Change as Art website now up

As part of a research project that I've working at with the David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, I've been tracking examples of art works that have led to measurable social and environmental change. We decided to put the database of projects that we assembled on-line so that other people interested in this area of research might have access to what we have assembled. We are also hoping that others might share their projects or the projects of others on the site as well.

For more information, please visit: http://changeasart.org/

Art in Action, QPIRQ Concordia

Just a short note to mention an up-coming art show that I'm participating in, "ART IN ACTION: Creative student and community contributions related to social and environmental justice." The show runs from Novembers 11-15, 2012 (10am to 8pm) and is located 1455 de Maisonneuve West, 7th floor (métro Guy-Concordia) Montreal.  The vernissage is Sunday, November 11, 5pm-7pm, and if you follow the above link, you can learn all about the various activities running in conjunction with this event over the course of the show.

My contribution to the show is a modest collection of lino-cut prints that I did for a summer drawing class, which I've called "Oh, Canada..."

Wn Wn: an eco-feedback tool for the office

Here is a rough video on my final project, which was part of the Concordia University Year end Design Exhibition.

Concordia University Year end Design Exhibition

Formation poster (click to get details)

I'm going to be participating the year end design exhibition with a number of other graduate students. Some of the projects are pretty darn cool, I suggest you stop by this weekend and check it out. 

Friday April 20-Sun 10am-6pm 1515 Ste. Catherine St. on the 6th & 7th floors of the EV building. 

Vernissage is 6pm-10pm on Thursday, April 19th. 

Oh hello Etsy!

Chocolate Lab Puppy (this one sold, but there is a new one posted)

I decided to post some of my small sketches on Etsy yesterday. I think a lot of hobby painters get to the point where they do more "warm-up" works than anything else, and I'm certainly no exception. My small apartment has one large room dedicated to my art equipment and it's over flowing with older, smaller works - so I figured I'd try putting them out there in the world. 


For example, last year, for one of my classes I painted 36 8" x 8" puppy paintings. This repetitive painting project was aimed at creating multiple similar, yet unique portraits of a number of the breeds most commonly found to be produced at puppy mills in N. America. 

Puppy Mill Project Installed

Each 8" x 8" painting is produced using a series of stencils and some freehand painting. Each painting is a unique combination of colours – so while they look remarkably similar to one another, they are each their own dog.


A number of these puppies are available on Esty for a tiny $19 - $5 of which will go to the Montreal SPCA, as I feel like those folks have to deal with a lot of unwanted dogs resulting from this kind of cruel, surplus breeding.

Materials Analysis Tool Animation

I've been keeping busy working on a project with McGill's University Services to develop a tool to help their designers and consultants make more sustainable building and maintenance product choices. The tool is called MAT, short for Materials Analysis Tool.

We are just in the testing stages right now and are hoping to launch mid-to-late September. In the meantime, I'm working on a short promotional video to for McGill's Sustainability Projects Fund, the organization that funded the project.

Here is a little teaser - this short animation introduces the criteria that are used in the framework of analysis for  MAT.

Afternoon Sketch: Self Portrait

Self portrait, 2010 8"x10", oil on canvas board

2pm - original sketch with high-tech mirror set-up.

2:22pm The initial blocks of color always looks pretty crappy.

 

2:43pm Starting to fill out the rest of the face - started to realize that I have a really sad expression on my face. I suppose "concentrated" and "sad" overlap in my arsenal of facial expressions.  Decided that I would not change this at that point, but made a mental note to try and not look depressed the next time I try this exercise. 

3:27pm "Finishing" touches. I'm going to have to try doing this again sometime - what an interesting way to objectify your own face. 

Dog Portrait: Hector

Hector and his tongue, 2010 8"x10" oil on canvas board

Another quick sketch or another small dog. Hector is a black pug - he might be a mix of some kind. He has a tongue too great for his mouth, so it's pretty well always sticking out. He's sweet and funny looking, both excellent qualities in a small dog. 

Here are a few of the steps that brought me to this little sketch:

Drawing 3:46pm. Not much to look at. I don't draw much in terms of details, as my painting style isn't at all like my drawing style, so I don't commit too much time to this. I like to start with a base color that will contrast what I might imagine to be the more interesting of the subject colors. I thought Hector might look good in a blue/purple coat, thus the yellow base coat.  

 First steps: 4:18pm - cover in the background spaces (just happened to be in another kind of yellow, for fun) and started laying down most of the darker stuff.

Middle steps: 4:42pm - more of same, started introducing some layers of color, as the early steps always look so ugly, and this layering gives me some hope that the sketch might look half-decent upon completion.

Finishing touches: 5:31pm - play with lights and darks, revisit background. Voila - little dog sketch. 

Wolf

Wolf 8x10, oil on canvas board

Another morning sketch.

Dog Portrait: Blue Ruby

Blue Ruby 8x8, oil on canvas board, 2010

This one really is Ruby. I hope. 

Dog Portrait: Not Ruby

not Ruby fan art, 2010 8x10 oil on canvas board.

I made this painting based on a photo that I assumed was Ruby, Georgia W. Tush's iconic Boston terrier and the inspiration for the logo to her great new Roller Derby shop Neon Skates (in the back of Local 23, at 23 Bernard, Montreal). I found the image on the store's website, so jumped to conclusions about the model - painted this little guy and clandestinely tacked the painting onto the wall of the shop. It turns out, it's a customer's dog - so I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board and do one of Ruby to make up for this grave error. Man, you can't even make assumptions about dogs. 

Guilty Pleasures: Pet Portraits

Simbad has dainty knuckles, 2008 9X12" oil on canvas.

As a painter, but perhaps more so as a student of "Fine Arts", I feel a certain pressure to focus my attention and creative abilities towards the "deeply symbolic". I do like to tell stories in paintings, often using dream imagery to bring together disparate elements in a seemingly sensical way, as only dreams can. These stories often leave a lot up to interpretation, which is what I feel good art should do. These are my more "serious" works, when they happen - which hasn't been often of late.

When I'm not in a rhythm of painting, which is most of the time, I like to start up with simple sketches and frequently this means portraiture - the bread an butter of painters for centuries. I get a guilty pleasure for capturing someone's likeness in a mess of thick and unrealistically colored brush strokes. It's hardly cutting-edge, but it's fun and challenging, and often bring a smile to someone's face upon completion.  For the last couple years, after having brought a dog in my life, this has also meant pet portraits. I love painting dogs and I'm not too sure why this feels like the equivalent to admitting a taste for Lady Gaga - but it does. Painting pets isn't deep, but it's fun.

Pretty Penny, 2010. oil on canvas board.

When my dog Simbad was sent back to Mira for training as a guide dog, I did nothing but paint him (from pictures) for about three months. It was my way of coping with his massive absence in my life. I loved finding the blues and mauves in his black fur, as well as finding ways to capture his gentle nature in simple lines and shades. As I've recently started painting again, I've again come back to my love of dogs and have again come up against this guilty sense of pleasure in producing these images. I figure I might as well share them as they come along. They are quick and dirty - as they often take less than 3 hours to complete and are mostly done on tiny and cheap canvas board.

Simbad, 2008 8x10" oil on canvas board.

A kind of alleyway arms-race.

If you walk around Montreal with any regularity, you may have noticed the recent rise of an artistically rich and linguistically complex graffiti tag known as "Cobra Cock". Clearly a deep thinker with much on the mind, this street artist has shared his floral and richly original understanding of mankind by tagging many homes, businesses and alleyway fences with this overtly naïve approach to street art.

A particularly nuanced version of the ubiquitous Cobra Cock tag. 

Well, it's happened, as it was bound to. There is a new alliterated snake/genital tag in town. Behold: Viper Vag.    

Viper Vag stamped threateningly above a rather limp Cobra Cock.

I have no idea who did this - but you have my respect sir or madame - well played. As many Montreal property owners surely do, I look forward to the ensuing alleyway battles for space and supremacy.

Get a grip: concrete lamp

I like making practical, fun stuff. For me, "practical, fun stuff" often comes in the form of homemade lamps, I'm not sure why. I understand that, stereotypically, architects have a thing for chair design, and while I can appreciate a well thought out chair, I swoon at clever lighting concepts. Once I discovered the bags of lighting fixtures commonly found for very little in the "As-Is" section of Ikea, my crafting life took on a new, brighter life. Perhaps this is why I never went ahead with architectural studies. Or maybe not - we may never know for sure.

This "fist" lamp was a project for a sculpture class I took some time ago. It involved casting my own left hand while holding  a lamp fixture. After casting my hand/arm using plaster bandages - it was a three-part mold - while holding the fixture, I poured concrete into the mold and let it set for a few days. I then placed the finished piece into a square form - a mold made from plastering a deep square stretcher frame - and poured a concrete base in which to support the hand and hide the wire from view. Embedded in both the fist and the base, is the wire of the lamp fixture - I hope I never have to rewire it.

Oh - the fun you can have with plaster bandages, some wiring and a large bag of concrete!

Inspiration: Yong Ho Ji

Yong Ho Ji is a Korean born sculptor and artist who builds mutant "monsters" out of rubber tires. He takes a modified natural material, rubber tires, and transforms familiar and somewhat threatening animals into beautiful yet unnatural creatures.

Tire waste is clearly a problem in car-centered societies such as ours (according to the Environmental Protection Agency, at least 290 million scrap tires are generated in the United States each year). Yong Ho Ji presents one of many reuses of this incredibly common waste material. Otherwise, whole tires have been reused as bumpers for boats, highway barriers and less commonly as a construction material for home building. It is not uncommon to now find recycled tire crumb in mats, stair treading and in athletic fields. It's amazing how a material so commonly used for a sole purpose can have such a variety of afterlives - probably not uncommon for most of our waste, when you think about it.

Clearly, one man's waste is another man's treasure. In 2008, one of Ji's sharks went for $145,000 USD at auction.

Old candles, new fire.

This project was undertaken as part of a one-class assignment in a sculpture course I took a few years ago. The premise was to collect items in one's home, bring them to class, and make something of them within that one class. The result was a class full of "garbage sculptures". It was pretty neat.

I wanted to carve something... I assume that all vegans occasionally long to barbarically hack into something with a blade of some kind. Or maybe I just personally like breaking things. Either way, I looked around my home and office for something to carve. What I found was a bunch of left over candle wax... all different colours and some laced with delicious aromatic oils. I always have a lot of aromatic candles mainly because I have one of the most flatulent dogs on the planet.

I melted all of the lumps of wax together using a double boiler. In the top part of the boiler I placed half of a used orange juice carton, into which I placed the wax to melt. After the wax melted, I let it cool into a solid block, which was easily released from the waxy carton.

The resulting block of wax was reddish brown, with visible ribbons of blue and green. It was very meaty looking, and being a bit of a romantic, I decided to carve a heart - arteries and all.



The process of carving released the aromatic oils trapped in the block. The studio quickly started to smell of chocolate and peppermint. Students and the prof gathered to understand the olfactory nature of my project. I got a very good mark on the project, despite the rudimentary nature of the carving. I believe this is because my teacher could appreciate the delicious process of it's creation.

Currently, I'm collecting another mass of wax to replicate the project. I'm hoping to be able to make a candle and not just a sculpture this time, by including a weighted wick into the container.