Double Eyebrows, 2006. 11.5" x 8.5".
Courtesy of Artist.

Marc Bell lives in London, ON. Hot Potatoe (sic), a monograph of his recent art and comics work was published by Drawn and Quarterly in the Fall of 2009. He was the editor of Nog a Dod: Prehistoric Canadian Psychedoolia (Conundrum Press, 2006) and co-editor of The Ganzfeld #6, the "Japanada" issue (Picture Box, 2007). His work was recently included in Pulp Fiction at Museum London (London, ON) and Shayne Ehman and Friends at Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo). Bell is represented by the Adam Baumgold Gallery in NY.

marcbelldept.blogspot.com

This is the place where I live. My building is over a hundred years old and was at one point a piano factory and coffin factory. Now it is home to woodworkers, musicians, filmmakers and comedians. Our 1500 square foot home has flourished many creative ideas and projects and it’s even worth dealing with the abattoir next door. Yet the condos are encroaching more and more seem to pop up daily. I doubt this oasis of creativity will survive. This would be a great loss for these spaces, and the people who create in them and bring vitality and spirit to a neighbourhood.

— Rose Bianchini

Rose Bianchini, My Hood, 2010.
Pen and inks. 27 x 30"
Courtesy of Artist.

Rose Bianchini is an artist, director, producer and writer who works in several mediums. Her radio work includes creating music profiles and documentary work for CBC Radio. Her television work has included a youth culture show for TVO, The Big Picture with Avi Lewis and The Hour on CBC Television.

She has art directed several shorts and Bravofacts and most recently art directed a television pilot featuring headless zombies. As a director her most recent project is a music video for Gentlemen Reg which has aired on MTV, MuchMusic and several other broadcasters as well as several film festivals. She is directing a documentary feature about a social experiment artist and her Surreal Girl animation has been picked up for worldwide distribution. Bianchini is part of the art collective which created the Soft City — an ongoing plush metropolis installation that has been exhibited over a dozen times and is currently being developed as an immersive game and television series. She has also diligently worked on a graphic novel about a surreal girl who talks to birds and has psychic powers.

rosebianchini.com

While I was born in South Korea, I've lived in Toronto longer than anywhere else in my life and consider it my home. I originally took up painting landscapes a few years ago, mainly to improve that aspect of my work. For years I had been focused on the figure, and didn't think that landscapes would be interesting to work on. However, I soon discovered that landscapes could be as organic and unique as the human body, with its own mysteries and stories to be told. These days, I enjoy trying to capture the atmosphere of a place, especially places I know well.

— Michael Cho

Michael Cho, Claudia And Me

Michael Cho is an illustrator and cartoonist who lives and works in Toronto, Canada. His illustrations have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Nickelodeon, Owl Magazine and on book covers for Random House and Penguin Books. He's also had comics published by Marvel, DC, Image and Adhouse books. Michael is currently working on an art book of urban landscapes to be published by Drawn and Quarterly.

chodrawings.blogspot.com

I grew up in Vancouver, BC at the edge of the ocean and my family had a summer cottage in a big forest in the mountains. As a child, I spent a lot of time lost in the vast expanse of natural spaces, my imagination running wild. I am drawn to Dufferin Grove Park both for its sense of community and its quiet, natural beauty. Even with all the excitement of its bustling Farmer's Market, children's theatre, and winter skating, there is still always a quiet place to find and reflect on the world. To hear the birds sing in the tall trees and watch the children play below.

— Willow Dawson

Snowy Dufferin Grove 1, 2009.
Acrylic ink and paint on cardboard, 6" x 8".
Courtesy of Artist.

Willow Dawson is the illustrator of award-winning graphic novels: No Girls Allowed with Susan Hughes (Kids Can Press) and Violet Miranda: Girl Pirate with Emily Pohl-Weary (Kiss Machine). She is the creator of the upcoming Lila and Ecco's Do-It-Yourself Comics Club (Kids Can Press, ETA: TBA) and the comic memoir 100 Mile House for which she recently received a Toronto Arts Council Grant. Dawson's books are also supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Dawson is a member of the RAID Studio, The Writers' Union of Canada, CANSCAIP, JacketFlap and Illustration Mundo. In her spare time, she plays the saw and sings in the band Pink Moth.

Literary representation: Samantha Haywood, Transatlantic Literary Agency, tla1.com.

All other inquiries: willowdawson.com.

I immigrated to Canada 15 years ago. Before and since, I've been to many beautiful cities around the world. In the end, there isn't anywhere I would rather be than Toronto. With the infinite loneliness of its sky scrapers, with the gritty colours of Chinatown, the dry memories of the summer and the beige slush of the winter; there is no place like here.

— Hyein Lee

In Bruges I, 2009.
Mixed Media on Wood, 9X13".
Courtesy of Artist.

Hyein Lee completed her Engineering degree at the University of Toronto in 2004. She also completed her Illustration degree at Sheridan College in 2008 and received the Hambly & Woolley Best in Show Award. Working as a freelance illustrator and a web designer, her work has been published in magazines such as Canadian Family, Shameless, Ricepaper, Crow Toe Quarterly and Applied Arts. Her recent exhibitions include Lonely Robots (Magic Pony, Toronto), SOS (Project 165, Toronto) and the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition (Toronto).

hyeinlee.com

Everyday we walk by thousands of tiny things we never notice. On our way to the corner store, crossing the street, in the park...this is a collection of a dozen such unseen treasures in East York. The details our eyes often glance over...the way wires cross at the top of telephone poles, the way that old sign hangs from the corner store window, the nest the birds have built in the rooftop next door. Am illustrated collection of the ephemera that surrounds us and fills our neighborhoods.

— Jeff Lemire

Born and raised on a small farm in Essex County, Canada, Jeff Lemire's Essex County Trilogy of graphic novels have been nominated for multiple Eisner and Harvey Awards. In 2008 Jeff won the Schuster and Doug Wright Awards recognizing the best in Canadian cartooning, and the American Library Association's prestigious Alex Award, recognizing books for adults with specific teen appeal.

Jeff recently completed a new graphic novel called The Nobody for DC Comics/Vertigo, and is currently hard at work on a new monthly series, Sweet Tooth for Vertigo, as well as a new graphic novel for Top Shelf. He has also contributed to anthologies for Dark Horse and Image comics, as well as illustrated album covers for bands such as Art Brut and catl.

He currently lives and works in Toronto with his wife, sculptor and doll-maker Lesley-Anne Green, and their son, Gus.

jefflemire.com
jefflemire.blogspot.com

Seth Scriver, born and raised in Toronto, attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and received an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Fine Arts. He is currently living and working in Toronto. Most of Scriver's art making is based on personal experience and stories told to him. His visual aesthetics push toward a type of fantasy world created through a stream of consciousness drawing style. The drawings present a believable view of a chaotic world in which unknown entities play out small dramas. He is currently represented by Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, Toronto.

peanutbreath.com

crosshatchballad.blogspot.com

GRAND GESTURES is an installation of thousands of silver thumbtacks spelling out the title of the work. This self-reflexive announcement, styled like a pixelated marquee, refers to the spectacular and even the historical "grand manner". Additionally, the term alludes to the historical "grand manner", one of the highest genres of academic painting endorsed during the late 18th century. The work generates a monumental presence through an accrual of thousands of tiny, anonymous gestures fashioned into a ubiquitous typeface. It is a record of action, as well as a reminder for generous action.

Based in Toronto, Jen Hutton completed her undergraduate degree in fine arts at the University of Guelph. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, most recently at Gallery Stratford in Stratford, ON, Truck Contemporary Art in Calgary, and Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.

jenhutton.com

Hedging Desire Desire is a photographic study of Toronto's private urban gardens.

While a front yard is by its own nature a showpiece, none of these front yards would make it into décor magazines as inspirational lifestyle examples. Rather, they are a testament to the gardeners' process' and acts of creation as they share their labours with passers by.

These gardens are expressions of personal style, as well as a passion for the living plants. The challenge and anticipation of watching something grow and thrive draws these urban gardeners. Control over nature and definition of their spaces with meticulous care are observed, while there really is no tangible goal or measure of success in mind.

Rita Godlevskis, Courtesy of the artist.

The limitations of space in which these urban gardens are created counter balance the gardeners' desire to include nature within their small property lines and enthusiasm for the task at hand.

This type of landscaping is not based on formal design, more the pure appreciation of the process that they must go through to maintain their work and establish their boundaries from their neighbours. My work is an observation and appreciation of their results.

Ultimately, these gardens are examples of a natural sincerity and patience, qualities rarely seen in contemporary urban environments.

— Rita Godlevskis

Rita Godlevskis is a photo-based artist working primarily on print publications and projects. A graduate of the Ryerson Image Arts program- specializing in photography, she also holds a Masters in Creative Media from RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia and has exhibited her work widely throughout Canada, the United States and Australia.

Active in promoting the work of Canadian photographers, she has founded and worked on projects such as the ShotBox — contemporary photography postcard collections, and PhotoEd — a Canadian photography education magazine. Participation in Toronto's photographic community events has included judging the annual SNAP photographic competition and benefit for the Aids Committee of Toronto and as a portfolio reviewer with the CONTACT festival of photography.

Commercial associations of note include photo editing assignments with magazines such as Toronto Life, Australian Women's Weekly, CLEO, Canadian House& Home and the Toronto International Film Festival's Festival Daily. She is currently on assignment with New Idea magazine in Auckland, New Zealand.

ritagodlevskis.com

To Store, To Keep Close, To Remember,
Niko Dimitrijevic, 2009,
Glass, Metal, Wood 30"x14"x14".
Photo courtesy the artist.

Niko Dimitrijevic (Michigan, USA) is from the United States where he had his first introduction to glassblowing in 1998. In 2004, he received his B.F.A. degree with a focus in glass and sculpture from Alfred University, New York. Using glass primarily as a means to create narrative settings, the imagery in his work is often reflective of memory and the interpretation of connecting the past to the present.

Niko is currently an artist-in-residence in the Craft Studio at Harbourfront Centre.

Scotched Memories: three sisters, Sally McCubbin,
sizes variable, blown glass, 2010.

In the beginning I was desperate to be a member of the glassblower's union. I would have been baptized in hot glass if I could. The longer I am a part of this club, though, the more I realize that skill can become a curse. Masterly techniques are lost on the viewer because no one sees how you made it, they just see it. Whether it was difficult, convoluted, time consuming or a near impossible feat, it doesn't matter. For this reason, glassblowers often make glass for themselves and other glassblowers. Now that I'm a part of this club, I wonder who started it and why is it so privileged, or precious or prized?

— Sally McCubbin (Toronto, ON)

"The glassblower's dilemma is that the necessity of technique fogs the clarity of conceptual intent." — Aaron Oussoren

Ingress, Tyler Rock, 2006.
Assembled blown glass, 72 x 72 x 12 cm
Photo Credit: John Dean

This work explores the nature of glass and perception. As a part of my artistic process, I utilize qualities of the material and aspects of the artistic process to convey ideas. After years of creating work focused on vessel aesthetics, my interests within the medium have increasingly turned to the exploration of models of the accepted systems that describe classical proportion.

Some of my inspirations while constructing work for Slanguage include the use of the craft object as a false artifact, and creating models using the Modular System of mathematical proportions put forward by the French architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965).

— Tyler Rock (Calgary, AB)

The Gargonians (Mother), Vanessa Yanow, 2008.
Blown and flame worked glass, heat set and burnt organza, Saharan and Floridian sands, felt, fabric, crystal, metal and magnets, 14.5 x 9 x 13
Photo: A. John Tinholt

Glass art is most interesting to me when combined with other materials. Glass and textiles are particularly exciting together as they contrast and compliment one another. Glass is a noble material, and I don't de-value it in any way but I am interested in subverting it. Too often, fine craft in general, and glass in particular, suffers from an obsession with technical achievement whose resulting awesome effect can be undercut by an absence of purpose. Technique can start with play, as many of my own techniques have, but a single-minded quest for technical achievement can also stifle the creator's ability to access her inner playfulness. I strive to make technique serve the ends of a profound and stimulating engagement with the viewers, in such a way that they are shocked — or coaxed — out of their preconceived notions of what fine craft can be.

— Vanessa Yanow (Montreal, QC)