art-action

Signal & Noise 2009

Meet me at VIVO's  Signal & Noise tonight!
http://www.signalandnoise.ca/

NEW YORK and then CALGARY's Glenbow Museum

Last week I put Garden Gnomad on the road: that is, I took it on a garden visit to meet Ruth Tschannen at Cascadia Garden, and I set it up at the Mount Pleasant Community Centre's Earth Day event. Both trips seemed very successful to me. The gardeners were inspiring and the weather was completely suitable for the machine and its work.

The Earth Day at the Mt. Pleasant CC was a quiet event with a few local gardeners coming by to gather up plants and information about gardening. Madame Beespeaker and I hung out at the dry wading pool where she was getting the kids to do some eco-play. They made lovely dandelion honeycomb on the pavement and under water drawings inside of the pool. I had Garden Gnomad make some pretty awesome photo-postcards of kids and families in the honeycomb with randomly generated Vancouver area gardens in the background.

Garden Gnomad is a little slow, but it works! After a few minutes of playing with the computer and flash drive, a picture postcard does come out. The delay is good for conversation! I was pretty inspired to hear about how a number of gardeners are using their allotments (including a traffic round about - called an 'island' by the gardener!) to grow herbs for salves and soaps. A young couple told me that they will be gardening their sister's garden this year as a memorial after her recent death. Everyone is eager to have GG show up for a visit and to document their efforts and pleasures. I can't wait.

But I have to wait, because soon I will leave for an 8 day trip to NY. There I will check out Laura Silver's Soft Core NYC and Wagner's Ring Cycle and Printed Matter and Exit Art and many great art museums and who knows what else.

After the NY trip, I will be in Calgary as an artist in residence at the Glenbow Museum to offer Comforter Art-Action at the Sew City events. It will include a sewing circle at the Canada Social Forum, a panel on arts and social action, sewing circles inside the museum, and a growing installation of comforters inside the museum lobby. I will blog more about that as the time nears. For now, if you are in the Calgary area during May 20-24, please consider participating in a sewing circle -- or bring a blanket to add to the growing stack in the lobby of the Glenbow! Please spread the word!

Download Sew City email

Garden Gnomad in Action

The tools... machinery... that will travel with me through a summer of conversation with gardeners is finally road-worthy. Garden Gnomad is a mobile,  solar-powered documentation implement that records isolated features from community gardens and innovative sites of urban agriculture. On site, it produces lovely postcards that are randomly generated images from gardens in the region. Gardeners can take the photos to send to far away friends/family or leave them for other people encountered en route. Some postcards feature questions or 'unknown's'. Gardeners can look through those postcards and mail answers back to the gardeners who generated the inquiry.

Mostly Garden Gnomad is an invitation to have a conversation in the garden about growing food, trees, pollination habitats and more in the city, in 2009. 

The photo-postcards are stored here:
Garden Gnomad Postcard album

Photos of Garden Gnomad in action at the Means of Production Community Garden and other sites are here:
Garden Gnomad in Action album

EVENTS:
Saturday, April 18 (1-3pm) - Garden Gnomad will be at the Earth Day Celebration at the Mount Pleasant Community Centre (16th & Ontario, Vancouver, BC) as part of the MOPARRC meet & greet. Mt Pleasant CC is one of the supporters of MOPARRC Events & Activities. Lori Weidenhammer as Madame Beespeaker will be there eco-tagging the site from 11-2. Sharon Kallis, another MOPARRC artist will be at the Means of Production Community Garden (6th & St Catherines) hosting a garden work party.

Sunday, April 26 (1-4pm) - Earth Day Artists Tea Party at Means of Production Community Garden. This is the first of three public celebrations resulting from three artists in residence at MOP. On-site performances from a number of local performers combine with garden-brew teas and other goodies.

Keet tract of MOPARRC events here .

Saturday, May 9 (12-5) - Garden Gnomad will be at the Stone Soup Festival at Britannia Centre (Napier & Commercial) where issues of urban agriculture is combined with artworks of all kinds.

At all of these events, I am hoping to pick up some dates for visits to gardens and farms... and give away a lot of gorgeous garden postcards!

LFP Store Closure & Gallery Opening

Unfortunately I had to take the Light Factory Publications Pay Pal Store (Widget) off of this site. Though cute, it was a beta site full of bugs and it finally became impossible to work with from the back end. Good Bye store... 

Instead, please step into the new gallery that you will find in the photo albums section in the right column of this page or here. On the first page of the LFP Gallery album, you will read this description of what Light Factory Publications has become:

Light Factory Publications is an itinerant production house that swings into action whenever the need for some swell, small edition multiples emerges. In its selection criteria it privileges projects that make obvious their reliance on collaborations or distribution between individuals over coffee or drinks. LFP relies on the handwork of anyone who needs a lesson or practice in book arts like binding and small publications.

With the help of those who exchange their hand work for binding lessons, Lois Klassen is LFP's editor, designer, publisher and distributor. From 1991-2001 Klassen participated in the Eternal Network (mail art) where she developed a keen interest in easily disseminated publications and collaborations across great geographical and cultural distances. In 1998 she hosted The Renegade Library: Collaborative Mail Art in Book Form at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba (Brandon, MB Canada). Renegade Library archived in a open public display some 570 book-like items that had been created by at least 730 individuals from 37 countries.

Enjoy the gallery and contact LFP if you would like us to send out some of the inventory.

Light Factory Publications
Box 74540
Vancouver, BC Canada
V6K 4P4
loiszing[at]telus.net