Huffman Award Aimed at Collaboration
All aboard the Pant Raft, William Huffman (l to r), Christine Swintak, Sebastian Koever and Nicholas Brown
An impertinent gesture by a young art school grad and a “put up or shut up” taunt by his peers has resulted in a decade’s worth of artistic collaborations catalyzed by the William Huffman Award. Upon graduation from the Art and Art History program offered jointly by the University of Toronto at Mississauga and Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Oakville, Huffman, above left, was presented with the Grumbacher Award, a set of paints from the venerable art supply company. The young artist exited stage right with his diploma and promptly dumped the paint set in the trash.
“It was my performative gesture,” remembers Huffman, who is now an independent curator and Associate Director of the Toronto Arts Council. “At school I was doing installation, performance and video work so a paint set wasn’t going to do my practice much good.”
“Someone chewed me out about my behaviour and challenged me to come up with an award geared to the practice of the recipient. Why not give them a voice, give them an opportunity and a venue to connect with the broader community. So several years later I started to pull it together.”
Poetry Goes Public With Viva’s Help
Frank Viva is an in-demand illustrator and branding expert whose work has appeared on the cover of The New Yorker, in Time and Esquire, the New York Times and Toronto Life: commercial clients include Butterfield and Robinson, New York Life and Le Creuset. But busy as he is, Viva found the time to do a pro bono job being unveiled today (August 26) at the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street); the OCAD-educated artist has lent his talent to Poet Laureate Dionne Brand’s Poetry is Public is Poetry project, an initiative designed to etch some of Canada’s most celebrated poetry into public spaces.
A collaboration between City of Toronto’s Cultural Services, Transportation Services and the Toronto Public Library and the TPL Foundation, the project will embed two to four installations per year in outdoor library spaces. Viva’s hoarding design (above) blends his whimsical art with snippets of poems by 34 Canadian poets.
ROM Mounts Soulful Caribana Show
The ROM will be jumping tonight at the kick off of From the Soul, a Scotiabank Caribana art exhibit that lays claim to the title of Canada’s largest ever juried display of works by African Canadian artists. Graphic and colourful, the 170 works by 50 artists were pulled together by curator Joan Butterfield (above with work by Ashley McKenzie-Barnes, top, and Rachel Natalie Rawlins), a festival director and chair of the Association of African-Canadian Artists.
Piped-in soca and calypso music set the appropriate tone as Joan walked me through the show earlier today. All of the work on display is new and has been created expressly for this exhibition. “I usually compose a short poem that defines the theme but this year I wanted to let the artists just do their own thing, I wanted them to paint from the soul,” she explains.
Butterfield selected the work from about 200 submissions. “The artists paint on canvas, whereas this whole room is MY canvas. I’m painting the room with the artworks,” she says.
Sholem Krishtalka Reclaims “Gay”
Pride may be over for another year but the Gladstone Hotel retains its focus on queer art through July 18 with That’s So Gay, a group show curated by Sholem Krishtalka, left. The curator hosts a panel talk tomorrow night (July 8, 7 pm) at the Gladdy with Philip Monk (director of the AGYU), Syrus Marcus Ware (AGO), and critic and curator, Gabrielle Moser.
“I’m a scarred veteran of panel talks where people drone on and on and on,” says Krishtalka, “so I want it to be fun and gossipy and anecdotal, with lots of images. With this show I was hell bent on making a queer art show that I would love and so I’ve been hell bent on creating a panel that I would love to attend and have fun at.”
Krishtalka was “very deliberate” in pulling the show together: “I didn’t want a cast of the usual suspects,” he stresses, although many of the artists are familiar, people like Stephen Andrews, Ed Pien, Sharon Switzer and Will Munro. “I needed to include those established mid-career artists but I also wanted a range of people who either haven’t shown a lot or are new to the city and are expanding and contributing to the queer art scene in Toronto.”
Al Gilbert’s Life Behind the Lens
Al Gilbert probably won’t think much of my point-and-shoot portrait of him and his lovely wife Gail, who joined us for our interview Tuesday at the Market Gallery. Gilbert, 88, walked me through the show, a survey of images from his lifetime as one of Toronto’s most prominent portrait photographers.
After talking for more than an hour it was clear that Gilbert believes a portraitist’s skill lies in how he or she composes and lights a shot: “Photojournalism isn’t photography,” he says, a little dismissively, “you’re not setting up the shot, you’re just recording what you see.”
He might sound like a curmudgeon but Gilbert is anything but; he was gracious and funny as he walked me down memory lane, reliving the shoots that resulted in these images of Frank Sinatra, Golda Meir, Ed Mirvish, Oscar Peterson, John Deifenbaker, Robertson Davies, even world famous Canadian portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh.
“Was it intimidating shooting Karsh?” I ask.
“Not a bit,” says Gilbert. “When you’ve shot everybody from the Pope on down, what’s another photographer?”
“Al could teach Karsh about light,” says Gail proudly.
