For the past month I’ve been noticing these large portraits posted on walls throughout the city. Turns out this is part of a large global street art project called Inside Out or the Inside Out Project.
INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Upload a portrait. Receive a poster. Paste it for the world to see.
John between King & Main
King William, west of John
at James north & Mulberry
King William west of John
When I was in Toronto over the weekend I saw Inside Out portraits pasted up on walls there too. Some people might not welcome this type of street art, but I like the way it interacts with passerbys and how it brings a personal story to public places. I love even more that this is a global project. You can see a map here of people all around the world who have participated in Inside Out.
A few years back when we were still living in Toronto I went to Pages book store, when it still existed at Queen & John, and asked if they had any books about Hamilton. We’d already been crushing on Hamilton big time, and I wanted to indulge in our fantasy of moving to Hamilton by giving Steve a book about the city for his 31st birthday. The store clerk looked up at me in a bit of shock, and then clarified again whether I really meant a book about the city of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario, really?
The only book in the entire store about Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario, was a graphic novel titled Hamilton Sketchbook by David Collier.
I could not have asked for a better gift for Steve and introduction to life in Hamilton. I was so happy to have had the luck of stumbling upon such a gem of book.
After having moved to Hamilton, at an art crawl about 2 years back, I met David Collier at Mixed Media. He was selling and signing Part 2 of the Hamilton Sketchbook. I ended up buying this copy for another present for Steve.
There’s something really cool about reading about places you’ve been to and places you’ve lived in. I love the down to earth feel, and day to day life depiction of David’s work.
Today as I rode by Mixed Media on my way to work I noticed a poster by David in the window. Prints for $10 Hamilton Light Rail Transit.
I heard that David recently designed the album artwork for relatively new Hamiltonian Luke Doucet and The White Falcon‘s latest albumSteel City Trawler, which is a tribute entirely to the city of Hamilton.
For a great read about Luke Doucet’s recent move to Hamilton, and more details about his album (produced by Sloan’s Andrew Scott) and about David Collier read the National Post’s article here.
Luke Doucet and life partner, fellow musician and singer-songwriter Melissa McClelland will be playing a show with their new band White Horse at The Hamilton Place Studio on September 30th with Frazey Ford.
Supercrawl 2011 is going to be so damn good. I’m crying inside that I’m going to miss it. Instead of artcrawling, I’ll be heading to beautiful upstate NY for the 4th out of 5 weddings of the season. It will be fun but it might be hard pressed to top the 3 major free festivals that will all be running simultaneously in Hamilton’s downtown core on Saturday, September 10th. We’ve got the Locke Street Festival, Country Music Week (at Copps Coliseum & on top of Jackson Square) and the SUPERCRAWL on James St. north.
The line up for the Supercrawl is just so outstandingly AWESOME! If I could go, these would be some of my top picks to check out…
J Mascis of Dinosaur Junior -9:15pm Stage 1 at York & James N.
Basia Bulat will be playing with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra -7pm Stage 1 at York & James N.
.
Black Francis aka Frank Black of The Pixies and Reid Paley -9pm Stage 2 Colborne & James N. (Paley & Francis will be releasing their new album with Hamilton local record label Sonic Unyon).
Junior Boys back from their world tour, and home to Hamilton for the Supercrawl! -9pm Stage 2 Colborne & James N.
Hamilton’s own, Young Rival -4:15pm Stage 1 at York & James N.
DMC Canadian Final DJ Competition at Academia Banquet Hall (upper floor), 242 James St. north.
I would also love to see the hand knitted art installation that will replicate the entire brick facade of The Brain, done by the Beehive Craft Collective. This is going to be so cool!
Oh, and how could I forget to mention a super exhibit called Women’s Work that will be on display at Project Space 126/128 James St. north, opening reception on the Supercrawl night from 7-10pm. It will be an exhibit of fantastic crafty, textileness, which will include a beehive paper dress by artist Hitoko Okata.
Erika DeFreitas, Detail from A Teleplasmic Study with Doillies (A Selection). 2010 - 2011. Digital print
The day before the Supercrawl; Friday September 9th will be Terra Lighfoot‘s CD release party at This Ain’t Hollywood, and James St. north will still be kickin’ with it’s regular monthly art crawl from 7-11pm.
The Supercrawl will take place on Saturday, September 10th from 10am-12 midnight, from York/Wilson and James St. north all the way down to This Ain’t Hollywood.
After parties a plenty at The Brain -199 James St. north (dance party to soul, house, disco boogie) free, 1pm-2am, and after party thrown by Beauty Industries at The Red Mill Theatre -80 James St. north (at Wilson) $10 to get in, 9pm-2am.
On top of a phenomenal line up of class act musical artists both local and otherwise there will be some amazing visual artists and art installations, plus galleries and the ever increasing number of independent and cool shops, will all be open and pumping at full throttle.
Here is a list of the 2011 Supercrawl contingent. For specific times and locations of performances look here.
Music-BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE
J MASCIS
PALEY & FRANCIS
JUNIOR BOYS
SAID THE WHALE
RIDLEY BENT
BASIA BULAT and the HAMILTON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
PLANTS AND ANIMALS
RAH RAH
DINNER BELLES
SEAN ROWE
JACQUES GREENE (dj set)
THE HEARTBROKEN
DINOSAUR BONES
YOUNG RIVAL
TURKEY RHUBARB
REBEKAH HIGGS
MAYOR McCA
ELECTROLUMINESCENT
LIVE HOW YOU LIVE
COWLICK
OLENKA AND THE AUTUMN LOVERS
MONSTER TRUCK
THE REST
BA JOHNSTON
SARAH LOWES
FRY TRUCK
HAMILTON HIP HOP ALL-STARS
MOTEM & CO.
McMASTER LAPTOP ORCHESTRA
DJ OLLIE
DJ BASCO
EARTH, WIND & CHOIR
plus
DMC 2011 WORLD DJ CHAMPIONSHIPS: CANADIAN FINALS
and
WAR CHILD Busking For CHANGE
FYI Free shuttle buses available from the Locke St. festival to the Supercrawl.
This month’s art crawl is going to be another really good one! The ladies from the Beehive Craft Collective are putting on their 2 day craft show in the old Friendship Gift Shop (118 James St. north). They will have some fabulous vendors. If you want to get a little taste of what will be at the craft fair you can checkout the Beehive Craft Collective blog and their spotlight features of the vendors & their products.
Here’s a tiny sample of some of the talented crafters that will be there.
From http://www.ohmysocute.com/
I have unknowingly bought many, many cards by printmaker Katie Muth. I’ve bid happy wishes with Katie’s artwork for weddings, thank yous, births and birthdays, cards all of which I’ve purchased from Mixed Media. It’ll be great to stock up on some more artful greetings for all the upcoming nuptials I will be witnessing in the next few months.
Hand drawn images, & screen printed textiles by bespoken uprising
For more images go to bespoken uprising’s blog or for some shopping check out her etsy page.
from http://breadandbutterpottery.com/pottery/
Super cute pottery from Bread & Butter Pottery.
from http://www.scoutandcatalogue.com/
Soft and pretty textiles and garments from Scout & Catalogue.
In addition to all this wonderful summer craftiness, Steve will have his artwork in 2 galleries for the art crawl; Align at b contemporary and Zoo at Loose Canon. At b contemporary, pieces by Steve Newberry like the one below, as well as, artwork by Stephanie Seagram and Nicole Collins, will be exhibited.
landscapes -belleville artist Steve Newberry
For more pictures of the gorgeous artwork at Zoo’s opening from July’s art crawl , check out Jacqui Oakley’s blog post.
Tonight’s art crawl will feature a super cool exhibit called Zoo at Loose Canon Gallery. I’m plugging this exhibit not only because Steve has work in this show, but also because there are some sickeningly talented artists that are part of the show too.
Jacqui and Jamie hanging the signage for Zoo at Loose Canon Gallery.
Jacqui Oakley and Jamie Lawson are the curators of this show, and are also unbelievably amazing artists, whose work will be exhibited in this show.
Here’s a little sample of some of their work.
Jonah & The Whale -Jamie Lawson
Image from: jamielawsondesign.com
woodpecker illustration -Jacqui Oakley
Image from: jacquioakley.com This link will take you Jacqui’s website, where she details some of her processes in doing this beautiful illustration (so much work to do behind the scenes!)
*Loose Canon Gallery, 150 James St. north, Hamilton
I went to visit Steve in Windsor, where he was doing a month long artist residency through the University of Windsor. While visiting, I stayed in Steve’s short-term living accommodations in Sandwich Town (best name for a town ever!). It is actually a part of the city of Windsor and boasts some of the oldest buildings in the area. Sandwich has some big ol’ beautiful houses, and they reminded me a little of what I would imagine grand manors in New Orleans to look like. The entire area of Sandwich Town had a whole different kind of feel to it that made me feel like I was a lot further away from home than just a 3 hour train ride.
Similar to Hamilton, Windsor’s is struggling through it’s own post-industrial era and as a result parts of the city have most definitely seen better days. The downtown was pretty quiet and empty, except for an unexpected mid afternoon Sikh parade that had somehow beautifully integrated Scottish bagpipes with some traditional Sikh drumming. An all together weird and unique experience of Windsor’s downtown.
Steve's art studio space in Windsor. Great light, and so much room!
Being the most southern area of Canada, spring was about two weeks ahead over in Windsor. Trees were in full bloom.
Story goes that a second bridge was in the works to be built right next to the existing Ambassador Bridge to accommodate for the high traffic between Windsor and Detroit. Houses along the area where the bridge was to be built were bought up, and then everything was put on hold. The plans for the bridge have been stalled due to some controversial opposition and a law suit against the US and Canadian government from the owner of the Ambassador Bridge; 83 year old Manuel “Matty” Maroun (or as one of our cab drivers called him Matty “Moron”). As a result the entire street for about 5-6 blocks, where the proposed bridge was to be built has all the houses boarded right up, lowering the property value of neighbouring houses and causing a bit of a fascinating yet eerie eye-sore. How does this kind of thing happen?
We decided to check out the Art Gallery of Windsor on one of the rainier days that I was visiting. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures of their current exhibitions. But regardless here a few photos of some of the spaces I was allowed to photograph.
We did some informal Doors Open Hamilton wandering over the weekend. The Art Gallery of Hamilton had their annual Spring Art Sale, which nicely coincided with doors open -free admission, and we got to check out a great new exhibit. If you have the time I recommend stopping by the AGH to observe Diane Landry‘s installation Defibrillators -beautiful light, soft sounds, and mechanical operations.
Diane Landry -Flying School 2000, photo by Mike Lalich
Diane Landry, Defibrillators, photo by Mike Lalich
*Art Gallery of Hamilton, 123 King St. West, Hamilton
Steve had his art opening yesterday at The Print Studio on James St. North. For his latest work he has silk screened images onto plywood. Super cool. The show will be on until May 7th. And he’ll be doing another group show at Loose Canon in July.
It was a really good turn out for the opening and art crawl, the street was full, and there seemed to be a constant flow of people into the gallery. I managed to sneak away for a few minutes to take a peak at the latest gallery to open up on James; b contemporary. It was very shiny and new and still had the smell of wood varnish from their freshly refinished wood floors. When I have a chance I will go by and take some photos and post them.
A day trip to explore Buffalo was perfect for a grey spring Sunday. Since moving to Hamilton we’d done a lot of talk about wanting to visit the Albright Knox Art Gallery, and on one of those dull in between winter and spring days, when it’s too cold to be outside but spring enough that you want to be somewhere besides hibernating, a short drive across the border to Buffalo to check out some contemporary art did just the trick.
*Albright Knox Art Gallery, 1285 Elmwood Ave. Buffalo, NY
