NAMELESS LOVE

I was going to post a photo and write-up about the costume jewelry design house Traffari, but upon close inspection of my favourite vintage find of the week day, a repair/glue job gone wrong just didn’t hold the standard of both Traffari and The Wardens Today. And since being a costume jewelry designer can be a job without recognition, due to the corporatization and mass production of the industry, I’m focusing on some of my nameless finds. So really, this is a thanks to my nameless gems that have garnered comments and compliments for me over the years. 

Text and photos by guest contributor Eve Tobolka

JANINE MIEDZIK

I visit Janine’s studio often to catch up, talk about what its like being an artist and of course, to look at her new work. Every time I climb into her studio through the window (its more fun that way) I feel as if I’ve entered a world of play, filled with colourful shapes, forms and folds. Miedzik’s work revolves around the phenomenology of space, our built environments and interactions with them.

I like how Janine sees painting as everything. Collage, acrylic on canvas and styrofoam structures are all considered to be painting objects doing away with the less useful question “what is painting?” and focusing energy on what matters more, constantly making and experimenting. One work, a colourful squishy form stuck into a corner of her studio, pokes fun at the “dilemma” of dealing with corners while painting on canvas. Miedzik acknowledges humour and silliness as worthy areas of exploration in art.

A larger than life wall work by Miedzik entitled Accordion Fold  can be seen at Relative Space until September 7, 2012.

Guest contributor Sagan MacIsaac

 

AMBER DOCTERS VAN LEEUWEN

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Amber Docters Van Leeuwen and I were setup on a blind friend date earlier this year on the basis that we share similar attitudes toward style (BOLD, that is). Since then, she’s been my swan, my big-earring muse. And with no surprise, her musical abilities rival her looks.

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Originally from Seoul, Amber grew up in Holland and has been playing the cello as far back as she can remember. Now at 28, Amber continues to tour the world’s center stages, playing Carnegie Hall and the likes. This coming December, Amber will be accompanied only by the piano, playing Brahms, Saariaho, and Schnittke at the esteemed Het Concert Gebouw, Netherlands, where I know she will captivate with so much more than style.

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Text and photo by guest contributor Eve Tobolka

BARRIOSUSO

Since childhood, I have spent summers in Barriosuso, Spain; a little village of no more than fifteen or twenty houses.  Here, a farmhouse (lived in for three centuries by my father's family) sits in a valley where animals graze, and where wheat, fruit and almond trees grow.  Surrounded by mountains still bearing the carved tombs of the 15th Century Moors, you can sit out in a field and listen for secrets as the north wind blows.  In the farmhouse, the room I sleep in has a bed that once belonged to my aunt, and to my great-grandmother before her.  A crucifix above the bed, the window of the room opens to a balcony where honey bees work furiously, their maddening buzz rising to a crescendo that awakens  the sleepers inside every morning.  The view from the balcony leads to a honey shack in the distance, the place I used to hide when I needed a place by myself.  If nowhere else in the world, this valley, and this hallowed ramshackle house with its peeling walls and sighing floorboards, is the place I belong. 

Text and photos by guest contributor Ann Marie Peña

GROW INTO MINE

Publisher, poet, and writer Harry Crosby (bon vivant) wrote this featured poem, In Search of the Young Wizard, in the year of his death, 1929.  From a wealthy American family, Crosby became disillusioned with his privileged Bostonian life after his experience serving in World War I.  He moved to Paris in the 1920s and was in the crucible of experimental artistic life, associating with the Surrealists and notable authors. Crosby founded Black Sun Press with his wife Caresse Crosby (formerly known as Mrs. Richard Peabody or Mary Phelps Jacob or Polly) where they published struggling and innovative authors including James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.  Crosby lived a wildly romantic and turbulent life, loving many women, breaking social boundaries and hungering after a lost portion of his soul; hungering for the unattainable.  He ended his life at the age of 31 in a scandalous suicide pact.

Text by guest contributor John Smith

 

OUR TWO WEEK SABBATICAL

As we prepare for the Nuit Blanche performance Made it then, Make it again, we'll be taking a 2 week sabbatical.  Look for a week of guest Wardens posts starting August 27th.  See you September 3rd.