MONARCHIE | New Works by Virgil Baruchel Opening Tomorrow

We’ve followed Virgil Baruchel from drawing on napkins to drawing on paper, painting on paper to scratching layers of oil stick off canvasses to globbing paint on carpet padding, and from hauling wood and metal from the streets to hand-building beautiful, reclaimed furniture. We’ve followed him from Toronto to Paris to New York, and we’re really, very happy to have him back here again. And we’re really, very excited to see what he’s come up with now.

Virgil has shown his work with us and supported About Face since our very first show. We wouldn't miss his Toronto solo show opening, tomorrow at Stussy Toronto, 1000 Queen St W (at Ossington), and you shouldn't either!

Facebook event here.

See more of Virgil's work here.

Mutts & Co. Variety Store Ft. All Your Local Faves, On Today through Sunday!

If you follow our happenings on the reg, you've most certainly heard us profess our love for the crew at Toronto-based clothing line, Muttonhead. Not only do they produce their goods right here in the city, using sustainable materials, but they also have a real knack for bringing together the best of local goodness from other creative Canadians.

This week the Mutts prove this yet again with what might be the best and most diverse Muttonhead pop-up shop yet, the Mutts & Co. Variety Store. Parked at Paramour at 94 Ossington (between Queen & Dundas) Paige and crew have curated an awesome little market full of local, reclaimed and fair trade food stuffs, housewares, accessories, magazines, art and, of course, clothing.

Display at Mutts & Co. ft. Stasis Preserves and TwoRibka wooden utensils

Custom 'Real-cycled' wood shelving by Jamie Miller,
upcycled glassware by Artech Studios and Lauren Pirie print

Muttonhead's latest line, designed by Meg Sinclair, is for sale alongside more than ten other local labels and scores like Dumptown's Worm Condos, the side project of the other half of Muttonhead, graphic designer Mel Sinclair.

And we'll be there too! Our pals from Reunion Island Coffee have generously supplied the beans (yet again) for iced americanos, proceeds from which will go toward the Everything Roof. We'll be whipping them up through the weekend. I've been practicing, and I must say, I'm getting good.... and pretty wired, as made obvious by the sign below, made after a couple tester coffees.

Everything Roof illustrated prints will also be sold to benefit the project. Other prints and cards from AFC co-founder, Lauren Pirie will be available as well as prints from AFC supporting artists Kathryn Macnaughton and Talia Shipman, records from the amazing Shad and a back room photo gallery featuring the work of Matthew Crisp and Beau Partlow. 


Okay, enough of the caffeine induced yammering, just come by between now and Sunday. There's even more to see (and taste) there, including (if anyone is down for MORE coffee) Sam James coffee-infused ice cream bars created by Brandon Olsen of Black Hoof (!!!).


Or if you prefer some gin-induced yammering (and shopping!) swing by the launch party on Thursday evening. 


See you there!

$10K On The Internet and $5 On The Wall | Thank You!

 

We did it! With the deadline for our IndieGoGo campaign on the horizon, our friends and family and community supporters, YOU collectively pushed us across the finish line. Yesterday, Facebook and Twitter erupted with support for the project and support rolled in; over $1500 of it in the last two days of our campaign! For this we can only say:

THANK YOU!

This community support will bring us one big step closer to matching granted funds and getting this garden a rollin'! We do still have more work to do, and you can still contribute—and get great perks like art and coffee and organic produce—until midnight tonight! We're still working away on grants and other fundraising initiatives and we can use all the support we can get.

Mike Layton, AFC's Natalie Boustead, CSI's Tonya Surman and Lauren Pirie (excited!) in front of the Everything Roof's wall of 5s!

And so much support we did get from our amazing community right at the home of the Everything Roof: the Centre for Social Innovation, Annex on Tuesday. Even before the Great Lakes Brewery beers were cracked, you could feel the love for the project in the Annex Lounge... and see it on the wall! Throughout the day, CSI and other community members flowed through—including ever-supportive Councillor Mike Layton—and taped five dollar bills on a projection of the Everything Roof drawing on the wall. By the end of the day, the contributions totaled $700!

And today, we got some extra love on the internet from our friends at Pure Green Magazine. Their new issue is focused on the urban farm, and to coincide, an interview with About Face on the Everything Roof is featured on their blog. Check it out here. And keep watching this space, our Facebook and Twitter for volunteer opportunities, upcoming events, news and more!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

All the best EVERYTHING,
The About Face Collective

Everything Roof Video and Campaign Launch

So, apparently it's Wednesday. Yesterday—that would make yesterday Tuesday, yes?—I ran around the Centre For Social Innovation hunting for speaker cables and coordinating the signing of signatures and re-re-revising grants...

I ran into one of the lovely animators (almost literally) who asked me how everything was going. She smiled and watched me sweat for a minute while I pushed the corners of my mouth up in attempts to form some similar sort of face and mused: it was going great, but dang, it had been a crazy week!

"It's Tuesday," she said.

So it was. And it was a SERIOUS Tuesday. I don't know what that means, but it was quite a day. CAPS, italics, you get it. We arrived at CSI before nine a.m. (I rarely have pants on at this hour) to prepare for the lunchtime launch of our long-awaited Everything Roof video (!!!), directed by our hero, Josh Raskin and made in part by our heroes, everyone we know.

To coincide, in the afternoon, we also launched our online video and fundraising campaign on Indiegogo and Vimeo. We also managed to get our grant application hand-delivered to the Evergreen offices—and even wandered around the Brickworks in sunny relief afterward; see photos below. In between all of this I attended a couple of meetings and inhaled an amazing vegan, gluten-free pizza from the CSI farmers' market (seriously amazing. Go to there).

Anyway, I know you're dyyying to hear what I did with the rest of my day (I hit refresh on webpages to watch numbers go up) but without any further adieu (or brackets or run-on sentences) HERE is the video! Almost 1000 people have seen it in its first day up. If each of those people were to donate just $10, we would already be able to reach our campaign goal!

Please visit our Indiegogo campaign page by clicking here and donate if you can. Any amount helps!

Help us spread the word! Blog, Tweet, Facebook, ICQ, whatev!

We like you.

Love, The About Facers

We hope that Evergreen loves us as much as we love them. If you have yet to visit Evergreen Brickworks, go now. It's an amazing wonderland of all good things for Earth and people. A few enticing photos below.

Electric car charging outside Evergreen Brickworks

The kilns. There's art in them!

We couldn't have said it better

here

Last Chance to Submit to Bike Photo Exhibit

illustration by Lauren Pirie

The Toronto Cyclists Union is hosting a photography exhibit at the Centre For Social Innovation, Annex on Thursday, February 2nd. The open call for submissions closes tomorrow, so time to hustle! We know all you photog friends of ours have some lovely shots of so-and-so pedaling through the park last Summer (remember Summer??). So do a little digging and drop them off tomorrow at the front desk at CSI. Or dig a little less and pull out a Fall or Winter biking shot; the theme of the show is The Four Seasons of Cycling, which means you could also submit a cycling-focused shot taken in the Spring. And remind us all that it will eventually come around again...

365 Days of Cycling: An Evening of Art and Cycling.

Submission details here.

Facebook event here.

Jan 25: UPDATE!
Digital submissions will be accepted through Friday. ALSO, 100% of the selling price of any work sold goes directly to the artist. Wooh! Check the detes here.

Water | Bottles in my basket | Belated Nuit Blanche Bike Ride Reports

Oh water, water. In a country where we are so fortunate to have you flowing freely from our taps, isn’t it funny that we opt to pay more than we would for say… a cupcake to drink you out of a bottle? (Or if you prefer the square, flower-laden variety, opt to pay close to the equivalent of a modest sandwich) A plastic bottle, no less, which may be leaching potential carcinogens into you (and, well, therefore into you, yes you out there). A bottle made of non-renewable resources that once empty, will go on to litter our land and waterways, or be lovingly placed into my bicycle basket (there must be something about my “vintage” [read: broken] brown bike that says “this girl’s a willing hippie who will redeem your laziness and ensure that your recyclables make their way to the nearest receptacle”). Or in the best-case scenario, be shoved into the frequently overflowing Toronto recycle bins (perhaps this explains the apparent need to resort to the bicycle basket) and maybe go on to be recycled through a pollution creating, energy consumptive process. Silly, right?

Right. But, allow me to digress momentarily from the bottle banter while I acknowledge some contaminants that we Torontonians do face chances of encountering in our tap water. The ever-controversial fluoride is being thoroughly tackled by our friends over at Regenesis www.voteoutfluoride.com while the not-even-controversial-just-bad lead continues to infiltrate, especially in Toronto’s older neighbourhoods and buildings - the ones we at About Face are looking to inhabit (Visit Toronto's page on Lead in drinking water. We recommend following steps 4 & 5 whether or not you are pregnant or breastfeeding). It wasn’t sooo long ago that lead could be found in, well, pretty much everything; toys, household items, pipes… hmmm, kinda like plastic. You wouldn’t pay sandwich-equivalent prices to drink out of a lead cup, right? Just sayin.

But, we’ve all done it. Culprits of our love-affair with convenience. At least we’ve seen one good thing come of water bottles lately. Okay, I’m a little late reporting on this, but I’ve been busy (all that pouring of filtered water into reusable bottles takes time, you know). Chances are you either saw this first-hand last weekend at Nuit Blanche or in one of the many articles on Alexandra (Alita) González before and since anyhow. Her Trinity Bells installation made me happy with nostalgia for my 80s child affinity toward the glowing nubs (of plastic) that made for endless hours of entertainment with lite-brite creations.

And of course I offer a big high-five to Alexandra for the attempt to address the pollution and BPA issues with plastic bottles. How, though, does letting big kids move oversized rainbow coloured bottle-pegs around to create giant collaborative lite (sticking with the alternative spelling) images evoke health and environmental concerns? If you didn’t get it by playing, hopefully the visual and interactive success of González’s work inspired you to research further. And, well, I suppose you’re reading about it here.

More belated Nuit Blanche commentary tomorrow. Pour maintenant, bon nuit.

-Lauren