ArtwordBlog

Today we learned of the death on December 30, 2009, of our dear friend and colleague Barbara Caruso. Barbara’s life-long passion, rigour and commitment to her painting and drawing was a constant source of amazement and inspiration to me. [posted by Judith Sandiford]

Below is the obituary that will appear in the Brantford Expositor on Saturday.   “Barbara Caruso of Paris, Ontario died of cancer in Brantford General Hospital on December 30th, 2009 after a two and a half month illness. She was born in Kincardine, Ontario in 1937. Survived by Nelson Ball, her husband of 44 years, her sisters Joan Caruso and Rosemary Eckert of Toronto and by nieces and nephews, she was predeceased by her parents Tom and Rose Caruso and her sister Thomasina Merritt of Kincardine. Barbara Caruso was a visual artist who dedicated her life to painting, drawing and print making. She was a writer on art and the author of two volumes of memoirs. Barbara is missed by her family, friends in Paris, and by friends in the visual arts and writing communities across Canada and abroad. Cremation has taken place. Memorial donations may be made to a charity of your choice through the Wm. Kipp Funeral Home, Paris (519) 442-3061 or www.wmkippfuneralhome.com”

Wacky and elegant: two qualities that are not generally associated. And yet, Friday’s art crawl saw the two hand-in-hand more than once.

Brian Kelly’s sculptures, at the You Me gallery on James Street North, are free-standing assemblages of cast-off objects. They are high-spirited, witty, whimsical — all of that. And yet, something more. Let your eye draw away from the detail, and each melange of random objects resolves into a structure that’s graceful and pleasing to the eye. More »

Went to a meeting last night ( July 9) on the third floor of the Police Station on King William Street, across from Theatre Aquarius. It seems that a group of arts-lovers, including some civic planners, involved citizens and Arts Hamilton, are excited about the idea of transforming a portion of King William Street into an Art Walk. More »

TH&B, “Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo”, is a now-defunct railway based in Hamilton that operated from 1894 to 1987. (Check out the Wikipedia entry.) A collective of artists from Toronto and Hamilton (I don’t believe that Buffalo is represented yet, but what a good idea!) has appropriated the name. They claim to have “an affinity for setting up exhibitions in unlikely places“. Their latest project is a group show in the cavernous industrial environment at 270 Sherman St. More »

The Dulwich Picture Gallery claims to be the first dedicated picture gallery in the world. Well, who’s to dispute it?

The gallery is on the grounds of Dulwich College, originally Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift, built in 1619. In Shakespeare’s time, Edward Alleyn was the chief rival to Richard Burbage as London’s leading actor. Owner of the Fortune Theatre, a bear bating garden and two brothels, all on London’s south bank, he dedicated his ill-gotten gains to building a chapel, a schoolhouse, and twelve almshouses, providing the site for the later addition of the gallery. More »

“Maman” is a giant spider made of bronze, a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. Monumental in scale, she seems weightless, barely touching the earth on the points of her eight segmented legs. She wraps and transforms the space beneath her, enclosing the light, standing against the sky, a delicate silhouette, simultaneously menacing and comforting, threatening destruction, promising transformation, an embodiment of brutish nature, a spinner of delicate artifice. Inhuman, alien, a creature of nightmare, simple, familiar, homely. She is Mother. More »

Around the corner from where we live on Portland Street is the Available Light Gallery (506 Adelaide St. W), run by our good friend Rupen. It’s a storefront. Rupen lives in the house behind. He changes the shows once a month, inviting artists to create installations. Rupen is an artist, and has lots of artist friends, so the shows have been excellent. There’s nothing to buy. You can’t go in. You just look at the displays in the windows. When the show is over, the work is dismantled and gone.

Rupen is not only an artist, but a finish carpenter. (That’s “finish” not “Finish”. He’s Armenian.) More »

Libby Hague has created an avalanche over in the west end, Lansdowne and Wallace. Made mostly of paper, rolled, crumpled, teased and piled, it tumbles and roils, filling one end of a shoebox-shaped space, threatening to inundate a tiny village, also made mostly of paper.

The offthemapgallery (OTMG) is as alternative as it gets. It’s in the wrong part of town, down a lane, back behind a yellow storefront, in an unheated, uninsulated garage. In director/curator/owner Antonia Lancaster’s words, “it is not government funded, not a cooperative, not an artist run centre, not a rental space, and not a dealership”. More »

Nuit Blanche came out of nowhere, it seemed. The idea was that we would stay up all night and wander through the streets noticing art. They do it in Paris. Why not here?

Well, I was dubious. I am a little suspicious of schemes that require artists to create a holiday for everyone else. I was also doubtful whether anyone knew that it was happening. I found out myself through an email, artist-to-artist. Would the general public know? I hadn’t seen any advertising.

However, the event itself was quite magical. It wasn’t so much about the art as it was about the fun of taking possession of the streets. It was about the crowds, the city come alive. The swimming pool event was something of a fizzle from an art point of view. Apparently there were microphones under the water, but the effect was very subtle, to the point of “do you hear anything?” “No, can you?” However, it was fun to see people swimming at midnight. More »

Visited the Glasgow School of Art, designed by Charles Rennie MacIntosh, Glasgow’s favorite son. (Glasgow is applying to Unesco for world site status based on his contribution to architecture and interior design.) The School of Art is indeed a pleasant, humane environment, tasteful, unpretentious, full of light.

While at art school, Macintosh and his best friend Herbert McNair fell in love with two sisters, Margaret and Frances Macdonald. They paired off married, and became the Glasgow “Four”. All were talented designers and painters. More »