Today was the final opening of the Open Spaces Gallery in Toronto until next fall, September 2011. I was expecting to present a local painter Oluwatosin Sanni but the weather called for thunder and rain and we both decided to delay his exhibition until next fall to prevent from damaging his paintings.
So I had to come up with a plan, a creative way to use the space. What was I going to do? I have started playing with a new experiment where I sit on a house doorstep and use that time to doodle, colour and write randomly into my sketchbook inspired by that doorstep. When I feel complete or finished I put the drawing into an unsealed envelope that has my address on it, place the envelope into their mailbox. The envelope explains that I drew this on their doorstep and they can reply if they wish. It is fun for me but also a recreation of a pen pal, or art sharing and way to include the viewer in a part of the process of generating ideas, is totally open for interpretation, and plays with the artists role of parting with their ideas, artwork, moments of freedom and sharing them with others.
So I decided to run with this experiment in the Open Spaces Gallery today. I did two drawings in the hour, they included text from thoughts that ran across my mind as I drew or words from uncontextualized conversations which I heard while people were walking by and then I placed these words into my drawings. Each drawing was put into an individual envelope marked with my name and address. On the front of one of the the envelopes is written "I drew this on the street today" and the other envelope is written "I left this here for you to find" and as a parting gift from the gallery, to leave my presence and I think to benefit the performance, I left the envelopes on the sidewalk with the hopes that someone may find the curiosity to pick one up and respond. I will see if anyone is up for some fun. I like these projects that have no rules, they have my own expectations but come with other people's interpretations which help me further develop my concepts.
Since today was the final opening of the gallery for some time, I was torn about what to do with the territorial marker, the baby carriage Iroquois Confederacy Flag and beaded fabric that sits draped upon the flag. These have really come to identify the gallery's presence and existence on Wednesdays. I have kept the beaded fabric to bring with me to Vancouver and perhaps use as a surface, blanket to continue manipulating but also to host the gallery on and mark my chosen parking space. However, the baby carriage Iroquois Confederacy Flag is now apart of the ephemeral genre of art. I pushed it down to Union Station, and got a lot of strange glares in the process of pushing a broken baby carriage with no baby. I decided to treat it as a real monument or flag. Outside of Union Station there is a large monument to multiculturalism depicting a human figure raising a spherical globe kind of thing with birds flying overhead. I thought a monument to multiculturalism? Wow, what a perfect place to leave the Iroquois Confederacy Flag, left as a monument for the rest of the day probably, but it would be great if the baby stroller has been adopted as an important part of Toronto public art. Again, the Open Spaces Gallery led to a creative day for me.
Future plans for Open Spaces Gallery are; open a related project in Vancouver over the summer months, continue documenting the projects process, use the summer months to develop a strong base of upcoming performances in the fall of 2011 when the Open Spaces Gallery will reopen in Toronto and hopefully be an essential part of the Colloquium of Aboriginal Visual Culture that happens in October. Still work to do, but that is a good thing.
