Summer is almost upon us, so we've very pleased to announce "She Must Be Seeing Things: Celebrating Women Filmmakers." Throughout June all of the films will be LGBTQ+ themed to help celebrate Pride Month. July starts with Julie Taymor's Frida (just three days away from the artist's birthday.) All films will be screened at 2:00 […]
Is there such a thing as a pastoral zine? Many zines have aesthetic roots in the Hairy Who, the artists (also known as the Chicago Imagists) whose own publications perfected a proto-punk vocabulary of demented cartoons. Later, Queer Punk zines like JDs invented a whole subculture by stylishly exploiting the gloppy aesthetics of cheap, bad photocopying to […]
Fashion illustration is a meeting place of clothing, costume design, pattern-making, art, drawing, illustration and graphic design. About half of the books in this article are available exclusively at the Toronto Reference Library and cannot be borrowed, but are great resources for fashion illustration. Finding materials on fashion illustration is relatively straightforward. It's under Dewey […]
The previous blog post was about perspective as a means of representing space and dimensions. But perspective is also a word used to denote both individual subjectivity and larger interpersonal issues of identity. Collage is a great medium to address misrepresentations and transforming the imagery that’s already within the mass media can be a means of […]
Every year the Toronto Reference Library hosts classes from OCADU researching aspects of perspective, found imagery and collage. It's a great way to show off some of the resources available through our Picture Collection, as well as some of the books available through the Toronto Reference Library Arts Department. This post is an attempt to […]
This piece was written four years ago on the occasion of Pratt's career retrospective at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. The best comment on her work however comes at the end of her long interview with Mireille Eagan at the bottom of the page. "Yes I like the idea that you look at what is beautiful […]
From July 14th to August 19th, the Aga Khan Museum is hosting an installation by Wafaa Bilal 168:01. The exhibit consists of a ghostly white book shelf filled with blank books with white covers. These empty books are placeholders for items lost from the collections of the College of Fine Arts at the University of […]
June is Pride Month Special events happen throughout the month leading to the 38th annual Pride Festival which runs from June 22 to 24. Toronto Public Library has all sorts LGBTQ programs as well. As I was putting books together, it became clear that the last five years has produced a slew of multi-cultural genderqueer titles. […]
Warm up with these free Czech movies, Monday afternoons, at Toronto Reference Library. Monday, January 8th Vratne Lahve = Empties (2007) Josef, a literature teacher, is pushed into retirement. But instead of a peaceful family life, he chooses a part-time job in a supermarket at the bottle-return counter. The exciting new world that he creates […]
The Arts Department at Toronto Reference Library continues its Monday afternoon screenings of international cinema with a festival of Portuguese and Brazilian films. Think warm thoughts, see the best recent and contemporary titles and then help welcome back the sun with an old classic. Mondays through November to December at 2 pm. All films are […]