing me letters. The letters are getting kind of scary, the latest one just says this:

WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY WE HAVE NOT HEARD FROM YOU.

PLEASE ADVISE YOUR INTENTIONS.

I don't even know what that means! When you call the phone company, the music that they play when you are on hold is really relaxing love song type stuff. When you call the collection agency, they play terrifying German horror music. But yeah, this is the fourth summer in a row that I have had a solo at the end, and the fourth time this sort of thing has happened. But once some payments come in from work things sort themselves out usually...

First off I want to thank my co-op student Nicolina Cloutier, shes an illustration student from Sheridan College. She worked really hard this summer helping Andrew and I in the studio, and did all of the shitty jobs that we didn't want to do and barely even complained about them. I'm hiring her on as an assistant starting this week, so now she gets to do a whole bunch of shitty jobs around the studio but she gets paid... But yeah, she was awesome to be around and pretty funny and I'm really excited that she'll still be around the studio this fall...

Here is a photo of her buying me socks and underwear from Winners:



I'll spare you the boredom of a million random studio photos, but heres a good one... A week before the show had to be finished Andrew got hit by a car. And not just a little hit, but face-smashes-the-windshield-missing-teeth sort of hit. I'm not sure if "hit" is the proper word, I think "smoked" is more accurate.

So he gets knocked out and when he comes to, he finds his teeth, puts them in his pocket, and immediately calls me and says: "um...I'm not sure if I'll be able to come into work today. I just got hit by a car. I'm about to go into emergency, but I'll give you a call as soon as I get out. Depending on what time it is maybe I can still come in and get some work done." What a selfish guy, he should have came into the studio FIRST, finished his work for the day, and THEN gone into emergency...



What a beautiful face...

okok, so here is a bunch of images of the work from the show...











The piece that looks like a grey scale doesn't translate very well, its actually a grid of 7780 bird portraits. I've posted the last image of the grids before, we released limited edition offset lithos of them at the show...

After the show I relaxed a bit, drew a bit, and went "up north" to chop some firewood...here are a few random photos of "up north":












As soon as I got back from the cabin, I got an email that my friend Crystal Yin ( www.flapflapfly.com ) and her sister Michelle was in town. I use the term friend loosely, we like each others work and have been emailing each other off and on for a few years, but had never met, but get along pretty well over the world wide inter web. What I wasn't prepared for however was her being the prettiest girl in the world and I had just spent 7 days in the woods and i was totally thrown off... I tried to show them the city but I was really nervous and tripped a lot and made long rambling sentences that made very little sense. Worst tourguide ever. But yeah, check out her site, her and Michelle make Sweet Toofs, they are really quite cool...

I didn't really get any photos, except for photos of their backs of them looking up at the CN Tower. Since 1976, it has been the world's tallest free-standing structure on land, though it will most likely lose this title to the still under construction Burj Dubai, which surpassed the CN Tower's height on September 12, 2007. The tower is the signature icon of the city, attracting more than two million international visitors annually. I took that whole last part from Wikipedia...




Ok, so that catches everything up to yesterday... So this time for sure, I'm going to update once a week! Except a drawing takes more than a week to complete so I don't know what I'll write about...I guess not every post will be art related...