The Heart of The Heart Machine

Christine Irving and her wild band of collaborators won a people’s choice prize at last year’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche with Flux and Fire and this year they’re fanning the flames even harder. Irving is a leader of Toronto’s Interactive Arts, the amorphous collective behind The Heart Machine, a flame throwing, interactive sculpture built for the 2010 Burning Man festival (above).

The Heart Machine finally debuts for a hometown crowd this Saturday night and promises to be one of the more spectacular works on display. The piece features a 6-foot by 10-foot industrial heart surrounded by four 16-foot “arteries”. Control points allow participants to manipulate the rhythm and size of fireballs that shoot up to 25-feet into the sky. READ MORE

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche: Protest Panel

Protest is the name of the game at this year’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, or at least a principle underlying theme. Curators of the event checked into the Drake Hotel yesterday evening for a Nuit Talks panel addressing the subject at the heart of this Saturday’s “all night art thing,” taking over downtown streets beginning at 7 pm. Curators (above from left) Candice Hopkins, Shirley Madill and Nicholas Brown each detailed the thinking suffusing their NB zones.

As panel moderator, David Liss (Artistic Director and curator of MOCCA) below, observed, “the organizing theme of the core initiatives this year is how artists and curators use contemporary art as a platform to raise awareness, to make a statement, to tell cultural, social and political stories.”

A number of artists participating in the various zones were on hand to explain and discuss their works. The final Nuit Talk takes place Saturday afternoon (October 1) from 3:30 – 5:30 in the City Hall rotunda (100 Queen Street West).

Sculpture Garden 30th Anniversary

More than 100 enthusiastic supporters including Ward 28 Councillor Pam McConnell (pictured in green) turned up at the Toronto Sculpture Garden yesterday evening to celebrate the park’s 30th anniversary. Sculpture Garden patron Marc Odette, above, recalled the history of this pioneering public-private partnership, which was started in 1981 by his father, the late Louis L. Odette. Since then, what was once a parking lot, has hosted 64 large-scale works of contemporary sculpture including the newly installed Gold, Silver & Lead by artist Jed Lind, below.

Queen West Crawling with Art

Queen West is always buzzing but never more than during the annual Queen West Art Crawl (QWAC), which hits Trinity Bellwoods Park and beyond into Parkdale beginning Friday (Sept. 16) and running throughout the weekend. Studio tours, curator walks and talks and a major juried art sale and exhibition are all in the cards both day and evening. One of the highlights of the Parkdale Nightcrawl is a special edition of Art Battle featuring “cage matches” where two painters go head-to-head and only one painting survives to be auctioned while the other is ignominiously destroyed.

“We’ve got a ton of stuff happening,” assures QWAC Associate Director Lanie Treen. “Everybody’s getting involved and it’s really, really exciting this year.”

Art Battle A Roaring Good Time

The smell of acrylics, the roar of the crowd — last night’s Art Battle 17 at the Great Hall was a blast! If you’ve never been and are not familiar with the concept, Art Battle is loosely modeled after a poetry slam where pre-selected painters and wildcard hopefuls go head-to-head for prizes and bragging rights. READ MORE