Bella Venezia

So, that trip I mentioned in my last post... well, it was to Venice (as anyone who has been following me on instagram would know). My friend Shary Boyle is representing Canada at this year's Biennale, and I was invited to help with the installation for a couple of weeks. My best friend (and coe&waito partner) Alissa is Shary's production assistant for the project, so basically it was a chance to hang out with a couple of my favourite people in one of the most unique and beautiful cities in the world. Pretty sweet. Here are a bunch of my favourite pics that some of you will have already seen on instagram or facebook. If you don't already follow me on instagram, the rest of my trip photos can be seen here. As far as the Biennale pavilion goes, it's top secret until it opens officially at the end of the month, but I'll be sure to post details about Shary's masterpiece then. I'm so honoured to have been involved in a small way.

The Canada pavilion has the best font.

 

 Walking home after work on a rainy day.

All the wisteria was blooming. It was everywhere, and so beautiful!

 The palm tree below our kitchen window.

Dinner.

The Paradiso cafe near the entrance to the Biennale grounds. Perfect spot for after work spritzes.

Alissa and me at Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute.

Collecting shells at the Lido.

 The Piraeus Lion at the Arsenale.

Campo di San Francesco della Vigna.

Crazy marble on Basilica di San Marco.

 The fantastic terrazzo floors in our apartment.

 Venice is full of hilarious doorbell faces.

Vine-covered columns at Venice Marco Polo Airport

spring update

Time has been flying lately. I've been doing a lot of drawing and painting, recovering from an inevitable change-of-seasons head cold and keeping an eye out for signs of spring. The winter has seemed particularly relentless this year, but things are slowly starting to sprout in the garden, reassuring me that, yes, summer will eventually come. I finally upgraded to an iPhone and joined Instagram, where you'll find more frequent activity (such as the above photos) than my very sporadic posting here. Please do follow me there if you're interested!

In other news, I'm nearly done restoring my portfolio website (finally!), and I'll post a note here when it's back up. Also, I have a very exciting trip coming up in a couple of weeks. More on that soon...

big love

I am so thrilled to share the happy news that my guy Andrew and I got engaged this weekend! He surprised me on Friday night when we got home after being out for dinner for my birthday. Well, it wasn't a total surprise, because we'd been talking about it for ages, and in the fall we started the process of having a ring custom-made. It was just a matter of when Andrew would officially pop the question.

I'm so happy with the ring, I wanted to share some pictures and give a shout-out to Meredith Robb, the talented jewellery designer who made it for us. She was an absolute pleasure to work with, and she took my super-specific criteria and created a ring that is beyond anything I had imagined. I absolutely love it. The gemstone is an indicolite tourmaline that I picked up at a gem and mineral show I attended in September. I love the depth and sparkle of the grey stone, which appears more bluish or greenish depending on the light. I love that the band and setting balance delicacy and softness, with strength and precision. I love that it feels somehow ancient and yet totally modern; iconic but unique.

And I'm so so so happy to be marrying my love!

snow day

 

It's a snow day, here in Toronto, and I'm sitting at my table by the window working on a drawing, watching the flurries outside. I've been working out some new ideas, and since am not quite ready to share the results yet, I haven't had much to post about lately. I recently started a Tumblr page, which I initially intended as a secret spot to collect images for inspiration and pleasure, but I think I'm ready to share it now. Especially since it is so quiet over at this little blog. If you're curious about what I've got on my mind, art-wise these days (plus the occasional random obsession), have a peek. Hopefully my ideas and experiments will start to come together soon...

website issues...

My portfolio site is redirecting to this blog for the moment, while I take care of some technical difficulties with the site. Hopefully I will have it back up and running soon! If you are here as a result of this redirection, and are looking for images of my work, there are paintings scattered throughout the archives of the blog, or you can visit my page at Narwhal Art Project's site for a selection of works and information.

beautiful science

Hello! I'm sorry for my long absence here. I've been keeping busy, trying to dig myself out of a slump. A big part of this process has been finally fixing up my studio space (in our dining room). I'll post before/after photos once it's all finished, but for now here's a peek at what it looks like today, as I spend some quality time with my new microscope(!). As far as the previously mentioned slump goes, things are looking up. I think I may have made a small breakthrough today. I have been finding it really difficult to loosen up and be experimental in my art-making, but to approach it from more of a 'science experiment' angle is opening up some really exciting possibilities.

Fallingwater

Endless Caverns

The second cavern site we visited in Virginia was Endless Caverns. It was a perfect contrast to the spectacular but super-touristy Luray Caverns. These caverns were off the beaten path, a bit smaller and less developed. We only had two other people on our tour, and our tour guide was fantastic - really knowledgeable and relaxed. It felt more like we were actually exploring a natural site, rather than being herded through a theme park.

Our guide would turn on lights as we went along, and then turn off the lights in the passages we had just come through. At one point he turned off all the lights and let us experience the most complete darkness I have ever felt. We entered the caverns down through a stairway locked with iron gates in a little stone building, and exited up a different stairway into the basement of the main building. The entering and exiting was one of my favourite parts of the experience. It is just so surreal to feel that transition from everyday reality to the strange and magical world underground.

 (I think it's kind of hilarious how much this picture looks like it should be in a brochure)

 

Luray Caverns

This was the real impetus for our trip. I've been pretty obsessed with caverns for a while now, and when I realized that some of the best show caverns in North America are clustered in an area of Virginia only a day's drive from here, we decided to plan our summer camping trip around going there.

We visited two caverns on our short trip. The first was Luray Caverns; the largest and most popular site in the region. It was kind of a crazy tourist trap, but completely spectacular nonetheless. We were part of a huge tour group (somewhere between 50-100 people?), which made its way through at a pretty reasonable pace, stopping at major features along the way, where a teenager would give us a short canned spiel about that feature. Surprisingly, I didn't feel very rushed or crowded. The caverns are enormous, and once people spread out, we could lag behind at our own pace. I think by the end we had assimilated into the tour group that was after ours. Most of my pictures are pretty blurry, because it was so dark, but I hope some might work for potential art-making purposes. Here are just a few of the hundreds of shots I took.

And, a couple more shots with people, to show scale:

P.S. Does anyone remember my cavern plate? That was from Luray! I think this trip may have inspired me to keep building on my vintage cavern souvenir collection (the contemporary souvenirs were absolutely horrid).