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Artist Profile: Braden Labonte

An artist profile of Braden Labonte

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Describe your process of creating a piece. What materials do you normally work in?

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Most of my time is taken up thinking about and perfecting my work in my head. Once I finally have a good idea of what I want to create, I use a combination of sketches and found images that I scan into the computer to get the layout I want. When the computer draft looks roughly like what I was originally thinking of, I will print out the image and use it as a reference to paint from. Maybe that seems like a roundabout way of doing things, but it works for me.

I work in a number of different materials and mediums, but recently I have been doing small oil paintings on mylar or board. Classic.

What projects are you working on? What do you have coming up, any shows?

I’m currently working on a bunch of stuff (paintings, sculptures, etc.) that relates in one way or another to an old book called Positioning in Radiography by K.C. Clark. I don’t want to give too much away, but it might just be the coolest book I have ever seen, and to make it even better it was given to my girlfriend a couple years ago by some old mystery man. He just stopped by a show she was having and handed her a stem of ditch flowers and the book saying she’d like it, and then left never to be seen again. Mysterious.

As for shows, I don’t have much on the horizon at the moment, but my ladyfriend Shauna Born has an awesome show opening at Katharine Mulherin’s on August 13th. So people should check that out.

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When are you most productive?

I’m totally useless before 2pm, but I’d say normally I really start getting things done later in the evening sometime between 8pm and 2am.

When did creating art become something important in your life?

I’ve always liked making things, but it didn’t use to consume most of my time the way it does now until grade 12 when I got to spend a couple months at home recovering from an operation. To kill the time I started painting.

What are some of your favorite spots in the city? Some favourite places to go, eat, drink, bike ride?

I just moved, so I’m still discovering my new hood, but for eats you can’t beat 6$ mile high nachos at Mitzi’s Sister on Monday night and to make things better they have Stiegl on tap. I’m also near the water now, which is a pretty nice place to sit and chill, read a book, skateboard, all that good stuff.

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What are you currently obsessed with? Any blogs, pod casts, films, artists?

I don’t know if I’d say I’m a news junkie, but I do tend to cruise around news aggregate sites like the Daily Beast and the Huffington Post for at least a couple hours a day. Other than that I’m also normally reading a couple books, I keep one in my backpack for during the day and one beside my bed for the night. At the moment it’s No god But God in the pack and The Origin of Minds at the bed. No real obsessive theme I guess. In the studio I have my computer beside me and I’m constantly listening to pod casts. Among the tops are This American Life, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and Quirks and Quarks. For films I’ll listen to nearly any documentary while I’m working, and I also like to put on old comedies that I’ve watched about a million times before just to quote the jokes… simple pleasures. Artists… I find new unreal artists nearly every week so my obsession is ever evolving, but Eric Yahnker and Aurel Schmidt are a couple recent ones that I’ve found impressive.

What are your thoughts on the Toronto art scene compared to everywhere else you’ve experienced?

I wish I had lived in and experienced more scenes so I could give some better perspective on this question, but as far as I can tell from visiting other cities around the world I’d say that Toronto has a relatively young or small scene. The size is awesome for creating a sense of community, but at the same time I feel the more Toronto can actively begin to import and export artists, grow and start to integrate its self with the rest of the art world, the better off we’ll be.

What is your survival food? Cheap eats for the starving artist?

Super Kielbasa on Roncesvalles. Three bucks for like 18 perogies and a giant homemade soup for $4.50, that will keep me going for at least three days.

Any last words?

Eat Perogies.

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