card catalogues & paper-fasteners

this site is so neat. it seem unassuming and bizarre at first but fill in the blank fields here and  you will get your very own:

behind the scenes

these are a couple of photographs I wanted to share from various museum archives. They were part of a show called Camera Obscured in 1997 curated by Vid Ingelevics and they can be seen here on this website. I love them because even though I study museums and galleries and the roles that run such institutions, I rarely actually think about the people who created the ‘environments’ in galleries, or the beginnings of museums. They are lovely photographs.

 

Visitors walking through dirt fields towards newly constructed Field Museum of Natural History, Grant Park, Chicago, 1921. Photographer: Charles Carpenter.

 

 

Photographers at work in the 'operating room' in the High Attic, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1924. Photographer: not recorded.

 

 

Dr. James L. Clark and unidentified technician with lion group in preparation, Akeley African Hall, American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1934. Photograph: Julius Kirschner.

Working on Flying Bird Group, Sanford Hall, American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1947. Photographer: Alex J. Rota.

Billo and Bella, museum guard dogs, with their trainer, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1941. Photographer: not recorded

 

 

 

 

suitcases, nostalgia and collections

My thesis project has taken a drastic turn – for the better I think. My previous idea had some serious issues that seemed almost unsolvable, such as; if I am both the curator and the artists, what happens to each of these roles? Does the artist become obsolete? Does the curator become obsolete? Isn’t this just a conceptual art piece dealing with curatorial issues, rather than a curatorial piece? Another concern was my devotion to responding historically to the site – which I was having a difficult time finding.

So, now, the short version of what I intend to do:  I am curating artists to respond to a suitcase to which I have attached a fictitious name and date. I am interested in creating identities and representing personalities through objects, series of objects, collections. This show will be exhibited in an old hotel, as I am interested too in the nostalgia and memory, or collective memory of a space.

So, now I am thinking in a slightly new direction. Objects. Memory. Identity. Perception. Collections. Representation. Self. Travel. Consumerism. Nostalgia. Collecting. Belongings. Value. Attachments.

And I need to start thinking about working with artists, which will be an interesting direction I have never really taken before. Framing the exhibition the way that I want it to create a cohesive look and narrative while still allowing enough freedom for artists to be creative and contribute something special and individualized. I’m excited for the experience and the challenge.

stuck

I’ve hit a wall with my thesis project.

my teachers are asking: What is my mission? Why do I need to do something fictional? What is the reason? Am i still the curator if I am also the artist? How will I negotiate these two roles?

I am thinking now that I might now be curating a show and commission other artists.

ba hum bug. I have much more to vent about, think about, but no time to do it now.

book dissections

My mother has a love of the written word. I don’t mean that she loves to read – although she does – but rather that she loves words. This love turned into a collection of dictionaries, thesauruses (thesauri?), maps, books and magazines meant for cutting up. Naturally this love of words, and maps, and old books fell to me too. So when my friend sent me a link for this artist, I just fell in love. I might have a new use for the shelf full of old cut up books on my shelf…

 

His name is Brian Dettmer.

just gorgeous….

the vault

My dear friend Marissa over at tinygrants (an amazing project!) and the author of art blog the last place on earth you probably want to be sent me an email when she came across an artist she knew i would just love.

and she was right.

Neil Pardington’s works are beautiful. I remember visiting a museum in Banff as a child and being fascinated with the darkness of their museum – and it was full of dead stuffed animals. There is something both eerie and magical in that type of feeling, and these photographs capture it:

fantastic collections, in this case held by our public collectors….

past lives lived

In revisiting the film The Gleaners and I, I discovered that there is mention of an interesting artist Louis Pons. I have not been able to find much about him, other than he collects junk and creates beautiful collages out of them, and that he is from France.

If anyone does know or come across anything on him, please let me know.

I love his displays of collections of junk:

They remind me alot alot alot of Louise Nevelson who made similar collages of junk. Here is her piece, eerily similar:and another:

the idea that I love about both of these artists and their philosophies is the notion that all of these objects that they collect, junk they turn into art, was someone elses before, has lived another life, has another history.

that’s a lovely idea.

Nick Bantock & the postal service

Perhaps one of my favorite artists, I fell in love with Nick Bantock’s works after my high school art teacher introduced me to him. She handed me his artistic biography – The Artful Dodger. I immediately went out and purchased several of his other books – most importantly to me, Griffin and Sabine.

This is the description he gives on his (poorly designed) website:

“Few books are more romantic than this trilogy, nor more surreal. Griffin Moss is a rather doleful, lonesome, gaunt, and haunted postcard designer in London. Sabine Strohem is an illustrator of stamps living on an island in the South Pacific. One day Griffin gets an extraordinary letter from Sabine revealing that she knows all kinds of things about his life and work–somehow, she can share his soul from afar. They start exchanging love letters, yet it remains an open question whether Griffin and Sabine are two hearts that mystically beat as one, or simply illusory. “You’re a figment of my imagination,” Griffin accuses Sabine. “You cannot turn me into a phantom because you are frightened,” Sabine replies. Phantom or soul mate, Sabine is pursued across the globe by Griffin in an increasingly impassioned fashion, and the mysteries deepen”

The amazing part is that Nick Bantock has two distinct style of art making  - one that he assigns to Sabine and the other to Griffin. These styles come through in the post cards and letters he crafts to be exchanged between these two characters. The book is lovely too, in that on some pages there are envelopes with letters that need to be pulled out and unfolded in order to be read. The narrative of these two characters spans a series of several books, and it well worth the read.

In fact he has several other books that are also beautiful, artistic and worth the read. I think I own all of his books, and there isn’t one that I don’t love.

In fact this book taps into my love for the post, mail and postcards. Several years ago my mother purchased someone’s stamp collection from a yardsale for 5$. It’s a huge binder, with stamps from all over the around from the 50’s. There are letters to, and they are all beautiful. I’m sure it would be worth a fortune, but I like to leaf through them from time to time, and use them in collages and art pieces. That adds more value to me.

There are several other books that fit nicely into this vein. ‘Post Secret’, which is a lovely concept – writing your deepest secret on a handmade postcard and sending them in to be published in a book or on the website. The books (i believe there are two now) are a wonderful simple read – some are funny, some are sad, some are scary and you would be surprised at how many you could relate to.

‘Postal Seance’ is another fantastic book. It is a ’scientific investigation into the possibility of a postlife postal existence’.  It explores, with a series of beautiful postcards, the possibility of sending postcards to dead people through a postal portal.  You can see and read more about it here.

fake: Lesbian Park Rangers

Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, two canadian artists created a performance art piece that was a hilarious semi-fake tour of the wilderness. You can read more about them here.

I love the ‘realness’ and professionalism added by the uniforms and an organized tour! Perhaps it will help me think about my own fake tour through my own fake setting.

historic toronto

So, there are a handful of historic Toronto sites and museums, opperated by Toronto Culture, that I will have to investigate:

Colborne Lodge, Fort York, The Gibson House, The Zion School House, The Mackenzie House, Montgommery;s Inn, Scarborough Historical Museum, The Spadina Museum, Todmorden Mills Heritage Museum & Art Centre, and the York museum.

I will of course also have to visit the ROM, the AGO, The Toronto Archives, The Bata Shoe Museum, The Toronto Police Museum, Casa Loma, University of Toronto, Black Creek Pioneer Village and anywhere else I can think of!

At each of these historic sites of museums, I would like to take a tour if a tour is offered, so I can start to think about locations that may be interested or willing to participate in my project, and so that I can think about displays, didactics, objects and narratives to help in creating my own!

This project is inspired in part, by my interest in archeology. Growing up in an old little hamlet, there were several foundations of houses around and rumours of unmarked graves. My sister and I used to stage archeological digs, using brushes and chisles and documenting our finds. This is where my love of Mark Dion’s piece Tate Thames Dig. It was a staged archeological dig, with all of the objects them displayed at the Tate in a very ethnographic, anthropological setting and display method.

I’d love to read a catalogue or listing as to the objects exactly in the collection.

And so shall begin my archeological dig into these historic sites, to see what I can dig up! I’ll have to get my camera fixed so that I can capture images to share along the way!