Day: July 13, 2014

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Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition Favorites

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way… things I had no words for.”  (Georgia O’Keeffe)

City Hall TOAE 1

The Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition took place last weekend in Toronto.  It’s a free art exhibition featuring over four hundred artists using all artistic forms.  Hundreds of people visited and enjoyed the great variety of talent available in one place – Nathan Phillips Square.  It was a lovely venue for this amazing show and a wonderful opportunity to talk to the artists themselves.  As with all shows, we do have some art that appeals to us more than others.  I will share some of my favorites below and hope you enjoy them.  I’m sorry that after seeing so many exhibits and meeting so many artists, I don’t have the matching information about them for  all their work.  You can check the TOAE website for a listing of all the artists and their work.

TOAE (painting with native lady with baby on back)

TOAE (jonjarro.com) swan & duck

TOAE (Cat Pottery)

City Hall TOAE 2

It was a warm day interspersed with sun and cloud and as you can see from the above collage, some people took their shoes off and walked in the water to get to the booths on the other side.  In winter, this pool of water is a skating rink.

TOAE (Lauren Blakey art)

Some artists cleverly had their names as a prominent part of their exhibits and I used these as part of the collage to show who they were.  I have a stack of business cards from various booths but can’t remember whose booth they were from.  So as not to make any errors, some collages don’t have who the artist is.

TOAE (with tree in middle) framed - for blog post

City Hall TOAE 3

Somebody buying something, me holding a ring, and other TOAE images!

TOAE (Tall Glass Sculptures)

These tall glass sculptures attracted lots of attention and were impressive for their sheer size.  Someone asked the artist if he wasn’t afraid that someone would knock something over and he said “no” – that they were safely anchored.

Matt Beasant is a Northwestern Ontario born and raised artist. Matt's work is inspired by the forces and emotions that permeate nature. (Info. from his card)
Matt Beasant is a Northwestern Ontario born and raised artist. Matt’s work is inspired by the forces and emotions that permeate nature. (Info. from his card)

TOAE (Ceramic Birds)

I love birds so this was a fascinating booth to visit.

TOAE (French-Canadian lady's pottery) by the waterApart from the beautiful colors and glazes that this artists’s pottery is endowed with – she had the best location and used her space wisely.  She was very close to the water and there was a nice breeze coming into her booth.  We spoke and I know she is French-Canadian.

TOAE (Japanese pottery)

Pottery (TOAE 1)

TOAE (Butterfly Paintings)

I don’t know any of the artists personally so my choices are just based on my feelings about their art.  They were all talented in their own areas of expertise.

Pottery (TOAE 2)

I love the way this artist blends colors and designs – simple and elegant!

“I work with multiple materials, such as fabrics, branches, wire, copper, paper and ceramic shards, creating an assemblage as part of a visual language suggesting a story. The narrative speaks of gathering the work of divergent cultures, histories and generations. Materials from around the world, created by many hands, are represented in a single multimedia assemblage. Fragile branches may be used as framing devices; tapering willow twigs and knotty grape vine tentacles are bent as if resisting the interstitial pull of perhaps a hundred different textiles, each attached with thread, strings, wire and weighted with smooth stones or other found objects. The assembled sculptural form may be reminiscent of a quilt, a canoe or a totem. I strive to have the materials form a new voice of a gathered people, a celebration of the human spirit in relation to its Creator, whether from secret spaces or the most flamboyant expressions.” (Alice Vander Vennen)
“I work with multiple materials, such as fabrics, branches, wire, copper, paper and ceramic shards, creating an assemblage as part of a visual language suggesting a story. The narrative speaks of gathering the work of divergent cultures, histories and generations. Materials from around the world, created by many hands, are represented in a single multimedia assemblage. Fragile branches may be used as framing devices; tapering willow twigs and knotty grape vine tentacles are bent as if resisting the interstitial pull of perhaps a hundred different textiles, each attached with thread, strings, wire and weighted with smooth stones or other found objects. The assembled sculptural form may be reminiscent of a quilt, a canoe or a totem. I strive to have the materials form a new voice of a gathered people, a celebration of the human spirit in relation to its Creator, whether from secret spaces or the most flamboyant expressions.” (Alice Vander Vennen)

City Hall TOAE 4

For those of you who didn’t get there, hope you enjoyed the visit with me!  You can find more information about the artists and their work at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition website.  Here is some information I found on the curators  and brings an end to this post:

Curators

Simone Rojas-Pick, Rui Pimenta, Elise Hodson

Exploring the relationships between art, the quotidian, and public spaces, artists have been invited to create innovative site-specific projects that offer a sense of critical play between the audience, and the civic square and outdoor art fair environment.  By simply situating less conventional, disenfranchised art disciplines within the more familiar context of a commercial art fair, Art Now inevitably encourages its audience to think about the meaning of art itself.

The works assembled participate in ongoing dialogues surrounding the current issues shaping contemporary art, and the role of art fairs as agents in the commercialization of art.  These projects, ranging from sculpture to performance, reimagine the role of art as a connecting node between publics and spaces, as a form of creative engagement with our everyday lived experiences.  Provocative, challenging, and stimulating, these original interdisciplinary projects animate Nathan Phillips Square by pushing the scale and artistic rigor of an art fair beyond a 10’x10’ tented space.

 

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