Mark Walton’s great collection of photographs opened at The Button Factory tonight in Waterloo. I met Mark at Jacqui Murphy’s Art Allies gig at The Communitech Hub a couple of weeks ago. I really like what he’s doing around disappearing landscapes. Check it out.
My good friend, Jacqui Murphy, of Art Allies rocked The Communitech Hub down at The Tannery tonight with a really great show of artists who are represented on the Art Allies web-portal-of-local-art-goodness. Jacqui’s vision of connecting local art collectors with local artists is really getting traction. Bravo! and thanks, Jacqui, for putting in the huge amount of work to bring this to the community.
Photo: James Bastow
My brother from the very same mother, Dave White, is doing a series of oil paintings on canvas. It turns out that canvas stretchers, the frames that you stretch canvas over to paint on, are pretty expensive. The 72”x24” stretcher that we picked up at Woolfit’s in Toronto was $69. Now, that’s a pretty fancy frame with slotted corners and select wood, but I remember very serviceable and simpler frames made from 1”x2” pine from my days in Fine Art at the U of G (aaah, the old Zavitz Hall). So I did an experiment tonight at kwartzlab to see if I could build a decent stretcher at a better price…
My arts sensei, Cathy Farwell, forwarded an invite to the 11111 Arts&Culture Rally hosted by The Alliance for a Grand Community (AGC), correctly gauging that this was yet another opportunity to connect with the local arts community. Ben Brown and I packed up our trusty kit of kwartzlab swag and braved a snowstorm to get over to the Conrad Centre last Tuesday (yeah! right after the fieldtrip to Waterloo Engraving!)
Good turnout and lots of familiar faces. There were some videos, speeches, discussion questions, and beers. I came away from the night with reaffirmed conviction to keep doing stuff.
Last Tuesday, a half dozen of us from kwartzlab took a (short) fieldtrip over to Waterloo Engraving to meet up with owner, Bill Jermyn. Bill had dropped by Tuesday Open Night at the lab a few weeks back and we got into a good discussion around some of the CNC work Karl and I have been doing. I asked Bill if we could visit his shop to get a sense of some of the work he could do with his Epilog 75W laser. Above is a test etch of the kwartzlab logo on some scrap cardboard. I love the scorched look. Wait ‘til you see Matt’s video of this job and you’ll have a much better sense of the laser action.
More blog catch-up! Before we get too far from November and from Cathy Farwell & Co’s fantastic Box 10 Art Show & Sale, I wanted to share these pics from the event and suggest you talented makers queue up your submissions to the jury for the next show: Box 11 coming Nov 12/13, 2011. This is a unique and accessible art show that will really blow your hair back.
You know how it works: you pop it in your calendar now and then you don’t miss it on the other end of the year.
