Art Toronto | Booth B42
October 24 – 27, 2024
Towards is pleased to return to Art Toronto with a presentation co-organized by Sophia Lapres.
Tinkering or, Spiralling in the Studio
Sophia Lapres
There’s a definition of tinkering that I could have looked up but didn’t because the way an artist tinkers is different anyway. Tinkering can be quiet, done early in the morning, or loud and done over beers at midnight with a jury of friends. It can be obsessive and esoteric using tools you’ve never seen or heard of, or casual with a studied cool and a pair of kitchen shears. Tinkering can be drawn out over years or
finished in a flurry of minutes. It can be inexpert or extremely studied. Certainly it’s experimental.
I watched Simone Blain install a series of paintings in a room. She found the overhead light had a slight green tinge so she took the paintings down and added green to each of them. Simone’s paintings are stratified layers of colour, scumbled on and sanded down. The surfaces of her paintings are smooth like a waxed canvas jacket stretched over a cutting board.
Landon Lim made paintings when we met in our Vancouver studio building. Now, he works with wood. When I visited Landon a few months ago, an elegant 20” wooden bandsaw stood attentively in the corner—Landon had made it from some plans he bought online. I have a small box that Landon made with hand tools, its dovetail joints are so minute and precise that they looked mouse-made.
I met Erin Skiffington through Landon, they’ve been dating for years and now share a studio. Erin’s paintings, much like Simone’s, are coiling abstractions. Light refracts within them and emerges from them. Erin paints against a wall which becomes blackened as she works, smeared with hundreds of brush strokes until her paintings seem to emerge from a velvet portal.
I saw Marisa Kriangwiwat-Holmes’s work a couple times before we met. Her work is photographic, scanned objects and images are remixed into collages. She deposits collections of pictures, one by one onto found paper (in this case it’s sheets of music) by feeding and refeeding the same sheet into a printer.
Ami Sangha, is a ceramicist. Strange and lovely things come up on my instagram feed courtesy of Ami’s sharp eye—like scattered among cherry blossoms, a chickadee enjoys a french fry. She just came back from a residency in Medicine Hat, Alberta where she made (among other things) a small crusty pot. The pot had to sit for 30 hours in a wood kiln to achieve its ashen finish. Ami tells me that she took her shift at 4am to a chorus of howling coyotes.
And finally, Maya Beaudry, who I shared a beer with last summer. We talked about everything but art (people say bankers talk about art and artists talk about taxes). Maya’s rectangular wall mounted sculptures look like ink washed paintings from afar. Up close they bulge and recede like the tufted back of a loveseat, bleeding colour.
All artists are tinkerers but maybe these six artists in particular.
