Toronto Art Festivals

I have now applied, and been accepted into, three festivals in Toronto in September. The Artisans at the Distillery Art Show, The Junction Art Fair and Queen Street West Art Crawl. This should keep me busy for the first month or so. Toronto is such a vibrant city with lots going on and I am excited about the art possibilities there. It always takes about a year to begin to make new friends and find out what is available in a new place but at least with this move it will be more permanent and I won't be leaving just as it all starts to come together.

House renovation, music and collagraph printmaking!

The past few weeks have been very busy for me. I just spent ten days up in Toronto. It's a great city but it isn't the best time of year to visit. The snow is mounded up everywhere and the place looks dirty. Once spring comes it will clean up and regain it's charm. What really upsets me is the way smokers stand outside the front door of buildings while they have a smoke and then drop their butts on the ground and go inside. There are butts lying everywhere. Why can't smokers clean up their act.

Now that I have voiced my anger at the disrespect of the environment I will move on to something about creativity. While in Toronto I was helping my son, who has just bought a house, to decide on some basic renovations. It's an old house right downtown in an area called Little Italy. We decided on the style for a kitchen, some modular wardrobes and paint colour for the main living area. It's pretty exciting, but challenging, trying to create some oomph and visual excitement for the house on a fairly small budget. However it's all coming together and we have enjoyed doing it. My son is a full time musician and parallel to all this renovation activity he is busy writing material for his next CD. In a future posting I want to write about his creative process and how similar it is to a visual artists.

My big thing this week has been the purchase of a printing press so that I can get back into printmaking. More on this next time. Just for fun I have added a very wacky print I did a year or so ago.