My friend and mentor Monica Bodirsky has just opened her long awaited online shop Curio Grimm featuring delightfully magickal and curious art, accessories and supplies! If you live in Toronto keep tabs on the happenings at Studio Huddle, where Monica has studio space, they have great shows and sales happening all the time!
Tagged: accessories, art, Curio Grimm, curious, Magical, Monica Bodirsky, supplies, Toronto
Thanks again to Krista and Milé for being such great hosts and creating such a wonderful space for creativity to thrive! I highly encourage all artists, designers, makers, musicians and writers out there to check out Small Pond Arts artist in residence program.
Krista has just posted a video and article about the 2014 banner that I made for them so check out their blog here.
During my stay at Small Pond Krista and I were both interviewed by Kingston Arts Council journalist Anita Jansman you can check out that video here.
Zac and I are gearing up to make new collaborative products and sell off our stock of housewares so we are offering 25-40% off our entire selection. Visit our etsy shop at www.etsy.com/shop/goldandginger
What a great last couple of weeks at Small Pond Arts, thank you Milé and Krista! I ended my time off with a great party and the much anticipated banner raising. I have included some photos of my process so you can start to see it come together. I hope you love it as much as I loved making it!
Process images:
For more details and to see what else I’ll be doing this summer subscribe to my personal blog at www.leanneshearhem.com/blog/
Tagged: art, Artist Residency, Banner, banner raising, Leanne Rhem, Leanne Shea Rhem, Ontario, party, Picton, small p, summer
First Impressions
I sat out in the sunshine this morning with my sketchbook and got to thinking about the weekend that just passed and all the new people I’ve been meeting recently. Zac and his family came to visit me and we had a great day out in Prince Edward County which consisted of a stop at the Waring House for lunch, Karlo Estates winery, Vickis Veggies seedling sale and a stop for dinner in Bloomfeild. As we sat sipping wine, talking and people watching at Karlo Estates (my favourite winery) the owner came around to shake hands with customers and say hello. Watching all of these introductions take place, I couldn’t help but notice there were some good handshakes and ones that made me cringe like: the people who think a handshake is done with the tips of your fingers alone like they’re shaking the hand of a baby dinosaur.
I remember learning the importance of a good handshake before my first job interview and practicing with my dad. I think it’s an important skill to have. After all a handshake is often the first opportunity to contradict first impressions based on preconceived ideas from a person’s appearance like: appearing weak, with facts like: being strong.
I think this idea of first impressions and first meetings translates to art and design as well. When we first look at a piece of art we make judgements about it based on appearance but maybe we need to shake hands? Unfortunately we can’t shake the hand of every artist whose work we look at but there are other ways that a deeper connection can be made. Often artwork will be accompanied by an artist statement; I think this piece of writing is the equivalent to a handshake, it’s how we meet the artwork and begin to see the way that the artist would like to introduce their work. If we look at artwork like we’re interviewing employees for a great new position in our roster of favourite art I wonder what would happen? When we meet an artwork and read the artist statement that is poorly written and is only shaking our fingertips like we’re the baby dinosaur, it is time to move on. When we meet an artwork that firmly shakes our hand and inspires us through it’s ability to clearly articulate a message, it is time to hire your first employee!
Do you ever finish a day off watching the sunset and think to yourself “what a full day, I don’t think there is any way I could have got more done!”. I feel like I’ve just finished off a week like that. It is such a great feeling to be able to go through your checklist and realize that you did everything you wanted to do plus some. This of course does not happen without hard work, maybe some luck, a plan, a schedule, a good night’s sleep, food to keep you going, a good mood and probably many more variables. When those “stars align” the feeling of success at the end of the day is pretty special and cause for celebration I think.
There is a great podcast that I am slightly obsessed with called TED Radio Hour on NPR which you can download off itunes. This program broadcasts a curated selection of TED talks within a select topic every week. They’ll often re-interview the speakers of different talks during the hour and give alternate viewpoints and create connections between presenters. This past week there was a podcast about success which I urge you to check out along with the rest of the excellent topics available here.
Tagged: Picton, Small Pond Arts, success, ted radio hour, ted talks
Banner raising made it into the Picton Gazette and the County Weekly News yesterday! Check the articles out below:
I began my day today walking around the property checking for any progress in nature after a good rainfall the night before and I noticed some old bottles in the window of one of the out buildings. 
These are all old soda pop bottles that were found after Milé and Krista bought Small Pond. These bottles got me thinking about the things we decide are beautiful or special, things we keep and what we collect. Later on in the day at dinner with my aunt and uncle we got to talking about the things we hold on to. We discussed the valueless things we keep in boxes and going through the belongings of family members after they pass away. It’s strange the things we think are important enough to put safely in a box, yet forget about over time. It’s even stranger when we spend countless hours rooting through said boxes to find a worthless piece of ceramic, plastic or paper.
“Things” are important to me, not in an outright materialistic way but in the sense that they each carry memories and construct a more complete sense of home and belonging for me. Luckily I have found a partner with a similar if not more overt need to collect, as stuff often finds a way of causing friction in relationships. If zac were to for example have all of his hundred and one star wars action figures in our living room I would have a problem with that, thankfully they are tucked away in a box in his dad’s crawlspace. If I were to say scatter the sand from each beach I have visited on our kitchen floor Zac would have a problem with that, thankfully each bottle of sand is sealed in a box under my side of the bed.
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When I woke up this morning I had every intention of ignoring the world and curling up with a blanket, in a comfortable chair, outside and finally start reading one of my many library books that have yet to get read after 3 renewals. When I passed through the kitchen to get a cup of coffee I couldn’t help but notice a poster. This piece of writing made me smile and panic at the same time. The part of me that is a consumer of artistic goods was thinking “right on, I love finding cheap posters and prints at shows”, the educator in me thought “now now come on you could have used a smaller font and included a couple hundred more reasons why accessibly priced art would make the world a better place” and the artist in me started sweating thinking about the price range available for my own work. I left the house for my comfy chair outside thinking about my own manifesto and pricing. Here are some of the questions and answers I came up with, give it some thought:
Tagged: art, bread & puppet, Leanne Rhem, Leanne Shea Rhem, manifesto, Ontario, Picton, poster, Small Pond Arts
My First Day at Small Pond Arts began and ended with sunshine and bird calls, it was beautiful out. One of my goals over the course of my stay is to end each day with a blog post, we’ll see if I can keep it up for the next 2 weeks. Since I can’t post any photos of the banner making in progress I thought I would put some photos of spring time, enjoy!
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Tagged: Artist Residency, Banner, Leanne Rhem, Leanne Shea Rhem, Ontario, Picton, Small Pond Arts
