Toronto Craft Alert

Just a quick note to let you know that, despite the project wrapping up in March, this site won’t be dissappearing anytime soon, courtesy of craft community champions Kid Icarus. The Kids have volunteered server space so that TCA can remain online as an archive. This not only means that our years of content, link gathering, etc. will remain accessible to you, but it also leaves open the possibility of us popping in periodically to share news or even post an article, should the fancy strike us.  A huge thanks to Mike and Bianca for supporting this process [...]

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Hi guys!

Just popping in to make sure you are aware that the First Ever Spring Edition of City of Craft is taking place this coming Saturday at Trinity St. Paul’s United Church. If that dead zone between the winter holiday season and summer fairs has got you down, City of Craft is here to help with what promises to be a show budding with fresh goods!

This is a blown up version of the craft and rummage trunk show that goes down periodically at the workroom, with 40+ [...]

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Creative workers don’t always live with much of a financial safety net, but, when they are good at what they do and active in their community, they do accumulate good will credits. That’s why, when local writer, bookseller, and Hallowe’enologist, Derek McCormack, fell ill last fall his substantial circle of talented friends came together to help.

The strategy is three-fold – 1) arrange an online art sale with an impressive list of Toronto artists 2) throw a one-night shindig 3) encourage [...]

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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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