This summer Arts Etobicoke was kind enough to ask me to hold an online studio visit with them via Instagram Live.

After months of lockdown it felt like another way to connect up with people and community online, much like my Virtual Studio Parties, and Kal Honey's Virtual Collage Jams (which I co-host).

Studio visits are fun, in fact I love seeing the insides of other artists' studios, what kind of space they have, how they work in them, how they organize them and so on. Not to mention what they are working on in there!

So you'll get to see some of all of those things in my video, which is on Arts Etobicoke's Instagram account.

​Here is a direct link: www.instagram.com/p/CDeniKDpkrE/

It's almost exactly an hour long. In it you'll get a peek at some experiments, a longtime hobby of mine, the view out my windows, what my painting table looks like and plenty more. Plus I answer some questions from attendees.

While not yet up on their website or YouTube channel, I'm sure it will be sometime this fall, and I will update the link in this post once that happens.

​I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know in the comments if you would like to see more.

DATE CHANGE:
Virtual Studio Party will return two weeks later,
on Saturday, October 3 at 2pm.

My co-host Kal Honey and I are taking a break from some of our work responsibilities for several weeks, including the Virtual Studio Parties, free weekly creative events on my YouTube channel, that have seen us through the first few months of the pandemic.

It has become something that we, and numerous regular attendees, have come to treasure, for the creative time, the conversation, and for the community experience.

While we are on hiatus, there is a YouTube playlist of 24 videos available on my channel from past parties. They are there for you to enjoy whenever you feel the need for some creative time with friendly company, in the comfort of your home (or at this time of year, possibly your cottage).

Here is the link: https://bit.ly/31HtbOm

Meanwhile, in the coming weeks, you can expect more posts here in the blog, and updates in the Teaching+ menu above, in my Online Offerings.

I've got my Fall term planned out so I'm busy writing and making web pages for each of the courses I will be offering. Some of them are up already with everything but the materials lists, which I'll post in late August.

UPDATE: All of my Fall courses are up on the website now!
Click here to see what's available.

Finally, if you haven't made it to one of our Virtual Studio Parties yet, I hope you can make some space in your week to attend one live on a Saturday afternoon this Fall, or else by watching or listening to a replay. And if you know anyone else who might enjoy it, please share the link with them.

Creative time, creative community, a friendly artist making things – and it's free! What's not to love? I hope you'll join us!

I was delighted to be featured in episode 36 of Stella's Studio on Camoes TV, a show about art and artists, music and musicians. In it I talked about and showed some of my work, I also demonstrated a process I work with a lot.

To prepare for shooting the video, there was the "excitement" of getting my upstairs studio space looking presentable – not to mention my own self, lol – anyone else here find that isolation has made their appearance standards slip a little?

The studio clean-up was necessary because making a TV appearance during the COVID pandemic is a little different than my experiences in the past. The show's crew could not come to my house but neither could I go to their studio, so I had to shoot my own video segments, which the show then added to with still photos, video effects, and most importantly, editing.

My video skills are rudimentary (better than they were a year ago!) and I didn't have much time to shoot my segments, but despite that, and some resulting technical issues Stella and her team made it look much better than I feared, and I am quite pleased with the result.

Here is a link to the episode:
tinyurl.com/yb53th78

My portion of the program starts a at about the 4:45 mark and lasts for 7 or 8 minutes.

I hope you enjoy it!

Before I tell you about that though, I want to share with you some thoughts I wrote to someone who needed help and emotional support through her distress at feeling unable to focus, unable to work, unable to settle. I feel it too. So many of us do, even if not all the time. So here is what I would like to say to you:

Nothing is normal right now. Nothing. So be gentle on yourself for not being able to work, and for feeling scattered. That is a natural response to feeling the anxiety of our crisis situation and even trauma and grief at the loss of normality.

We humans adapt to amazing things but to stay healthy in the full sense it is important to do gentle things that nourish, calm and ground you. That will ease the transition to the new normal, and you will feel better for it. 

Activities that get you focused on your body are especially beneficial: movement of any kind and focusing on your senses instead of your thoughts whenever you can, or for part of each day.

Do something with your hands, go outside for a walk if you are healthy (and keep your distance from others). Above all, have patience with yourself and those around you... even for the times that you – or they – lose patience :-)

.  .  .  .  .

On March 20, I started holding Virtual Studio Parties online, via YouTube livestream so that anyone with high-speed internet, no matter how unconfident with their computer, could take part.

It’s a no-cost creative gathering for anyone who’s missing the experience of community, is feeling isolated or anxious, or wants to have some gentle fun in the real-time, virtual, company of others.

People have said it's really helped them and it's something they look forward to now.

If this sounds like it might help you, or just be fun, visit my Virtual Studio Parties page.

​Do you have a suggestion for self-care during stressful times? Please share in the comments.
​

Thanks so much for being part of my community this year. Buoyed by that support, including my Heartspace sponsors, I was able to take on more, make more, and make more ambitious work – including trying many new media, processes and formats – in the past 18 months than in any previous.

That work enabled me to create and share experiences like my 2018 In Situ Festival room installation; my solo show 'A Full Heart' at the Cedar Ridge Studio gallery, my biggest ever, spanning three rooms in a historic house; Wonderfest in Port Credit a performing arts event where my large paintings set and dressed the stage for singers, musicians and spoken word poetry. 

The culminating event was Heartspace at The Red Head Gallery, my debut solo show there, which included some of my previously shown heart-based work, alongside 47 new artworks in various sizes, mediums and formats.

It is only one month since Heartspace closed. The response, enthusiasm and attendance were amazing, thanks to my community!

I hope you were among those able to attend. If you were, thank you! If you checked it out online, thank you!

This year's holiday card was designed by my partner in life and creativity, Kal Honey, whose most recent show, Signs of Subversion, featured artworks based on (and subverting) the bylaw and road signs of our everyday life.

Heartspace, my debut solo exhibition at The Red Head Gallery, is in its final week this Weds–Sat noon–5pm. I will be there for the final Saturday (Nov 23) all afternoon, or as close to it as I can manage!

After that the work comes down except for some of the small works which will be part of the group show that follows right after mine, #foxypopup.

Heartfelt thanks to my amazing sponsors!

I have thanked my sponsors in print at the show itself, but it's about time I thanked them here on my website.

They took some pressure off, lightening the load on my mind as I headed into, and worked away in, my studio, and they also made some things possible, thereby helping to make this show as interesting and diverse as my ideas called for.

Here are my generous sponsors: 

• Miriam Snell
• Josef (Joe) Rich
• Abigail Johnson
• Joanna Czub
• The Conspiracy to Promote Artists
• Ruth Austin
• Nancy Moniz
• Lindsay Isaac
• Anne Cook

I also owe a very special thanks to Kal Honey, who helps me in every way imaginable. Thanks also to Tim Marshall who along with Kal installed the show so I feel happy every time I look at it!

What a day! I'm feeling so full of gratitude for the many people who came out for the artist talk and opening reception for my 'Heartspace' solo exhibition at The Red Head Gallery in Toronto.

It was so packed that on more than one occasion I had to act like a bus driver and urge everyone to move further inside to make room for the new arrivals!

Wonderful to connect and re-connect with many familiar faces, colleagues, friends, students, sponsors, and even family!

I gave the group a guided tour through the artworks – so many of which merit a little background or additional explanation to enrich the experience rather than replace the personal encounter – covering conceptual, material and 

Part two of this blog series is up!
​To go directly to it, click here.

The 2018 In Situ multi-arts festival took place November 8–10 at the Small Arms Inspection Building (a former WWII munitions factory now partially refurbished as a creative hub) in Mississauga, Ontario.

'Hearts in Place' was a whole-room installation comprised of: ten 7-foot high scrolls, eight of which were transfer-printed (a hand-pulled process), two were hand-painted; two paper-and-fibre "veined" panels (centre); two veiling textile panels; one built-onsite sculpture/assemblage which you can see a sliver of light from at the centre of this photo; and the wall behind me as I photographed the room panorama was a mural drawing which I drew a portion of as a live performance each of the three evenings of the festival.

Like the first In Situ festival in 2016, this was an extraordinary experience and a creative high, but with the benefit of central heating and running water!

I am still exhausted from the experience of preparing all of this new work, performing and then taking it all down just days later. As a result I will keep this entry shorter than I might have, but will share with you some photographs. Thanks go to the numerous – generous – photographers and friends, (all credited individually), who made this possible, documenting when I could not.

​Many thanks to the many people who came out to experience the festival and visited my room! If you were there, please let me know what you thought in the comments below.

The In Situ arts festival in late October was an extraordinary experience for me as an artist and a fun one in general.

With two large scale pieces in the main space and an entire room installation (allowing plenty of space for dancers to perform in), it was wonderful to stretch out (mentally and physically) into so much space.

The intensity required to conceive and execute so much in so little time is not sustainable for long (by me at least) but has some benefits. As I was just describing to a friend, it kept the threads of my thoughts white-hot, so every hour of work built 100% onto the previous hours, days and weeks of work – since most other distractions had been put aside... even sleep!

As well, working with the festival's fabulous lighting designer Joe Pagnan and working with light in the drawers and other components of my room installation 'Containment', has forever changed my thinking around light.

The incredible support and enthusiasm of Heather Snell, director/artistic director of the festival, and her wonderful husband Ken, was fertile ground in which to grow (thank you both!).

While I had nothing like enough time to get ready (in fact I am still trying to recover from the 24/7 preparations) but the joyful, creative and expansive experience that this was, coupled with the new work I produced for it, means I am glad and grateful for the opportunity.

And I still love that gorgeous, decrepit building!

Thanks to all who visited! For any who could not, I hope these photos will go some way toward compensating.