Rating: NNNNN
Now in its 42nd year, the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition offers tens of thousands of visitors the chance to see diverse artworks while getting a tan at the same time. More than 500 artists will crowd Nathan Phillips Square this weekend (July 11-13), so seeing everything can be an exhausting experience. Here are a few new and younger artists you should plan on visiting.
Sin-Ying Ho vae
WHERE : White section, booth 003
WHAT : Ceramics
THEME : Five-hundred-year-old Eastern traditions blended with Britney Spears.
QUICK HIT : Ho utilizes Chinese ceramic techniques (you know, the blue-and-white vases of the Ming dynasty era available as knockoffs anywhere along Spadina Avenue) but then sneaks little images into the works that you can only see if you’re really paying attention. In one, Chinese symbols are replaced by those little warning symbols on bottles of toxic, flammable or corrosive stuff.
Robyn Cumming woman
WHERE : Blue East student section
WHAT : Photography
THEME : You are your stuff.
QUICK HIT : This student documents the obsession of collecting with strong results in both concept and composition. Each work is two photos, one showing shoes or pills sorted neatly into boxes, the other a portrait of the owner of the shoes or the taker of the pills, with their respective obsession hanging around their head like a swarm of bees. Kim Simonsson dog
WHERE : Turquoise section, booth 573
WHAT : Sculpture
THEME : Japanese anime meets toilet bowl, with a Finnish flourish.
QUICK HIT : This first-time TOAE artist, with addresses in Toronto and Helsinki, is sure to draw crowds with amazing polished white ceramic figures of dogs in flight, young nymphs and even a spitting girl with dangling resin spittle.
Sarah Jane Gorlitz porch
WHERE : Purple section, booth 241
WHAT : Painting
THEME : The light is more perfect here.
WHO : Gorlitz has a singular ability to capture that otherworldly light that breaks through the clouds for just a brief moment and then disappears again for weeks, even months, on end. Trees or people are rendered in a state of absolute majesty. Gorlitz won first prize for student painting at the TOAE last year.
Marco Cheuk city
WHERE : Red student section
WHAT : Printmaking
THEME : Hand-printed doodles on handcrafted paper.
QUICK HIT : Cheuk, a student at the Ontario College of Art and Design, brings the drawings of a wandering mind – blue-pen cityscapes – into the formal printing process. Something so free becomes so exacting, and somehow all the more exciting.
thmoas@sympatico.ca
Others to watch
WHO: Michelle Menzies
WHERE : Pink section, booth 132
WHAT : Sculpture
THEME : Little wooden people living little wooden lives.
WHO : Heidi Yip
WHERE : Blue East student section
WHAT : Painting
THEME : These deer and dolphins might know Bambi and Flipper.
WHO : Lindsay Page
WHERE : Blue East student section
WHAT : Photography
THEME : Our lives can fit in a small box.
WHO : Maciej Dyszkiewicz
WHERE : Turquoise section, booth 571
WHAT : Glass
THEME : Stunning abstract worlds of coloured glass globs.
WHO : Adele Chong
WHERE : Red student section
WHAT : Painting
THEME : Flat, even colour fields exploded into precise splotches and splats.
