PLP at Mixed Media, Hamilton

I apologize for this rather late update on last weeks PLP reception at Mixed Media in Hamilton. The opening was loads of fun...the James Street Art Crawl was incredible, with hoards of art-hungry observers packing the streets and galleries until nearly midnight. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to see The Portable Library Project, and for all the kind feedback. Thanks also to Dave Kuruc of Mixed Media for hosting the project in his incredible store and for all his help along the way, as well as PLP artists Stephanie Vegh, Sheila Jonah and Fiona Bailey for coming out to see the show! And...thanks again to Fiona and her partner Patrick for the ride back to T.O!

The Portable Library Project is on view at Mixed Media until July 3rd.

Photo courtesy of hamilton.ca

PLP at Mixed Media, Hamilton

The next showing of The Portable Library Project opens in a week at Mixed Media in Hamilton. The opening will coincide with Hamilton's monthy James Street Art Crawl. See above (and below!) for all the details. Hope to see you there!

The Portable Library Project is a multi-dimensional mail-art/bookmaking project involving the creation of small works exploring ideas surrounding archiving, ephemera, journalling, libraries and incorporating an art practice into everyday life. The 18 participating artists span several artistic disciplines, from performance art to fibre-based art; from photo-based art to craft to sculpture and installation. Artists involved in the project are based across Canada, and are from as far away as Seoul, Korea.

Invited artists were sent/delivered an empty cigar box, roughly the size of a hardcover book. Over the course of one week, participants were expected to create a 'book' a day, reflective of each person's day-to-day activities and artistic process. Books were ideally made while on the go; boxes were intended to be carried with the participant, where books were to be added and collected each day for seven days.

Participating artists:
Aimee Lee (Seoul, Korea)
Amber Landgraff (Toronto)
Cara Spooner (Toronto)
Daphne Gerou (Toronto)
Debbie Danelley (Winnipeg, MB)
Deborah Margo (Ottawa, ON)
Fiona Bailey (Toronto)
Jen Pilles (Oakville, ON)
Laura Calvi (Halifax, NS)
Laurie Kang (Toronto)
Margaret Flood (Guelph, ON)
Margaret Legue (Forest, ON)
Morag Schonken (Halifax, NS)
Sheila Jonah (Toronto)
Simon Rabyniuk (Toronto)
Stephanie Cormier (Toronto)
Stephanie Vegh (Hamilton, ON)
Sylvia Ziemann (Regina, SK)

The Portable Library Project is organized and curated by Tara Bursey.

Poster design:  Tara Bursey

PLP at Mixed Media, Hamilton

There has been a new development on the Portable Library Project front...the third PLP exhibition has just been scheduled at a great little shop/gallery called Mixed Media in Hamilton. The opening is on June 11th, 2010 and the show will run until July 3rd. Opening night will coincide with Hamilton's well-known James Street North Art Crawl, that happens the evening of the second Friday of each month.

More on Mixed Media, from their website:

Mixed Media is Hamilton’s only independent art shop. Having only been open since October 2005, this locally owned and independent store is already creating a stir in the local arts community. Specializing in art and printmaking supplies, specialty paper and stationery products. Mixed Media also features locally made gift items, greeting cards, books and magazines and a pretty cool art gallery. We strive to do things differently and creatively and hope to inspire a few bystanders along the way.

Mixed Media is located in the historic James North neighbourhood of Hamilton, Ontario. This diverse cluster of restaurants, shops, churches and galleries makes for an interesting day out. Just a short walk away from both Downtown Hamilton and the beautiful waterfront area.

For even more on Mixed Media, check out their website, as well as this short video which features an interview with Dave Kuruc (owner of Mixed Media) about the changing face of Hamilton, and it's creative community.

More info and a flyer for the opening to come in May.

PLP at Roberts Street Social Centre

Here are some photos from the day of the opening at Roberts Street Social Centre!  Thanks again Sarah Evans of RSSC and Morag Schonken (and Suzy, pictured above!) for helping put on the show. Everything looks super!

The Portable Library Project is on display at Roberts Street (in the Anchor Archive Zine Library) until November 1st.  Their hours of operation are Tuesday from 6-9pm and Sunday from 2-5pm...if you're in Halifax, be sure to check out the show before the end of the month!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Photos:  Morag Schonken

PLP at Roberts Street Social Centre

Well, it's that time again!  The second Portable Library Project show opens in one week, at Roberts Street Social Centre in Halifax. Thanks so much to everyone who helped put this show together, specifically Sarah Evans and everyone at Roberts Street for their help and enthusiasm, and my good friend (and PLP artist) Morag Schonken for helping co-ordinate the exhibition.  Stay tuned to the blog for photos of the show and press from Halifax!

*****

The Portable Library Project is a multi-dimensional mail-art/book-making project involving the creation of small works exploring ideas surrounding archiving, journaling, libraries, ephemera, and incorporating an art practice into everyday life. The 18 participating artists span several artistic disciplines, from performance art to fibre-based art; from photo-based art to craft to sculpture and installation.  Artists involved in the project are based across Canada, the US and are from as far away as Seoul, Korea.

Invited artists were sent/delivered an empty cigar box, roughly the size of a hardcover book. Over the course of a week, participants were expected to create a 'book' a day reflective of each person's day-to-day activities and artistic process. Books were ideally made while on the go; boxes were intended to be carried with the participant, where books were to be added and collected each day for seven days.

How do working artists fit artistic production into everyday life?  Challenging oneself to make work outside of a studio setting is one way. One element of The Portable Library Project serves as a challenge to artists to adopt a portable art practice to fit the demands of the life of a working artist, which often entails a job or two in unrelated work environments. The portability of the book format is a natural basis for the project, which also encourages artists to explore and comment on the relationship between the book and the art object.

Participating artists:
Aimee Lee (Seoul, Korea)
Amber Landgraff (Toronto)
Cara Spooner (Toronto)
Daphne Gerou (Toronto)
Debbie Danelley (Winnipeg, MB)
Deborah Margo (Ottawa, ON)
Fiona Bailey (Toronto)
Jen Pilles (Oakville, ON)
Laura Calvi (Halifax, NS)
Laurie Kang (Toronto)
Margaret Flood (Guelph, ON)
Margaret Legue (Forest, ON)
Morag Schonken (Halifax, NS)
Sheila Jonah (Toronto)
Simon Rabyniuk (Toronto)
Stephanie Cormier (Toronto)
Stephanie Vegh (Hamilton, ON)
Sylvia Ziemann (Regina, SK)

October 11th-November 1st, 2009
Opens Sunday, October 11, 2-5pm
Anchor Archive Zine Library
at the Roberts Street Social Centre
5684 Roberts Street
Halifax
http://www.robertsstreet.org/n/
Poster design: Tara Bursey

PLP at lowercase gallery

Here are some photographs of the PLP installation at lowercase gallery, taken the day before the opening on July 4th.  Thanks so much to everyone who made this happen:  Brandy Fedoruk and Rebecca Dolen of the Regional Assembly of Text, and Jo Cook who oversees lowercase gallery.  All three ladies are incredible zinesters/bookmakers in their own right.  For images and info of some of their work, check out the "Little Books" section of the Regional Assembly of Text's online shop and Jo's publishing project, Perro Verlag.

Stephanie Vegh on the Portable Library Project

Participating artist Stephanie Vegh was kind enough to post about the first showing of the Portable Library Project on her blog.  She also wrote a bit about the process of making her awesome contribution, which was inspired by the Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.  Find her post here.  Thanks, Stephanie!

Laurie Kang

Sadface

(2008)

Collage on paper.

Laurie Kang is a photo-based artist born in Toronto, Canada.  She currently lives and works between Toronto and Montreal.

Sheila Jonah

Magpie Box

(2009)

"Magpie Box is a visual diary of treasures collected in travels in downtown Toronto over seven days.  Setting the parameter that all items must be “found” in my regular environment, I spent time like a magpie searching for the “shiny” and colourful, the unusual and unique, the mundane and commonplace – pieces of detritus that one encounters daily.  Each tiny accordian book reflects my movement and activities daily over the span of a week as well the state of the recycle bin at the warehouse and my friends waste baskets.  An addictive weeklong mini bookmaking experience now all housed in the recycled cigar box."

Sheila Jonah is a Toronto based visual artist who delights in the daily game of collecting bits and pieces, ephemera, old books, pieces of wood, used cool stuff, thrown out treasures and anything that can be recycled for printmaking, papermaking or handmade artist books.  A graduate of OCAD majoring in Printmaking, Sheila has studied and made art in New Zealand, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Vancouver (which by far has the best skiing and kayaking). She now spends her time in the Historic Distillery District in downtown Toronto working at PROOF Studio Gallery and drinking Balzac’s Coffee, eating Soma chocolate, Eccles cakes and happily printing away.

PLP at lowercase gallery

I'm leaving for Vancouver this Thursday! The Portable Library Project's first public showing, at lowercase gallery in Vancouver, opens this Saturday at 4pm. Read the following for all the details, and check out this weekend's other festivities brought to you by the ladies of the Regional Assembly of Text!

The Portable Library Project is a multi-dimensional mail-art/bookmaking project involving the creation of small works exploring ideas surrounding archiving, ephemera, journalling, libraries and incorporating an art practice into everyday life. The 18 participating artists span several artistic disciplines, from performance art to fibre-based art; from photo-based art to craft to sculpture and installation. Artists involved in the project are based across Canada, and are from as far away as Seoul, Korea.

Invited artists were sent/delivered an empty cigar box, roughly the size of a hardcover book. Over the course of one week, participants were expected to create a 'book' a day, reflective of each person's day-to-day activities and artistic process. Books were ideally made while on the go; boxes were intended to be carried with the participant, where books were to be added and collected each day for seven days. 

Participating artists:
Aimee Lee (Seoul, Korea)
Amber Landgraff (Toronto)
Becky Johnson (Toronto)
Cara Spooner (Toronto)
Daphne Gerou (Toronto)
Debbie Danelley (Winnipeg, MB)
Deborah Margo (Ottawa, ON)
Fiona Bailey (Toronto)
Jen Pilles (Oakville, ON)
Laura Calvi (Halifax, NS)
Laurie Kang (Toronto)
Margaret Flood (Guelph, ON)
Margaret Legue (Forest, ON)
Morag Schonken (Winnipeg, MB)
Sheila Jonah (Toronto)
Simon Rabyniuk (Toronto)
Stephanie Cormier (Toronto)
Stephanie Vegh (Hamilton, ON)
Sylvia Ziemann (Regina, SK)

The Portable Library Project is organized and curated by Tara Bursey.

July 4-31, 2009
Opens Saturday, July 4th, 4 pm (BBQ at 6pm)
lowercase gallery
at the Regional Assembly of Text
3934 Main Street
Vancouver

http://theportablelibraryproject.blogspot.com

Poster design:  Jo Cook

PLP Exhibition Dates

I am thrilled to announce the first confirmed tour dates for the Portable Library Project!

July 2009
lowercase gallery and reading room
at the Regional Assembly of Text
3934 Main Street
Vancouver, BC
Opening: Saturday, July 4th. 4pm

October 2009
Roberts Street Social Centre/Anchor Archive
5684 Roberts Street
Halifax, NS
Opening: TBA

I will be traveling with portable libraries in tow to Vancouver to mount the first exhibition in July. Wow! For more on the lowercase reading room and the Regional Assembly of Text, read on, or check out their blog and website.

"The lowercase reading room, “one of the richest collections of unusual zines and artist-made books in the country,” is located at 3934 Main Street in Vancouver, BC. Assembled from the combined collections of Jo Cook, Rebecca Dolen and Brandy Fedoruk, the reading room houses over 500 books in a 9′ x 3′ space at the Regional Assembly of Text, a gift store of hand-made textual oddities. Open seven days a week from noon until 5 pm, the reading room provides a quiet place to read or research the endless possibilities for self-publishing. There are full-colour comics, photocopied grocery lists, zines about personal obsessions and enthusiasms. There are pamphlets and manifestos, the rude and crude and X-rated, alongside lovingly handstitched books with fur-lined covers. An afternoon of browsing may uncover books about holidays from hell, brochures about the end of the world, a survey zine about New Year’s resolutions and a quiz about toast.

"The first systematic defence of one’s right to self-publish was written by John Milton in his Areopagitica in 1644. Milton argued that the survival of an ideology-based state hinges on its tight control of ideas and that state control is impossible to challenge unless self-publishing is allowed. Whether or not the authors of the books in the lowercase reading room collection have read Milton, they share the impulse to create works without censorship. The self-publisher has a dream: she sees the world and its variety of creatures and inventions, she hears the many forms of speech and sees its written symbols, she is not afraid of inconsistencies. She welcomes accidents and the beauty of human imperfection that is edited out by homogeneous ideologies."

Stephanie Vegh

Dashiell Hammett's Violent Masterpiece Red Harvest
(2009)

"This library contains seven distillations of a second-rate paperback print of hard-boiled detective writer Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, which depicts the disorientation and downfall of the Continental Op as he struggles to purge the criminal lifeblood of the corrupt mining town of Personville, familiarly known as Poisonville. The individual book-objects are tactile interpretations of key elements of the narrative, each attuned to the commonplace violence of Red Harvest with its masculine trappings of leather, gin and dead matches for cigars long since extinguished."

Emerging artist and writer Stephanie Vegh was born in Hamilton, Canada in 1980, where she studied Art and Comparative Literature at McMaster University. She completed her MFA at the Glasgow School of Art and has since served as Artist-in-Residence with the Repton School in Derbyshire, England and written essays and articles for various galleries and publications throughout the United Kingdom and Canada.

In 2007, she returned to Hamilton where she serves on the Boards for Directors for Hamilton Artists Inc. and The Print Studio. Her drawings have been included in group shows in Hamilton, Toronto and Winnipeg, and she will be mounting her first significant solo exhibition at the Leeds College of Art and Design in 2010.

Margaret Legue

Hoarding Memories
(2008)

"My current practice is centred around certain historical aspects of WWII with allusion to social/political movements of the 60s-70s. A lot of my research is done through libraries and museums...I'm interested in the archival/journaling aspect of (The Portable Library Project) in that it's an integral part of how i conceptually base my art, taking a look at past historical events and propaganda from a contemporary standpoint."

Jen Pilles

I Wish I Hadn't Done That
(2009)

Jen Pilles is a third-year illustration student at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. She is founder/co-founder of the Welland Zine Library, OCAD Zine Library and Sheridan Zine Library.