Laurier Library LIFT Launch

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Alliteration win! And cultural win for us all as the Laurier Library backing on to Albert Street lights up some micro-gallery space amid the stacks in cooperation with the Robert Langen Art Gallery: the LIFT Series. This is said to be a first step in finding a more permanent home for the Langen Gallery within the library and based on what I saw this is going to be a great fusion. Curator Suzanne Luke brought library chief Gohar Ashoughian and crew down to Maker Expo a few weeks ago to see what we were up to. I was glad to get up to their LIFT gig on Thursday last week.

I’ve got more story below, but want to take a quick second and give a shout out to my supporters who help make makebright stories possible. My first week on Patreon and here’s who stepped up to be awesome: Brent Wettlaufer, Vince Marcovecchio, Dinah Davis, Daryl Dore, and Cam Turner. I’ve been cranking out free work for six years here. If you’ve found something of value, something interesting here, please consider supporting my community-building mission with your pocket change. You’ll be investing in your community. Now more story and a completely unreasonable number of photos…

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Miss K, aka Kristen Moss, talked about her sixth floor piece Out of the Cannon (above x 2).

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Suzanne Luke (right) introduced the series and then turned us loose on the tour with the artists.

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I like everything about this project. Regular readers know I’m a street art fan, turning on to the genre back in 2011 when David Hoover had his first show down on Borden Ave. I caught Hoover and Wiebe’s latest show there late last year. And I’ve shot what I find in the street and alleys from Berlin to the Bay Area. I like the scale, the individual expression, the symbolism and the techniques. Most of all I like the accessibility of the work. I love it when art comes to the people instead of the other way around. I especially like when artists get paid some amount >$0, as I’m told happened here.

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I had a lot of questions for Kristen (delaying the tour!) She used a mix of spray and brush here. Used stencils. Achieved some great layering in the piece. The work is done on plywood panels that have been mounted on a frame and lightly sanded. It measures 4’ by 12’. Awesome. Kristen also talked about increasing participation by women in the graffiti domain. Here are her words:

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Kristen’s dad (let’s hear it for Dads!) noted how impressive it was to watch this work in progress (in his driveway) emerge from raw plywood and get laid down with minimal blocking.

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On to the fifth floor. This is In The Fade by Whos One aka Paul.

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First priority: stroller driving…

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Then talking about his work: Whos One / Paul. In this piece, Paul mashed up some 3D illusion with some actual 3D elements popped off the surface. Cool to have this highly-stylized word in a building full of words.

Paul mentioned that he was one of the artists tied up in the bureaucratic brouhaha a couple of years back involving a mural created on the side of the Dairy Queen over on Weber Street. He also threw out a bit of a teaser that there was a big show of street art in planning. Looking forward to that and would love to shoot some work in progress if anyone wants to reach out to me.

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Here we all are standing just off the elevators (…LIFT—ah, I see what you did there Laurier) getting the lowdown. This location breaks us out of the preciousness you sometimes encounter in a traditional gallery setting.  I love this and also when we use real, everyday language to talk about the work.

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Artists/friends/fans.

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Then a most excellent and helpful thing happened for a student of the art like me…

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Paul traced out with his hand the letters of his street name, pointing out stylized features of various characters. Wicked.

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Third floor! This is Cycl3 by…

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 Nicholas Taylor aka Krown.

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Meta.

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Nicholas runs Dying Wish Tattoo so I asked him to talk about his tattoo work and this work on the wall. Of this 16-foot long piece, he said: “This work is for me.”

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Nicholas walked us through the piece depicting the journey from birth to death. Listening to him, I recognized what I’ve seen in many artists, that they can be their own harshest critics. He said he sees all the flaws in the work, and I just see this epic image spread.

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This central figure hits you right off the elevator. Awesome.

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He said “Touch this work. Feel it.” It’s sealed with the same coating as is used on bowling alleys, the off-gassing of which I understand caused some temporary consternation in the library as the piece fully cured.

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This is a signature skull you will see in a lot of Krown’s work, said he.

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Back down on the main level, our tour caught up with Toronto artist Michael DeForge who was showing…

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his drawings…

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and…

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collaborative sculpture (with artist Phil Woollam).

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Michael talked about his start doing gig posters

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These pieces were all titled untitled. (I didn’t forget).

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It was only when I got down to writing this post that I discovered how prolific Michael is. Check out this wikipedia page on him.

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This was one of those schedule-crushed encounters where you want to hear someone talk about their work and experience for at least a couple of hours and then…

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it was time…

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for the…

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reception to start…

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and we moved inside…

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where there were snacks.

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In fact, pretty freaking amazing snacks.

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And beats by Linguist.

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Some spoken word by Janice Lee.

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“Can I get a snappy snap?”

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Da boss, Gohar Ashoughian, Laurier University Librarian…

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took us from zero to sixty on the inspiration-o-meter…

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with an impassioned pitch for us to dance, talk, meet, imagine, learn, do…

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because that’s the role of an engaging library…

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she told the crowd…

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and then proceeded to walk the talk, meeting UWAG curator and TH&B Collective co-instigator Ivan Jurakic before he went off for a little urban camping in downtown Hamilton.

Had a great chat with the library’s Gordon Bertrand who is working on a makerspace within the library. That was the third conversation of the week with three independent meta-makers who are all creating makerspaces of one sort or another. Six years ago when we were creating kwartzlab, we often received the cautionary question: “What if someone else creates a makerspace here?” The answer today remains the same: Awesome! A constellation of makerly clusters!

Also great to catch up with Mirko Petricevic, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the Waterloo Lutheran Seminary next door. And of course I can rarely go to Laurier (or anywhere else for that matter) without running into Stephen Preece, Academic Director at the Schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship on the other side of the library.

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Suzanne gave the shout-outs and then I had to boot it down to Kitchener City Hall to see Brian Douglas’ opening of his photo show “5 a.m.” in the Rotunda.

Leave yer sofa and go check out LIFT. The library is this six-story building on Albert Street in Waterloo, between University and Bricker, enter from the side opposite Albert. Street parking off Albert is best. Echoing the words of artist Krown: “This shit is dope.”

If you dig this story and can throw a few bucks my way, please join my small but mighty posse of patron ninjas on Patreon, kicking in a buck or two for posts just like this one.

DW (8.5 hours)

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