Toronto Craft Alert

Man, I LOVED Thunder Bay.  Never having been this far north, this was the most anticipated stop on my craft tour of Ontario and I was not dissapointed.  Incredible industrial architecture, a surprisingly robust Finnish culture (the largest Finnish population outside of Finland, who knew?), super warm people, insane thrift, and a bit of a “land that time forgot” vibe going on in the restaurants, cafes and shops.  My discussions with makers revealed that a cultural regeneration is taking place and that we should [...]

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Stop two on my Ontario craft road trip was Kitchener-Waterloo, and a definite highlight was visiting the Joseph Schneider Haus Museum and Gallery, a Pioneer Village-eque spot in downtown Kitchener. The central building is a Georgian farmhouse built by one of the area’s first pioneers, Joseph Schneider, a Pennsylvania-German Mennonite c. 1816. The rooms are filled with gorgeous woven Menonnite blankets and quilts, linen feedbags, super heavy duty functional ceramics, hand woven [...]

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Spark Box Studio

With TCA wrapping up in just a few short days (whoa!) I wanted to try to squeeze in some pics from my Ontario craft odyssey to Prince Edward County, Kitchener Waterloo, and Thunder Bay this past November as part of an Ontario Crafts Council funded project to uncover regional issues for makers practicing outside of large urban centres. The trip was a real eye opener to this Toronto native about different cultures of craft [...]

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Everything about this talk sounds right on: ceramics, public space activism, live kiln work, oh my!  Visit the Gardiner website to purchase tickets.

RORY MacDONALD: PUBLIC CRAFT (Lecture)
THURSDAY MARCH 8, 2012 6:30 – 8 pm

Ceramicist and NSCAD professor, Rory MacDonald discusses the importance of ceramics within the realm of public activism and public space. He highlights a new role for decoration as a disruption to our thinking about how we organize and build public space. [...]

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Winter may still be blustery, but life never stops in the deep abyss (read: big green suitcase) of the Toronto Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef. After a two year hibernation, the reef has emerged once again to occupy another Toronto window Gallery, Roadside Attractions on Davenport at Christie, where it will be on display all day and night for the next five weeks. This emergence sees the reef bigger than ever with “more hanging things and more big things”.

Curated [...]

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Upcycling (the repurposing of materials, giving them new life) has been a hot topic in craft over the past few years as consumption and waste has weighed heavy on a lot of makers’ minds. This upcoming show at the TMC pulls out pieces from their permanent collection that reflect this approach of seeing value in “trash “and creating something beautiful with it. I think it will be fascinating to see how this orientation threads through time and across cultures.

Perpetual [...]

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