WIAprojects

It is said that during the Neolithic age (10,000 BC), there was a 4000-6000 year period of relative peace and stability in matriarchal cultures across Europe, where several goddess figurines have been uncovered, indicating that the feminine was revered as divine. Entitled Mala after the artist's matriarch – her maternal grandmother – the piece shines a light on cultural context and expectations of life-birthing, aiming to mend the dissociation many of us have to the feminine. The felted sculpture is of a pregnant demi-Goddess mother figure, in front of a representation of the fallen woman. The mother figure tends to herself with one hand and holds her belly with the other. The artist wishes to shine a light on motherhood and life-giving, as we find ourselves in the throes of instability on psychological, communal, and political levels, and renewed politicization of women's bodies. Sarah Katz is a published poet and fibre artist in the start-up phase of a wool-slipper s...

Window into Another World Windows are a divider between one world and the next. One is instinctively drawn to its power and possibility. Is freedom just on the other side? Inside, the traveler makes her way to unknown places. This piece is inspired by Hokusai's landscapes and the paper doll cut outs from my mother’s old activity books.  Erin McKluskey Born in Ottawa, Erin is an emerging artist and illustrator working in Toronto. With a background in illustration and theatre, she creates images that exist on paper, walls, objects, spaces, and stages. Erin is interested in using imagery as an opportunity to explore the world, our environment and social issues.

BANKSIA SERRATA by Sarah Dawn Richardson Curated by Carpos Collective Window Box Gallery Gallery 1313 1313 Queen Street West, Toronto Wed - Sun, 1 PM - 6 PM I am a textile and bio-artist. I don't like the ordinary. I have a flair for the absurd, the gaudy, the surreal. I use fabrics, beads, needlework, and the use of biological beings to create visualizations of a world outside of this one. I believe art shouldn’t be confined to a visual experience. While my work is visually stimulating, my work is also experienced through tactile stimulation. My work explores the traditional ideas of craft, women's work, the hierarchy of biological beings, and the boundaries of fine arts in today’s artistic establishment. BANKSIA SERRATA was inspired by an australian plant of the same name, as well as fungi and molecular structures.   I use fabrics, beads, needlework, and the use of biological beings to create visualizations of a world outside of this one. I belie...

HELEN MCCUSKER April 2019 Window Box Gallery, Gallery 1313, 1313 Queen Street West, 1-6PM Wed - Sun. A graduate of Sheridan’s Illustration Program, Helen has been making art for more than 40 years. Her main focus is on Figurative work – creating Expressionistic drawings and paintings that speak to movement, energy and the deeply personal. Helen’s Figurative work always begins with drawing from live Artists’ models – looking for the elusive ‘something’ that carries the work beyond the skill of the drawing. It is mostly created in-session, using models with whom she has worked closely over many years. She sometimes brings in outside elements – found imagery, which is then incorporated into the work to create narrative. Helen also works with Paper Engineering as counter-point to her drawing and painting, creating Abstract Pop-Up sculptures incorporating hand-painted papers and collage. Helen is a member of the Etobicoke Art Group, Neilson, Park Creative Cent...

Artist: Ines Scepanovic Exhibit runs: April 3 - June 28, 2019 CWSE Hallway Gallery, 2nd Floor OISE  252 Bloor Street West, Toronto This site-specific installation uses imagery from Francois Millet's 1857 painting, The Gleaners, which depicts three impoverished farm workers collecting grain left behind after the harvest. The scale of Millet's original painting was 84cm X 112cm, a monumental size that was unprecedented in its depiction of themes of labour and poverty. The work was met with negative criticism and suspicion by the upper classes who saw this work as a glorification of the working class. Originally located by the Sessional Faculty office at OCADU, this installation repeats, in varying sizes, multiple drawings of these three figures from The Gleaners . The figures are representative of the 77 sessional instructors currently employed at the Faculty of Art. As is the case with most Canadian universities, sessional faculty are precariously employed at OCAD...

Parable of the Talents Stephan Goslinski Curated by Carpos Collective Opens March 13 for the month in the Window Box Gallery, Gallery 1313, 1313 Queen Street West, Toronto. Wed-Sat 1-6 pm. ‘Talent’ as an idea has fallen from its pedestal in recent years, I think for good reason. When we praise talent, we often abstract the hundreds of hours of discipline that it took to learn how to create well, making the talented one an other in our eyes—something beyond our reach, at once prized and privileged. In my experience, this view of talent leads only to apathy and jealousy. The humility of discipline tempers both of these, and breaks the distance between apathy and excellence into discrete units of hard work, measured in days and hours, sweat and tears. However, just as I don’t believe in talent as a miracle cure, I don’t believe in discipline as internal combustion. Both of them come from somewhere; there is something that plants a seed and something that encourages us to wa...

Talking Wellness OCAD U! Exhibition Jan 30-April 1 2019 2nd Floor OISE  252 Bloor Street West, Toronto. Art and Design Education (ADEL): Community at OCAD University have been investigating various concerns around how we might achieve a healthier art and design education community at OCAD U. We have taken this up through personal observation and in conversation with the staff at the Health and Wellness Centre. Our intention was not to suggest definitive policy changes nor do a rigourous quantitative research but rather to explore, as artists, through personal discovery and dialogue, what we might envision as an ideal – or even imaginary – healthy community for those who study, teach and work in art and design at OCAD U. This exhibition presents creative voices in dialogic as they imagine a healthy thriving community for OCAD U. Artists/Researchers:  Jerad Beauregard, Rhys Castro, Tara Clews, Tania Costa, Hana Elmisry, Zen Huang, Cori Jin, Nataly Kais, A...