My diary quilt is finished! Stay tuned for the reveal and post-mortem in next month’s letter. Today, there are two exciting events I want to share with you:
Studio Sale
Saturday, February 3rd, 2024 from 10am - 5pm
7240 rue Clark, suite 101 (De Castelnau metro), Montreal, QC
Locals, you’re invited to my studio this Saturday! I will be showing the paintings I’ve been working on since the summer. You Betcha Iris zines will also be available. Come check out my studio mates’ wonderful creations (Fancy Little Day, Colenti, Allié.e Underwear) and peruse the vide-dressing (new term for me—you?)
The Sweetest Little Thing
Online bidding opens Wednesday, February 7th, 2024 at 9am AST
In-person event: Wednesday, February 14th, 2024 at 7pm AST
Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, NB
The Owens Art Gallery and Struts Gallery’s 25th annual Valentine’s Day fundraising auction is almost here, featuring artworks donated by local, regional, and national artists. I donated a work from an ongoing series in which I honour the process by painting spreads from my notebooks. Here’s a first look:
Fuel (4 sources of energy)
The Carol Wainio exhibition Réenchantement at 1700 La Poste. I saw The Tortoise and the Hare fable in a new light at this show, and appreciated how children’s drawings and children’s book imagery have been so central to the artist’s work since she had kids. See some of the show and hear Carol speak to her process in this video.
I really enjoyed this behind-the-scenes video, Needle Felting with Alana Morouney, produced by the Owens Art Gallery. Another artist whose work and parenting go hand-in-hand.
The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice by Todd Henry. Considering this book is primarily geared towards creativity in the workplace, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I got out of it. My main takeaway was to remember that you are what your brain eats. Aka decisions about the media and information you consume should largely be made with your creative goals in mind. Looking back, it’s no wonder one of my least-fruitful art periods in recent years coincided with my binge-watching of Suits.
Movies: I finally saw Past Lives and think it may be one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Loved Poor Things. Better than watching Saltburn itself, for me, was listening to its director Emerald Fennell talk about it afterwards. Every interview with her is a masterclass for all artists on how to speak about your work. I recently enjoyed learning about the Daniels’ (Everything Everywhere All At Once) filmmaking process on Marc Maron’s podcast.
“The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy.”
— Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
Paid subscribers, I am sharing with you below an interview that I stumbled upon during my digital decluttering. A Fine Arts student at the Malta College of Arts, Science & Technology, of all places, had reached out to interview me as part of their thesis research. The funny thing is that this was from 2014, and I am still on board with my answers today. It was somewhat comforting to find evidence that despite how much the world and I have changed over the past ten years, the core ideas within the work have not.
Everyone else, thank you for being here. It means a lot to me. Maybe see you at the studio on Saturday.
xx Clara
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