I recently became aware of two interesting charities in Toronto, both of which use art and artistic practice to encourage people in quite different ways. Interesting, because making art is a great way to get outside of one’s own head and creative expression is an important skill to learn, or re-learn as the case may be.

The first charity is called Art City in St. James Town and provides after school art programs to elementary school children. It acts as a place for kids to be between school time and when their parents come home from work.

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Art makes a great gift. People don’t always realize how inexpensive some books and multiples are, and isn’t it better to support local art scenes than buy from major corporations? I think so.

Here are my top picks for Canada’s best art shopping:

1. ART METROPOLE. Started by General Idea in 1974, Art Met continues to specialize in the sale of artist multiple, artist books, video and more. Much of it is very affordable and rather unusual. Gold-plated replica of Peaches’ teeth on a chain, anyone?

Peaches. Image: robotdancemusic.com

Peaches’ teeth, on a chain. Image: artmetropole.com

Check out the comprehensive website, HERE. It’s fun to browse.

2. CANADIAN MAGAZINES.

Support Magenta, a newish online publication, or buy a subscription to the excellent Vancouver journal Fillip, or to Toronto’s artist-run magazine Hunter & Cook.

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From London, UK: A charity called Art of Giving is launching their National Art Competition in October 2010.

The Saatchi Gallery, London. Image: piclondon.co.uk

It’s an open competition for artists working in painting, drawing, sculpture and photography. Ten finalists in each category will be given the opportunity to exhibit their work at London’s Saatchi Gallery on October 7 – 9. How many categories? It’s unclear, but you can read more HERE and apply HERE.

The winners receive a cash reward, and lots of publicity, which in the U.K, means something.

Paintings on view at the Saatchi Gallery. Image:contemporaryartlinks.com

Artists are invited to submit up to five works of art. It costs 20 Pounds per work, which is $30, which is not bad for the incredible exposure that your work could receive. And Art of Giving will be donating a minimum of 10% of the proceeds from the competition entry fees to the Red Cross Disaster Fund.

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Toronto artist Micah Lexier is everywhere these days.

A view of Micah Lexier’s installation I Am the Coin, at BMO in Toronto.  Image: iamthecoin.com

Not only did he have new work in a recent show at his Toronto dealer, Birch Libralato, he has a just-opened year-long installation at the Bank of Montreal’s Project Room titled I am the Coin – click HERE to check it out – along with several upcoming collaborations.

-Twelve of One: A Series of Twelve Consecutive Vitrine Displays is on view at Art Metropole, and will change each month over the course of one year. Click HERE for more info.

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What is it about the increasingly popular art that brings together illustration, graphic design, graffiti and cartoons? It’s a huge trend that you might say was begun, in its most recent form, by the American painter Philip Guston in the 1970s, when he abruptly dropped Abstract Expressionism for his own style that he’s now most famous for.

Philip Guston, Story, 1978. Image: artnet.com

Marc Bell, Spore Spredder. Image: comicsreporter.com

Guston made the change because he was looking for an art with more meaning. Speaking of his feelings in the late 1960s when America was at war, he said “I was feeling split, schizophrenic. (I thought) what kind of man am 1, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything – and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue. [..] I wanted to be complete again, as I was when I was a kid…. Wanted to be whole between what I thought and what I felt.”

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Just found this on Luxist.com:

Louis Vuitton’s new book: Art, Fashion and Architecture. Image: luxist.com

“A seductive anthology of the famed French fashion house’s collaborations with an international group of elite artists, architects, designers, and photographers, including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, David LaChapelle, Annie Leibovitz, Takashi Murakami (whose updated LV monogram is featured on the cover) Richard Prince and Stephen Sprouse.”

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Alberta is seeing a lot of cultural action these days.

There’s Santiago Calatrava’s controversial bridge, Lethbridge’s own (and VoCA favorite) David Hoffos with a large retrospective coming up this fall at the National Gallery of Canada, and Nigerian artist El Anatsui giving a talk tomorrow at the Glenbow Museum, courtesy of the Canadian Art Foundation, to name just a few things going on.

Burtynsky’s new book. Image: rsvppost.com

Not to mention the Art Gallery of Alberta, which is currently under construction and set to open in early 2010 with Edward Burtynsky: Oil.

From October 9 – December 12, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design launches 2 exhibitions by an American and an Irish artist, that explore the issues associated with the idea of the North and related ideas of the West.

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Superstar art dealer Larry Gagosian is certainly tapped into the zeitgeist, with his high-profile stable of artists, mini-empire (New York, Beverly Hills, London, Rome, Hong Kong, Athens) and recently, with his new shop that sells multiples by big-name artists in New York. The shop is new for a dealer, but not so new for the art world. It began with Claes Oldenburg’s art project The Store from 1961, and more recently, when Takashi Murakami began collaborating on Louis Vuitton-emblazoned merch, (and then opened a shop with his show at the LA MOCA.)

It’s clear that art has met fashion, and fallen in love.

The Gagosian Shop at 988 Madison Avenue. Image: selectism.com

As author Don Thompson makes evident in his observations from inside the international art world in his book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art (a reference to Damien Hirst’s shark preserved in formeldahyde), art has become about brands. And almost no one brands more successfully than Hirst and Gagosian.

It was probably inevitable, but it seems a shame that art has been reduced to branding. When the focus is on the brand, it takes away from the value of the art.

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Peut Mieux Faire
September 4 – 9 October, 2009
Atelier Punkt, Montreal

There’s a new exhibition opening on September 4 at Atelier Punkt, the year-old space that appears to be one of Montreal’s coolest art and design spaces.

Founded by artist Melinda Pap, Punkt is effectively an artist-run centre that dedicates itself to exhibitions of work by young designers, photographers, illustrators and architects from “Montreal and the world.”

Peut Mieux Faire features work by artists, performers, graphic designers, stylists, make up artists, ceramicists, jewelers, architects, authors-composers-interpreters…each of whom have been given by Emmanuel Galland (the curator ‘professor’), a classic Canada Hilroy exercise book as a ‘canvas’.

Participating artists include Suzanne Dery, Justin Stephens, Jerome Fortin and Daniel Olsen, among many others.

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BAILOUT: The 2008 Members’ Exhibition & Sale
Mercer Union Centre for Contemporary Art, Toronto
9 – 18 December, 2008

Sale: Thursday, December 18, 8 pm

Mercer Union’s “stimulus package to put the US bailout to shame” includes drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures and multiples all priced at $149.99 from hot Canadian artists including several VoCA favorites:

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