Holiday Happenings at Loop Gallery

Holiday Small Works Salon Show

loop members & invited guest artists

December 17 - January 16, 2010

Reception: Friday, December 17th, 6 - 9 pm

  

loop Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition by loop members and invited guest artists. 

Local and regional artists will be on view in this group show of new and small-scale artwork. The work in this exhibition represents the diverse range of styles and media of loop's extended community of artists. Over 85 works will be hung, including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, mixed-media and 3-dimensional works.

Participating loop members include Mark Adair, Elizabeth Babyn, Yael Brotman, Heather Carey, Gary Clement, Tara Cooper, Elizabeth D'Agostino, Sheryl Dudley, Martha Eleen, Eric Farache, Charles Hackbarth, Libby Hague, Linda Heffernan, David Holt, Sung Ja Kim, JJ Lee, Jane LowBeer, Ingrid Mida, Suzanne Nacha, Mary Catherine Newcomb, Barbara Rehus, Rochelle Rubinstein, Lanny Shereck and Adrienne Trent.

Invited guest artists include Ruth Adler, Marilyn Bercovich, Diana Birkenheier, Jillian Booth, David Brown, Betsy Canfield, Chari Cohen, Gary Michael Dault, Teri Donovan, Nomi Drory, Richelle Forsey, Fran Freeman, Michael Gerry, Margaret Glew, Lauren Goldman, David Griffin, Jeff Harrison, Shauna Havgen, Julie Jenkinson, Anne Kaye, Margie Kelk, Henna Kim, Valerie Knapp, Rudolf Kurz, Kyung Min Lee, Zavi Lerman, Alex Liros, Christine Lynett, Alistair Magee, Patrick Joseph Mifsud, Heather Nicol, Nancy Oakes, Stan Olthuis, Teodora Pica, James Ridyard, Emily Schaefer, Lois Schklar, Jerry Silverberg, Camilla Singh & Walter Willems, Ilona Staples, Michael Stoeber, Harry Tiefenbach, Alex Turner, Jennifer Wardle, Patti Waterfield, Lyn Westfall, Elaine Whittaker, Phillip Woolf, Shirley Yanover, and others.

 Join us for the opening celebrations on Friday, December 17, 6-9 pm, just in time for the holidays!

loop Holidays: The gallery will be closed December 24th through January 4th for the holidays. The Holiday Small Works Salon Show will re-open on January 5th, and run until January 16th. 

Last Chance to See Kelly Cade and Sheryl Dudley's work at Loop

This weekend is your last chance to see the work of Kelly Cade and Sheryl Dudley at Loop gallery. Hours this weekend are 12-5 pm Friday and Saturday and 1-4 pm on Sunday.

Rolling the Bones by Leo Kamen

There are only two days left to enter the Akimbo contest to win a copy of gallery owner Leo Kamen's witty and captivating memoir called Rolling the Bones.

Like many creative types, Leo Kamen had a difficult childhood, but there is no bitterness or rancour in his memoir. Leo writes about his experiences with a degree of detachment and humour, allowing readers to laugh along with him and his fighting spirit and joie de vive make me wish I knew him better. His direct style and deft touch with the pen moves the story along and his descriptions of people and places are vivid and amusing. For example:

"Mrs. Fluck, our grade eight art teacher, was as thin as a stalk of asparagus. She dressed in long sweaters and grey skirts. Whenever she spoke, she sounded as if she had cotton gauze stuck up her nose. I had vague ideas about what artists were like, but Mrs. Fluck didn't fit the bill. I assumed she went straight home every day after school, wrapped herself up in a housecoat and crawled into a can of sardines for dinner. Only her name, cursed as it was with one too many consonants, gave her a racy reputation she didn't deserve. I never created anything of artistic note in her classes, though towards the end of the year I managed a ceramic lion that bore a striking resemblance to our family cat. I glazed it bright spinach green and placed it on top of our television set at home, where it remained for years." 

The best part of this book for me are the chapters about Leo's experiences as an art dealer which really are worthy of another book unto itself. In this part I gained a new appreciation of how difficult it is to make a living as an art dealer. It seems to have been a labour of love to a large extent as Leo faced bankruptcy more than once. And the parts where he muses about the changes in the art scene are particularly erudite. For instance, on page 226, Leo writes "An artist's studio, which had always been a place to work, became a "site" where artists did as much thinking as painting. Gone were the days when a besotted gallery-goer was abandoned to his reveries in front of a painting. Now a third party mediated the relationship with catalogues, didactic labels and sound bites. Irony in art began to flourish less as a result of French intellectual diatribes and more in response to the gulf introduced by such mediation. Since writers did much to obscure a work's meaning as to elucidate it, the irony was enhanced. This suited the intelligentsia and the cultural elite. Their claim to exclusivity was ennobled by the opaque prose. Especially opaque writers thrived and were hailed as the new emperors of the contemporary art scene by virtue of their opacity's brilliance."


Rolling the Bones is available at the Leo Kamen Gallery in Toronto and in e-book format at www.leokamenauthor.com.

Title: Rolling the Bones, a memoir
Author: Leo Kamen
Publisher: General Karma, Toronto
Category: Non-fiction, Memoir
Number of Pages: 248

Installation Shots: Sheryl Dudley and Kelly Cade

There is a zen-like quality to the current show at loop Gallery which features the artwork of Kelly Cade and Sheryl Dudley. If you need a dose of tranquility during this hectic holiday season (is it December already?),  step inside the gallery and the haunting beauty of this work will leave you feeling refreshed and restored.

Loop Gallery Installation Shot - Kelly Cade and Sheryl Dudley

Kelly Cade

Kelly Cade

Sheryl Dudley

Sheryl Dudley

Photo credits: Ingrid Mida

Gallery hours are Wednesday - Saturday from noon to 5 pm and Sunday from 1-4 pm

A Review of Loop Member Sandra Smirle's Show at WARC by R.M. Vaughan

R.M. Vaughan of the Globe and Mail wrote a review of Loop member Sandra Smirle's show at WARC. The article was published on Saturday, November 27, 2010 and can be read in its entirety here.

Sandra Smirle at the WARC Gallery

An extract of the article is included below: 

Sandra Smirle at Women’s Art Resource Centre Gallery
Until Nov. 27, 401 Richmond St. W., Suite 122, Toronto; www.warc.net

Today (Saturday, November 27, 2010) is your last chance to catch Sandra Smirle’s haunting shadow puppetry at Women’s Art Resource Centre.

Using table-sized, laser-cut circles of Plexiglas, thick creamy paper cut by hand and a huge 10-foot by 14-foot sheet of Tyvek (an industrial polyethylene that resembles canvas), Smirle crafts topographical cut-out maps of random street corners. She then projects lights through the maps, creating a dancing interplay between the lit surfaces and their crisp shadows.

Mapping, Smirle’s wispy shadows argue, is an inexact science – one as susceptible to the vagaries of perception as any other decoding process. To wit, Smirle culls her maps from imagery gathered by satellites, a system that sells itself as indisputable. But by metaphorically and literally putting the technology under the spotlight, she turns these allegedly infallible geographies into fluttering, ethereal speculations, questions their reliability.

No space is wholly knowable, no matter how many angels we can now count on the heads of pins.

Holiday Small Works Salon

For the first time in Loop's history, there will be a Holiday Small Works Salon featuring the work of Loop members and invited guest artists. The party begins on Friday, December 17. Chose art for your holiday gifts and support local artists. Hope to see you there.

Kelly Cade and Sheryl Dudley at Loop Gallery

loop Gallery is proud to present solo exhibitions by member artists Kelly Cade: Hover and Sheryl Dudley: le jardin de cygnes. 

The works presented in Hover represent Kelly Cade's ongoing curiosity with the blurring between form and environment, an ambiguity which she explores through the process of painting, itself.

Sheryl Dudley’s new series of time-based photo works, le jardin des cygnes, document random human interactions as they move across an ambiguous ‘stage’. Gestures suspended in light appear both innocent and menacing. The works ultimately question the mechanics of representation, perception and truth.

Kelly Cade is a Toronto based artist and graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design who has exhibited in both solo and group shows. Her work can be found in private and public collections throughout Canada, the United States and the U.K.

Sheryl Dudley’s paintings and photographs have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Canada. Her work can be found in many private collections on both sides of the border.

November 20 – December 12, 2010

Reception: Saturday, November 20, 2010, 2-5 PM

Interview with Jennifer Matotek on Urbane Magazine

Trevor Blumas of Urbane Magazine interviewed Jennifer Matotek about Loop Gallery as part of his profile of curators from galleries in the area of  Ossington and Dundas Street West. Read the online article here.

Art Shows-ongoing

I found the time to make it to the AGO, in truth, we went to Frank the restaurant, the snacks are great, the mixed drinks are too sweet for me.

Anyways, speaking of art, we stuck around long enough to check out the Julian Schnabel retrospective, a superstar of art, according to the AGO.

Really interesting to see the work, still after all these years I don't really get the broken plate paintings, I hope never do in a way.

Having said that, the painting that really touched me was the black velvet painting of Andy Warhol. Interestingly, this painting and the ones around it were in an intimate space not the volumes of air and concrete the AGO committed to this New York Big Mouth who has all but referred to himself as a modern incarnation of Picasso. For all that loud clothes and his bravado, there is something exceptionally touching in this piece he must of saw in Warhol, whose by his own accounts was fairly vacuous, so this painting dialogue between big mouth and superficial is something much greater than the sum of their parts.

here is an article from the Globe and Mail, see what they have to say


Maybe I am a sucker for velvet paintings ever since we had a red bull fighter in our dining room that my Dad painted.

Here is that painting, in the basement with an illustration on top of it from a series of photo/paintings of mine from 2006.



Julian Schnabel: Art and Film

continues until January 2, 2011, take your honey and have some fries and booze at FRANK.

Candida Girling at loop

Marcovaldo: Where The Sidewalk Ends is the title of Candida Girling's exhibition at loop Gallery.

Candida Girling 

In her installation at loop, Candida Girling provides us with a view of city life, in which the quest for a calm, natural space to cope with the hardship quotidian aspect of life is paramount. She has drawn inspiration for this exhibition from Marco Valdo, a book of short stories written by Italo Calvino.

Marcovaldo is a labourer who revels in nature wherever he can find it: in the cracks of the sidewalk, in a clump of mushrooms by the side of the road or in a babbling fountain. In Candida Girling’s mixed-media prints we find Marcovaldo on a park bench, which is for him a portal into the bucolic refuge of his imagination.

These excerpts from Marco Valdo by Italo Calvino served as inspiration for Candida Girling's work:
“This Marcovaldo possessed an eye ill-suited to city life: billboards, traffic lights, shop windows, neon signs, postes, no matter how carefully devised to catch the attention, never arrested his gaze, which might have been running over the desert sands. Instead, he would never miss a leaf yellowing on a branch, a
feather trapped by a roof-tile; there was no horsefly on a horses back, no worm-hole in a plank, or a fig-peel squashed on the sidewalk that Marcovaldo didn’t remark and ponder over, discovering the changes of season, the yearnings of his heart, and the woes of his existence.”


“In one corner of the square, under a dome of horse chestnuts, there was a remote, half-hidden bench. And Marcovaldo picked it as his own. On those summer nights, in the room where five of them slept, when he couldn’t get to sleep, he would dream of the bench as a vagabond dreams of a bed in a palace. “


“And yet, once, a flight of autumn woodcock appeared in a street’s slice of sky.
And the only one to notice was Marcovaldo, who always walked with his nose in
the air.
….And as he proceeded, his eyes on the birds, he found himself at an
intersection, the light red, in the midst of the automobiles …
Can’t you ever get lights straight, asked his foreman.”

Artist Profile of Ingrid Mida

Loop member Ingrid Mida has posted a profile on Fashion is my muse! Click on the link here to read more.

Yael Brotman at loop

Teacher's House by Yael Brotman c2010

This is the second week of the print-based exhibition at loop Gallery by multimedia artist Yael Brotman entitled Mnemonic Stoop. This exhibition is presented as part of Open Studio's PRINTOPOLIS: International Symposium on Printmaking.

Relying on both the precision and imprecision of memory, and, referencing Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, Yael Brotman documents the houses in which she has lived. Brotman repurposes scraps of etched Kurotani paper into two- and three-dimensional works that examine the tonality of intimacy and the psychological elasticity of an image, reconstructing architectural details which sag with mnemonic import.

Gallery hours at loop this week are 1 pm to 5 pm on Wednesday through Saturday and 1 pm to 4 pm on Sunday.


As well, Yael will be participating in a group exhibition of small scale paintings/drawings at Lessedra Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria December 15 – February 15, 2011.

Staying in the loop

The TIAF is over and it is back to regular programming on the loop blog.

Here is what loop members are up to.

Spot On by Sandra Smirle

SPOT ON, a mixed media installation by loop member Sandra Smirle, opened at WARC Gallery on Saturday, October 30. In her show, she explores ways of perceiving place by using "randomly selected locations, translated form aerial maps into large-scale cut drawings" on paper, plexiglass and tyvek. These drawings are hung out from the wall creating a "shifting interplay of light and shadow" that informs what the viewer sees and how the work is interpreted. WARC Gallery is located in 401 Richmond and the show continues until November 27, 2010.

During a recent question and answer session with loop members Candida Girling and Yael Brotman which was moderated by William Huffman, Larry Eisenstein had his sketchbook out. He posted his drawings on Artpost. Click here for the link.

Yael and William by Larry Eisenstein 2010

Jennifer Matotek was interviewed about loop gallery for an upcoming issue of Urbane Magazine. Stay tuned for the link.

Last Chance to see loop at Art Toronto 2010

Today is the closing day of Art Toronto 2010 (Toronto International Art Fair).   Hours today are 12-6 pm.

Warbler I by JJ Lee
Encaustic on canvas, 16 inch diameter
$900

The Dream Series: Maroc by Eric Farache
Chromeographic print facemounted onto Plexiglass and aluminum, 70x14
$3500

More loop at Art Toronto 2010

There are two more days to see loop member's work at Art Toronto 2010 (Toronto International Art Fair).   Gallery hours for today are 12-6 pm which still leaves ample time for Halloween fun.

Illumination by Elizabeth Babyn
Acrylic on canvas, 52 x 42 inches
$4000

Babel T. H. II by Maureen Paxton 2009
Graphite on Paper, 22x30
$1800

In Between by Kelly Cade
Water-based pigment on yamagampi, 22x28
$650

More loop at Art Toronto 2010

There is such a range of talent among the loop artists. Here is another selection of work that is available for sale at Art Toronto 2010 (Toronto International Art Fair).

Gone Missing by Yvonne Singer, 2010
Neon Installation, 30x9 inches
$2000

undersinister by Suzanne Nacha 2008
Oil on canvas, 26x22 inches framed ellipse
$1200

Sacred 2 by Elizabeth Babyn
Acrylic on canvas, 12x12
$400

Loop Gallery received a mention in today's Globe and Mail in the Arts section, page R15, in an article by Larry Humber called "No $100 Warhols, but there are bargains". This is what was written about Loop:

"The Loop Gallery, which recently relocated to Dundas West from Queen Street, is a cooperative with members each allotted a space. Works on the block include Martha Eleen's oil on wood titled Winner, priced at $900. Another member is cartoonish Gary Clement, whose watercolour Untitled/Air is $400". 

WINNER by Martha Eleen 2009
Oil on wood, 16x16
$900

More loop at ArtToronto 2010

loop Gallery artists offer a diverse range of work, including drawings, paintings, mixed media, installation and photography. Here is another sampling of what is available for sale at out booth at ArtToronto 2010 (Toronto International Art Fair).

Babel T. Fshng. by Maureen Paxton 2008
Graphite on paper, 22x30 inches
$1800

In Between by Kelly Cade
Water-based pigment on yamagampi, 22x28 inches
$650

Sacred 1 by Elizabeth Babyn
Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
$400

Posts will continue through the weekend with more samples of loop artist's work. 

More of loop at ArtToronto 2010

Tonight is the opening gala at ArtToronto 2010. Do stop by at Booth #1022 to say hello. Here is another sampling of some of the work available for purchase by loop Gallery artists at the art fair this weekend.

Warbler I by JJ Lee, 2010
Encaustic on canvas, 16 inch diameter
$900

Been & Gone, 100 random temporal observations by Sandra Smirle, 2009
Hand cut archival paper, 9x12 inches
$250

Ancient Pottery Collection 4 by David Holt 2005
Acrylic on linen, 14x14 inches
$850

More of loop at ArtToronto 2010

Here are some more examples of work by loop artists that will be available for purchase at ArtToronto 2010 (formerly Toronto International Art Fair). Please visit is at booth #1022. Don't miss this opportunity to purchase affordable art by some of Toronto's most talented artists. loop Gallery accepts cash, cheques and credit cards.

remona 2 by Libby Hague 2010
unique hand cut woodcut on Okawara paper, 41x21 inches
$3000

Ancient Pottery Collection by David Holt 2008
Acrylic on linen, 14x16
$850

The Dream Series: Hay Bluffs by Eric Farache
Chromeographic print facemounted onto Plexiglass and Aluminum, 72x25 inches
$4500

loop at ArtToronto 2010

Visage elliptique #8 (yeux ourles) by Lorene Bourgeois
Oil on panel 7.5x14.75 inches
$880

           

This painting by Lorene Bourgeois is one of the artworks by loop Gallery artists that will be on display this weekend at the ArtToronto 2010 (formerly known as the Toronto International Art Fair). Come visit loop Gallery at Booth #1022.

Held in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre north building at 225 Front Street West, the event opens the night of Thursday, October 28th with a special collector's preview as a benefit for the Art Gallery of Ontario. The fair then opens to the public as follows:
Friday October 29 12 - 8pm
Saturday October 30 12 - 8pm
Sunday October 31 12 - 6pm
Monday November 1 12 - 6pm

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit the ArtToronto 2010 website.

LOOP at ART TORONTO 2010!

loop Gallery is very excited to be part of Art Toronto 2010 (formerly The Toronto International Art Fair)! Only a select number of not-for-profit spaces were available and we were accepted! We're in Booth 1022. Come visit us! The show runs from October 28th to November 1st, 2010.

http://www.tiafair.com/

Here are some photos of the installation process.

Yael Brotman and Candida Girling at loop

loop Gallery is proud to present print-based installations by multimedia artists Yael Brotman and Candida Girling. These exhibitions are presented as part of Open Studio's PRINTOPOLIS: International Symposium on Printmaking.


Yael Brotman     Mnemonic Stoop
Candida Girling  Marco Valdo: Where the Sidewalk Ends


Relying on both the precision and imprecision of memory, and, referencing Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, Yael Brotman documents the houses in which she has lived. Brotman repurposes scraps of etched Kurotani paper into two- and three-dimensional works that examine the tonality of intimacy and the psychological elasticity of an image, reconstructing architectural details which sag with
mnemonic import.

Italo Calvino’s deftly drawn character of Marcovaldo is a man of the city. In him we detect a dissonance between the urban reality of his daily life and the world of his dreams. Marcovaldo is a labourer who revels in nature wherever he can find it: in the cracks of the sidewalk, in a clump of mushrooms by the side of the road or in a babbling fountain. In Candida Girling’s mixed-media prints we find Marcovaldo on a park bench, which is for him a portal into the bucolic refuge of his imagination.

Yael Brotman was born in Afula, Israel and currently lives in Toronto. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in artist-run centres and galleries throughout Toronto and other Canadian cities. Her work is held by numerous private and corporate collections.

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Candida Girling studied art and industrial design in Denmark, Scotland and Toronto, where she now lives and works. Girling is a founding member of loop Gallery and her works may be found in collections in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

This show will run at loop Gallery from October 22 - November 14, 2010. Please join the artists for the opening reception on Friday October 22, 2010, 4:30-6:30 pm and for a Question & Answer Session on Saturday October 23, 2010, 4:30 pm moderated by William Huffman.

Gallery Closed for Installation

loop Gallery is closed for installation this week and will reopen on Friday, October 22. In the meantime, please enjoy this video clip from the Question and Answer session with Elizabeth Babyn and Linda Heffernan from September 18, 2010. As well, Artsync's interview with Linda Heffernan is now available online here.

Last chance to see Maureen Paxton and Barbara Rehus at Loop

It is the final weekend for the exhibition of Maureen Paxton's Wish Well and Barbara Rehus Saint's at loop Gallery. 

If you missed the question and answer session with the artists which was moderated by Antonia Lancaster, check out the following links on vimeo:
For an extract of the discussion with Maureen Paxton, watch here.
For an extract of the discussion with Barbara Rehus, watch here.
In these short clips, the artists speak about their work and what inspires them.

Gallery hours this weekend are Saturday 1-5 pm and Sunday 1-4 pm.


loop Gallery Fundraiser: October 17, 2010 at Lula Lounge. Get your tickets today via Paypal on the loop website!

loop Gallery will be at Art Toronto 2010 - The 11th Annual Toronto International Art Fair on October 28 - November 1, 2010. Come visit us at booth #1022.

Loop Fundraiser at Lula Lounge

Get your tickets for Loop Gallery's fundraiser on Sunday, October 17, 2010 at Lula Lounge featuring musical performances by:

Aaron Davis - Rich Brown -  John Johnson - Nick Buzz
(Jonathan Goldsmith - Hugh Marsh - Rob Piltch - Martin Tielli + Friends)

Tickets $30 are available at the gallery, from a Loop member or online at www.loopgallery.ca

Doors Open 7:00
Concert 8 - 9:30

At Lula Lounge
1585 Dundas St.W., Toronto, Ontario

Maureen Paxton at Loop Gallery

Maureen Paxton is currently exhibiting WISH WELL at Loop Gallery.

Ovals predominate in this body of work, with nine of the paintings offered as variations on the locket.  While adornment for the body, historically this item of jewellery has also functioned as a tiny wearable vessel, its contents ranging from medicine to poison.  Most commonly though, it bore images or artifacts associated with a loved one.

Whether over the heart or at the base of the neck or at the wrist, the keepsake locket tends to be worn at points on the body where the wearer’s pulse can be felt. Because of this, Maureen Paxton describes the locket as a form of life support, a memory bridge, a circuit, a conduit. Is breathes life into Was.  Through the keepsake (keepsafe), much is cycled.  That is, time, ourselves, each other.

Maureen Paxton teaches in the Animation program at Sheridan College.  She also writes.  A past member of the Tarragon Theatre’s Playwrights Unit, she is currently at work on a novel, funded by a Works-in-Progress Grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

Loop Fundraiser at Lula Lounge

Buy your tickets now at Loop Gallery 416-516-2581.

Installation Shots from Loop Gallery's Current Show

The exhibitions of loop members Barbara Rehus and Maureen Paxton opened yesterday at loop Gallery and will continue until October 17, 2010.  The photos below are selected installation shots from Barbara Rehus show Saint's and Maureen Paxton's show Wish Well.

Icon Installation by Barbara Rehus

Calculation by Barbara Rehus

"I see you, Marguerite" by Barbara Rehus

Maureen Paxton at Loop

Maureen Paxton

Maureen Paxton at Loop

Photos by: Ester Pugliese, 2010