Some interesting visitors!

The Exhibition Curator............

Studio Assistant?

The diabolical MR. V

Yes, it's kitsch time.......

The installation started October 25..... here is a video

How a Phototype is made...... (click on the blue "Phototype")

Latest Prints....

Complete Service, Phototype on Kitakata, 46 by 36 cm, 2011. This still life incorporates an album by Anita Bryant called "Abiding Love" along with a great corn-on-the-cob serving set (in the original display box) that I found at a Thrift Shop. The figurine conversation started off with a kicking-kid offering the demure Virgin Mary a swig of milk. Beside Mary is a most phallic cactus and lurking overhead is a double-image of a sporty dog, complete with tartan top-hat!

Baby Album, Phototype on Kitakata, 50 by 44 cm, 2011. I seem to have a plethora of adorable lamb figurines, which is not surprising since lambs so perfectly symbolize the joyous innocence that a new birth brings, and I am certain they were popular sellers during the post war baby-boom. Along with my cutesy lambs we have a peach shaped cookie jar (which really just looks like a bum) and the quintessential cluster of grapes - that for centuries have adorned so many still lifes. My grapes, however, are made of a wondrous rubbery plastic. Surrounding this assemblage is several cameras (equally wondrously plastic) that also became a symbol of the optimistic 50's. Topping it all off, is one of my favourite anthropomorphized objects within my collection, the lady buy salt-and-pepper shaker! What were they thinking? "I know, lets turn a lady bug into a human, giver her heart shaped pupils, long eye lashes and a crown-like head wrap.... but wait, we will turn them into salt-and-peper shakers just to make them useful."

Curator and Catalogue Author

Amazing news, we have managed a major coup - Denis Longchamps PhD has agreed to be the exhibition curator and catalogue author. The Montreal-based educator/curator brings his expertise in historic ceramics along with his knowledge of the genre known as "still-life" to this project. The installation at upART (Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, Canada) will be presented by Frances Thomas Art Projects but Denis has agreed to work with Frances and I to curate the collection and has written an insightful essay that places my work in context both historically as well as aesthetically.

Here is a sample of the copy: "Guilty pleasures are those little moments, or things, in life that one engages with or finds pleasurable, and at the same time can be layered with guilt. When it is an action, one tends to keep it secret—like eating ice cream while claiming to be on a diet—and when it involves an object, one hides it from view. What some may regard as kitsch might well be another person’s treasure, and therefore underlines questions of taste, and thus aesthetics. Timothy Laurin collects made-in-Japan kitsch ceramics from the 1950s and 1960s. He is cautiously fascinated by these figurines, whether it is a poodle or a little lamb, to which the manufacturer has added oversized human-like eyes trimmed by long eyelashes."

Want to read more....... then come to the exhibition (Oct 27 to Oct 30) and pick up your copy of the catalogue - It's amazing!

Denis received his PhD in art history from Concordia University in 2009 and was a research fellow at the Yale Center for British Art in 2010. An independent writer and curator, he has contributed essays, articles and reviews to magazines and journals. He is the publisher and managing editor of Cahiers métiers d’art : Craft Journal.