What is Practising?
Practising is a newsletter about my art practice. It consists of two main types of posts:
1. Weekly Updates
sent out every Saturday morning to paid subscribers*
brief
heavily visual
process-focused
not exclusively about art; you might also find my running playlists, recipes, decluttering antics, etc., all in the name of a deep interest in exploring, as Barbara Campbell Thomas puts it, “this way in which a practice is fit within the rhythms of a life.”
*NOTAFLOF (no one turned away for lack of funds): If you want to hear from me weekly but a paid subscription is not financially feasible, please send an email to clara.congdon@gmail.com with the subject “Weekly Updates” and I will be more than happy to add you to this subscription tier.
2. Seasonal Updates
sent out the first Sunday of every season to all subscribers
long-form
mix of writing and photo documentation
major project updates
Occasionally, I also send the following to everyone:
previews of new work (first access for paid subscribers)
invitations to exhibitions and events
“Patron” subscribers receive all the same perks as paid subscribers in addition to a physical piece of mail art as a token of my appreciation.
About Clara
Clara Congdon (she/her) is an artist based in Montreal, Canada whose practice includes textiles, drawing, painting, artists’ books, and mail art. She holds a BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
In 2018, Clara exhibited Possessions, a series of body-themed textile works, at Galerie Monastiraki in Montreal, Quebec in a two-person exhibition with Asma A. Khan. Her cloth-based artist book Want to buy some illusions?, inspired by the art of drag and responses to a cryptic Craigslist ad, was included in the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists’ Guild (CBBAG)’s touring exhibition Art of the Book 2018. She recorded the days between her twenty-fifth and thirtieth birthdays through tactile calendars made one square at a time based on different parameters each month. Pieces from the Calendars project have been featured by the Owens Art Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick, Le Livart in Montreal, and Brooklyn Art Library in New York.
Clara was one of twenty artists selected to participate in the first edition of Artch, Montreal’s annual outdoor exhibition of emerging contemporary art, and was invited in 2020 to present an artist talk about her incorporation of textiles with bookmaking as part of the the third edition of Montreal’s art book fair, Volume MTL. She publishes a personal zine called L’oubli using collected imagery from her various processes, as well as a collaborative zine called You Betcha Iris which profiles members of Montreal’s drag community. YBI is stocked by the Ottawa Art Gallery (OAG), Printed Matter Inc. in New York, and Fiend in Melbourne, Australia.
In 2022, Clara participated in the Can Serrat International Contemporary Art Residency in El Bruc, Spain, where she hand-sewed a patchwork curtain for her bedroom window and stitched cloth postcards depicting small human interventions observed throughout the town.
