soon it will be time for...

lost...

A few weeks ago, I finished a torso posted earlier and had some time left over to do a quick clay sketch during the last half of sculpture class. I took some photos of the quick piece then threw it back into the clay bin. A week later, someone had fished the now broken-off head of the bust out of the bin, and stuck it like a cannibal trophy on top of a pole in the corner. It looked pretty funny. Too bad I didn't get a picture of that. Anyhow, the sculpture is now gone and here are the photos:




For those who wish to know, it was about 12 inches high. And I now like it better than the torso that I kept. (posted by Arna)

Goran

For all things dark...

Our friend, illustrator and animation designer Goran Delic:

Goran's brand new blog is here.

Link to his portfolio site here. (works best in Explorer or Safari- not in Mozilla).

animals, domestic, household, aka...cats!

We're inspired by other Toronto bloggers who are posting their gorgeous animal sketches from visits to the Royal Winter Fair. See Nick Sung and Smook for example.

But when ya can't get to the Royal... ya gotta just draw what's around!

and this last one is our girl Kiki at her punky-est... wanting me to stop drawing and PAY ATTENTION! :

sketches by the water...

We live near Lake Ontario in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto, a great place to sketch.

The top image is a progresso pencil drawing of an outcropping at the Scarborough Bluffs. The bottom one is another progresso pencil sketch (with a blue prismacolour underdrawing) of willow trees beside the boardwalk. (Posted by John)

Photo essay: Tara Bursey Sculptures

In September, we were fortunate to see a solo show of sculpture by the talented Toronto artist Tara Bursey. I (Arna) met Tara when I was a (part time) sculpture student at The Toronto School Of Art, and she impressed me as a person with intense commitment to her art. The work she does always makes me stop, look...and think.

The pieces in this show were constructed of domestic materials given an alternate, and some would say larger, life of their own by Tara's clever re-interpretation. In the work titled Kimonos (2005), the artist meticulously sewed paper wrappers from tea bags to make several full-sized kimonos. Tara used the tea bags, and the tea itself, as part of the piece.

For her piece Formation (2005), Tara hung a line of boxer shorts as though freshly washed. Each of the shorts carried the name of a different US fighter pilot, honoured as a hero for flying in the bombing raids on Japan during WWII. Tara wrote the young pilots' names by hand, in a crisscoss pattern. If you didn't know the back story, you might assume that these patterns were purely decorative.

The photos in this essay are inspired by Tara Bursey's show. John chose to take shots as details of the works, and allowed the play of light and shadow on the sculptures to create patterns that compliment the repetition so important to the works themselves.

You can see the photo essay here.