..For the CULTURE CRAWL!!!
This is my favourite weekend of the year. Any year. For the last decade or so, every November i take a weekend off from chores and spend it touring artist studios with friends and family. It is a great kick off to Christmas shopping season and it is always inspirational. It is so cool to see all of the unique spaces and because i have been going for so many years see the changes in the artists work. Last year it was cancelled which sucked ,and this year they split it over 2 weekends with the first weekend requiring timed bookings for the more COVID cautious. That actually was a great idea because it ended up not being as crowded as other years. They were were also limiting the number of people going into the buildings so late risers had to stand in line. Maybe they always do that but we have learned to hit the studios at opening time. With the reno we are thinking ahead to things like a new dining room table and maybe some art for the dining area as well so that made it a bit different. Usually were are just drooling at art we can’t afford.
On Friday we went exploring with Mela and went to some studios close to us. There is a place called Co-Lab that has some woodworkers and a cool textile artist (Heather Talbot: instagram & website) who does amazing embroidered photos of bees. This year she is doing mushrooms and they are super cool. We then walked over to The Hive Screen Printing where we have spent more than a few dollars on gifts over the years. They did not disappoint! They have a cool new embroidery machine and were giving demos. The machine is part of a government grant because they were slammed by COVID shutdowns for a bunch of their regular markets so that kinda sucks but we spent a bit of money and will again i am sure. It was a nice night for a walk and the vibe is pretty laid back in the evening.
Saturday morning we hit the Mergatroid with Ric and Taylor early as the large studio buildings can get pretty crazy. Sarah bought a bit of pottery which she promises is for gifts. Mostly. We crossed over to Parker Street Studios (aka 1000 Parker) which is the largest space on the Crawl with 133 open studios and is a real focal point for the whole event. It was great that it wasn’t crowded and we got to enjoy the spaces and check out some of our favourite artists. It was a shame though because a bunch of the wookworking studios were closed. Oh well.
Not to be missed at Parker Street are printmaker Kari Kristensen and paper artist Tara Lee Bennett.
Sarah had to leave after 2 floors of Parker but Ric and Taylor let me tag along so we left the rest for Sunday and headed downtown to Maker Labs. One day we have to convince Ric to just shell out of a membership to get access to tools. We also grabbed a bite at a cafe and checked out a bunch of studios that i had never been to before. The smaller studios away from the Parker/Mergatroid nexus are totally different and you never know what you are going to get when you go in. Sometimes it blows you away and sometimes it makes you scratch your head. Archive was under Les Amis de Fromage so that was handy and there was an awesome print maker there (and some head scratchers). We also went to the Sun Wah Building which despite the funky smell is worth a visit to check out painter Leanne M. Christie and illustrator Anais Lera. We finished with a walk through Railtown to a few random studios off the beaten path.
Sunday we were going to meet R&T again at Parker to finish the top floors but they slept in so Sarah and i did it on our own. A highlight was visiting the studio of Penny Eisenberg who i have been following for a few years but had never been to her studio. Her landscape work is lovely. We also stumbled across a little pottery studio on our way back to the car and, surprise!, bought some pottery. We went back downtown to a few studios i wanted to show Sarah and picked up a little print of a puffin that had caught my eye the day before at The Archive.
Rules to survive the Culture Crawl:
- start early
- bring snacks and water
- avoid the food trucks. That is time you could be looking at art. (I am not pointing fingers)
- go multiple days
- get off the beaten path
- always buy the puffins
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