Hi Everybody,

The Box invites you to an evening of fiction, music, performance and film by: Austin Clarke, Ariel Garten, Luis Jacob, Warren Kinsella, Laurel MacDonald, Maggie MacDonald, Tasman Richardson and Fiona Smyth. We hope to see you there. Please forward to your friends who you think may be interested in this evening.

8 pm
Wednesday, February 22
Rivoli, 332 Queen W. (Back Room)
pwyc, $5 suggested donation

Host: Louise Bak

416-351-0416 (tel)

The Box is a quarterly salon night of readings, performances, screenings, interventions and networking that aims to bring diverse artistic communities and audiences into an environment of artistic and social intermingling.

Austin Clarke is the winner of the 1999 W.O. Mitchell Prize, awarded each year to a Canadian writer who has produced an outstanding body of work and served as a caring mentor for other writers. Since 1964 Austin Clarke has published nine novels and five short-story collections in the United States, England and Canada. He is the winner of the Commonwealth Prize, Giller Prize and the Trillium Book Award for his novel, The Polished Hoe. His most recent book is Love and Sweet Food, a culinary memoir.

Ariel Garten holds a neuroscience degree from the University of Toronto, as well being an artist and former clothing designer. On the scientific front, she has studied in vivo neurodegeneration of dopaminergic cells in Parkinsons Models at the Toronto Western Research Institute, and on the artistic front she has exhibited her design work from the Banff Center for the Arts to the Art Gallery of Ontario, to her College St boutique, Flavour Hall. Her projects frequently bridge art and neuroscience, such as creating concerts in which participants brain waves, as read by EEG, modulate performers musical output. She has been recognized for her fashion that bridges art and science, such as shirts sporting ones brain waves or growing fungal colonies, in dozens of print media and television features.

Luis Jacob is an artist and writer living in Toronto. Recent solo exhibitions of his work include Habitat, Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Ontario); Flashlight, Toronto Sculpture Garden (Toronto, Ontario); Open Your Mouth and Your Mind Will Follow, which travelled to Articule, (Montreal, Quebec), Artspace Gallery(Peterborough, Ontario), AKA Gallery (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), The New Gallery (Calgary, Alberta); and Towards a Theory, Het Wilde Weten (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). Luis Jacob is represented by Birch Libralato, Toronto.

Warren Kinsella has been called „the Liberal Party‚s resident pit bull (Canoe), as one of the country‚s most controversial and outspoken political commentators and consultants. He is also a lawyer and newspaper and magazine columnist. He is the author of Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics, the best-selling Web of Hate and the recent Fury‚s Hour: A (Sort-Of) Punk Manifesto. He lives in Toronto with his wife and his four children, still plays in a punk band and has a dog named after a Ramones song.

Laurel MacDonald‚s voice and compositions have appeared in many dance, theatre, film, and television productions, and she has released three solo CDS: Kiss Closed My Eyes (1995), Chroma (1999), and Luscinia‚s Lullaby (2005). Laurel recently completed work as sound designer and musical director for the production of No Great Mischief for the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa, and as composer for the production of This Castle for Moonhorse Dance Theatre in Toronto. In 2003, she and partner Philip Strong received a Gemini Award for their score for the dance film The Year of the Lion, and her latest C Luscinia‚s Lullaby was chosen as the #1 Essential Echoes CD of 2005 by the Public Radio Internatonal radio program Echoes, heard across the US.

Maggie MacDonald is the author of the novel 'Kill the Robot' (McGilligan Books) and currently serves as Writer in Residence at Hart House at the University of Toronto. Her rock musical, The Rat King, was performed in Toronto in January, and she is currently working on a graphic novel of the story. Maggie is also a member of the bands The Republic of Safety and The Hidden Cameras. For information see: http://www.mcgilliganbooks.com

Tasman Richardson is a videomaker, electronic composer, designer, curator, and organizer. He is not a vj. Over the past 10 years he has exhibited or performed in Argentina, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Egypt, England, France, Finland, Holland, Iceland, Peru, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and The United States. His work focuses on the spectacle of the tele-visionary existence, video as language, and the re-unification of sound and image. He has performed and collaborated under the aliases M.O.I., JAWA, Pox, FAMEFAME, theblameshifter, IBM, OHVOV, Anvil, Polygon Noose, and Noise-Op. He currently lives near a bar in Toronto, Canada. His artworks are available through Vtape, Artcore, Art Metropole, Microcinema International, Ant-zen, and FAMEFAME.

Fiona Smyth is a Toronto based artist exploring popular and alternative cultural icons and imagery. Smyth's work always probes these timely societal, sometimes intense and always relevant topics with a sense of humour, wonder and catastrophic consequence. She also employs surrealist, abstractionist, spiritual, feminist and pro-sexual strategies to achieve her unique aesthetic. Her use of media also reflects this range of interest by using different formats from which to engage her audience including illustration, painting, animation, music covers, web-based art and her fabulous murals. Smyth has exhibited in Taichung /Taiwan, Venice/ Lido, Jeollabuk-Do/ South Korea, New York City, Winnipeg and most recently The Chimera's Daughters at SPIN Gallery in Toronto. http://www.fionasmyth.com

+ DOOR PRIZES

Healing landscape paintings in hospital recovery rooms

Given that:

• Health care costs and hospital bed spaces are an issue

• There are a lot of folks who get pleasure from amateur landscape painting

• In Edmund Wilson’s book The Future of Life, there’s a throwaway bit about landscapes. People in hospital recovery rooms with the right kind of view out the window, or barring that the right sort of landscape painting on the wall, heal an astonishing six times faster than other patients. The requirements are specific:

The view should be as if from a gentle hill. There should be trees around, but an unimpeded view down over the landscape. There should be a lake or gentle river below. It should be sunny but with some clouds. The time of day should be @ 10-11 am or @ 4-5 pm (i.e. not dark and not blazing noon). It should be spring or summer.

(I’ve done this from memory but interested parties could look it up.)

This is what we find peaceful and healing – Wilson says because that’s what we would have liked as hunter-gatherers – fertile, water, promising weather, possibilities of plants and animals, good view so we would not be surprised by predators.

Therefore:

Why not put hospitals and amateur landscape painters together in a project that would supply healing paintings to the hospitals? (No toxic paints of course.) Fun and helpfulness for the painters, and if Wilson is right, reduced costs for the hospitals.

Painting by Claude Lorraine

Sanskrit term Ka'ma (kah'-mah') n. means wish, desire, enjoyment or love and embraces any form of enjoyment experienced through the senses--the scent of a lily, the sound of your favorite melody, and the awakening of new worlds through reading. So why not take your valentine to the 14th annual Kama Reading Series 2006 presented by World Literacy of Canada a 6 night venue of literary programming, wine and hors d'oeuvres. The Toronto Tribute on February 15th featuring poet Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, playwright Deanne Taylor, architect Eb Zeidler and designer Bruce Mau, each discussing what the city means to them list. All proceeds support World literacy of Canada's literacy and community development programs in Canada and overseas. The event is hosted at the Royal Ontario Museum and doors open at 6:30pm. The event began in January with a wine reception and will close in June with special author book signings, tickets may be purchased individually [$40.00] or as a series ticket package [$200.00]. So make it snappy, last year the sold out venue and left a hundred people on a waiting list.

The ultimate winner of Mississauga’s Absolute condominium design competition must be an international icon, insist clients Fernbrook Homes and Cityzen Developments. The six semifinalists selected last week suggest that they will get their wish.

The Toronto region’s recent condominium boom is driving a demand for high-design not seen for two generations. Good design is, however, more than stylishly iconic buildings. To be successful in the long term, quality buildings - especially residences – have to be as functional as they are beautiful.

Toronto’s modernist epoch of the 50s and 60s gave the city many of its most ambitious, stylish, and successful buildings.

The best architecture of this era incorporates rich materials, complex spatial forms, and a deep concern for the way occupants live – all hallmarks of modernity. Those lucky enough to inhabit these buildings appreciate amenities not found in architecture that is more prosaic and less considered. In many ways, the design of these buildings represents a heroic belief that good architecture is an essential part of living well.

Older modernist inspired apartments and condominiums dot Toronto’s landscape. Peter Dickinson’s One Benvenuto Place, for example, accents the crest of Avenue Road. Built in 1955, it is aging well. In fact, design elements used here find new life in the latest generation of the city’s modernism influenced condominiums.

Toronto’s current condo boom is turning out to be a modernist renaissance, especially in the city’s urban core. Today’s style-conscious condominium buyers have rediscovered that the architecture they inhabit can either enhance or diminish the quality of their lives.

A small, local company is adding well-considered, innovative projects to Toronto’s growing pool of modernist inspired buildings. Founded in 1998 by Howard Cohen and Stephen Gross, Context Development’s mission to offer the condominium market well designed, modern architecture has proven to be a timely strategy. The company’s portfolio of successful condominiums includes 20 Niagara, Ideal Lofts, District Lofts, Tip Top Lofts and Radio City.

Context’s first project (with partner Lloyd Alter) was a modest six-storey building at 20 Niagara Street just off Bathurst Street near Front. Designed by Wallman, Clewes, Bergman (now Architects Alliance), this condominium project captured the design community’s attention when finished in 1998. Defining the edge of a small downtown park, the building’s formal elements and unit arrangement reflect its modernist heritage.

For example, the architect’s use of east west through units allows for energy saving cross-ventilation. Large, east facing windows and smaller windows on the west wall bring light deep into the building. Both these architectural devices are integral to the modern movement’s concern for the quality of life of its occupants. Each unit allows for interior customization, something that most of its design savvy occupants preferred. Other amenities include views towards the city’s core that are among the best in the city.

What makes this building truly exceptional is that it takes a typical Toronto form and deftly re-imagines it for the site’s context and required density. As a result, this building is one of the city’s architectural gems. (...read more...)