Stations, People, Eat, Drink

Speaking of closing art shows... (I'm clearing out the blog backlog!)
A shot from the vernissage of Parisian Laundry's Stations, People, Eat, Drink, with my small friend being mesmerized by the red and green moving lights on the tropical print wall.

Current @ the Arsenal

Mega contemporary art space Arsenal, will be holding its closing event of Current, a street art exhibit curated by Alejandro Figueroa.  The weeklong show invited local and international street artists to create their works in a gallery setting, allowing visitors to view the works in progress.
I stopped by earlier in the week to scope out some of the pieces.

Iron getting the signage under way

Crates full of blue chip art served as a set. Kevin Ledo's gold leaf star seen in the background

Art crating and moving has always fascinated me.  Herein lies a Franz West.

Getting up close to Ledo's gold detritus

Ledo working it out

This is the second out of three large format portraits that Ledo is mounting

Labrona working on his signature faces

Labrona set up a series of barrels in the loading ramp, coming to life with his imagery

Alexis Diaz is back! A crosshatched heart is starting to come through.

For those who don't want to splurge on some art at the moment, stamps representative of each artist were created so you can take home a freebie.

The dirty business of art. Ledo and Zoltan illustrate.

For a full list of the artists involved check out here, or go see it in person!

Festival Nouveau Cinema 2014

The best film festival in town just got underway yesterday and I just took a look at the program.  Holy moly there's lots of good stuff here. A couple of projects I did the costume design for are going to partake in the fun, so check it out!

First up, Turn Off Before Living, directed by Annick Blanc, a dark and steamy film set in Havana, Cuba about a cast of characters living personal lies.

Step Well Pilgrim is a dance film that I had the pleasure of making "butt turbans" for four of the performers.  Director Duncan McDowall was inspired by principal performers Katia Lesvesque and Jonathan Fortin's performance from Cabaret Carmagnole and transformed it to a screen adaptation.

I was super stoked to assist the insane talent of costume designer Patricia McNeil for one day on the set of Félix et Meira.  Directed by Maxime Giroux, the film explores the unlikely crossing of paths of a young mother and wife in the Hassidic Jewish community and an eccentric francophone québecois. 

My one awesome day consisted of transforming about twenty bearded men, from young hip dudes to elderly santa claus-like gentlemen into Hassidic Jews.  With the treasures of eBay Israel and a bunch of resourcefulness, McNeil orchestrated epic movie magic.

01magazine

Shit's been cray, so the blog's a bit backed up.

I sent some Instagram images to 01 Magazine who put out a call for summmer submissions.
They selected the above image of a dock on Three Mile Lake, in the Muskoka region.
Although not a sunny summer day, the overcast (aka rain's gonna pour) sky is always helpful for image taking. A little on-the-go processing with VSCO Cam and voila.

in a quarry

Last weekend I found myself about a one hour drive outside of Montreal.  I drove through a very functional rock quarry wearily dodging oversized trucks.  Photographer Elena Willis rallied the troops to help with the creation her newest image in the striking blue and very deep waters of the quarry.
Yours truly was tasked with swimming out with the yellow fibreglass boat (above) and guiding it into Willis' frame.
I hid myself behind the boat as Willis clicked away on the very bad assed Phase One camera, watching the murky runoff (top) dump into the very waters I was floating in.
#artlove

shoot studio X ans

Shoot Studio recently held their annual photography exhibit and showcased their roster of talent with a big bash to celebrate their ten years of image making.  Experimental filmmaker Karl Lemieux (above) was invited to stage a multi-projector performance/cacophony with the use of 16mm film.  The audio component was not dissimilar to distorted drone metal like sounds which emanated from the film being manipulated through the projectors' magnetic heads with an equally grindcore-ish vocal accompaniment on the microphone.

With visions of Cremaster 2/bees/death metal drum solos, I grabbed a glass of wine and headed downstairs to the gallery to check out the photography.
A couple of faves:

Geneviève Demers, positive and negative images of the waters of Kalymnos, Greece.

soft and ethereal underwater photography by Sandrine Castellan

dark and moody with awesome use of colour by Pierre Manning

wedding flowers

This lovely labour day weekend was apparently host to many, many weddings.  Other than Brad & Angie*, two dear friends were also tying the knot and invited me to a morning of lots of croissants (and other assorted pastries), coffee and itty-bitty bouquet arranging.  Needless to say, but I was like a pig in shit. Pardon the crassness, but I was deep in my happy zone for several hours surrounded by these tiny beauties.  The above flowers made me squeal with delight.  These ping-pong sized flowers with the texture of paper are called scabiosa stellata, or commonly 'Drumstick" or what we affectionately dubbed "the balls."

The bride picked out about a twelve little varieties from a wholesaler and put her friends and family to work, cutting and arranging different stems in dozens and dozens of glass vessels of varying dimensions.  The result was whimsical, eclectic and effective.

Above from left:
-The astilble erika or false spirea are pink buds in a cluster of spike shaped stems
-Flat petals seem to characterize the phlox paniculata species which come in tons of variations, ours were a deep pink/purple that still had lots of buds ready to open
-The ivory flowers with pink and green hues are astrantia maxima, or masterwort, or million star or what we liked to call them "the droopies."  Their heads were hanging sad and low out of the box, but the overnighter in a vessel of water picked them back up.
-Last in the image, to the right is eryngium supernova, also known as the thistle

photo by Margot Ross

Happy as a clam,

As happy as a lark,

As a fish in water

Or a pig in poop.

*Oops, apparently Brad & Angie got married the 23rd of August- the weekend before-my bad.