Candahar

Although I had arrived just after the opening hour, the din of the crowd had already filled the dark entrance to the pub and echoed out into ACAD's concrete corners. Not ready for the bar atmosphere I wandered through the adjacent gallery where I caught my first sight of Theo Sims' project from the back. Like watching a play from the wings, or stumbling across a movie set on a stroll through the city, this view collapsed the illusion before it had a chance to suspend disbelief. About an hour later, after settling into the relational drift of the evening, this backstage area would function more like a breaking of the fourth wall.

When I finally made my way into low-light interior of the pub, I learned that The Candahar, the title of the work painted on the mirror behind the bar, referred to the street where Sims lived in southern Belfast, a rough-living stretch of the city. The swinging wooden door in the back served as a threshold of fiction. A step through this door and the veneer of reality from the interior fell away. From behind you could spot the dvd player high-up on a shelf with a wire leading in through a small hole to the tv inside, where it played television recorded in Belfast for the swarms in the bar.

The crowd was made up of mostly Calgarian locals, and instead of Guinness, the taps poured a local sponsor, Big Rock brewery. The bartender, Brian Flynn, had an austere manner (and beautiful white hair) that suited the bar. Having never been to Ireland I can't attest to the neighborhood style bar's authenticity, and I'm not sure a formal analysis has much to offer us here. The Candahar is a transformation of a space-for-objects (the gallery) into a space for social activity (the pub). The "public house" has a long tradition as a social space where politics are contested, stories are told and the aura of community is established – all with the help of alcohol. (wikipedia says: "In many places, especially in villages, a pub can be the focal point of the community, playing a similar role to the local church in this respect.") Whether or not Sims intends to reignite this history, with two dollar pints and dollar ham sandwiches, we can safely assume that a profit is not his motive.

As the opening hours came to conclusion, a few people, including myself, were reluctant to leave. Earlier in the night a rumor had circulated that there might be whiskey after-hours and several people stayed on after the doors had closed... we carried on until Sims pushed us out using a broom like a plow. Stumble drunk and high on conversation, the evening continued into the street.

Handi Craft, Handy Cats workshop

The Canadian Crafts Federation (CCF) recently announced Craft Year 2007, a year-long event celebrating professional Canadian craft through various exhibitions, seminars, and events across the country. Their news release was quick to point out that Craft Year activities will not include “the kitsch of crafter sales, but the accomplished…hand-made material culture of Canada.”

Blatantly defying the CCF’s delineations of what constitutes proper craft, Calgary artist Wednesday Lupypciw has a CAMPER full of crafty projects that undermine the very idea of what is ‘kitsch’ and what is ‘accomplished.’

As TRUCK Gallery’s Patch Project continues its summer run, Lupypciw will be the fourth of five artists offering workshops out of the gallery’s mobile CAMPER exhibition space (a converted RV stationed at festivals throughout the city). Each workshop provides audiences with the chance to earn a Girl Guide-style patch to commemorate their participation in the project.

Lupypciw will be hosting her ‘Handi Craft, Handy Cats’ workshop on Thursday September 14th from 11:30am – 8pm at the Olympic Plaza during the ArtCity Festival. Filling the wood-paneled interior of CAMPER with her extensive collection of textile-based paraphernalia, and offering hands-on demos in various eccentric craft techniques, her workshop will invite visitors into a world of crochet, hot-loops, knitting and DIY projects, and encourage them to (re)consider the potential esthetic, social, tactile, and visual roles of these materials.

A graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design’s fibre arts program, Lupypciw uses a variety of media to challenge and reconfigure traditional fine craft paradigms. She explains in her workshop outline that through her fascination with a myriad of materials and techniques, she has gained experience with many of them, but mastery of none. This admission largely discards/ignores canons of ‘craftsmanship’ that would see a well-behaved craftsperson dedicating years to perfecting one particular technique, and carefully producing useful or decorative objects. Indulging a fascination with process, the projects that she will share with visitors to the CAMPER (possibly including “knitting a brain-like mass” and “using your forearm as a crochet hook”) often have no polished end product and no obvious purpose.

Lupypciw’s extensive repertoire of techniques resurrects and celebrates processes that would otherwise end up relegated to the shadowy realm of macramé and craft sales, as she invents new uses for these forgotten materials that highlight their creative and conceptual potential. By reusing and incorporating elements of so-called ‘low’ or ‘kitsch’ craft supplies like pipe cleaners and plastic lacing, these materials can be considered and appreciated for their nostalgic references, while also calling into question the hierarchies that deem only certain materials to be acceptable for use by professional craft practitioners.

Lupypciw’s crafty esthetic presents an interesting take on the resurgence of DIY and punk culture. While referencing what she refers to as the “conscious amateurism” often found in this type of fashion, her work nevertheless branches off into its own world of garish colours and un-wearable accessories that do little to enhance their wearer’s punk-rock cred. When mass-produced craft supplies that have passed their trendy prime are reintroduced into these new projects, these materials also speak to contemporary issues of consumer culture and changing tastes.

While Lupypciw’s workshop will expose participants to her particular brand of radical crafting techniques, it will also act as a catalyst for dialogue and innovation. Participants may end up inventing and exchanging their own new crafts, and forming their own challenges to the traditions of the medium, all the while earning themselves a patch.

http://www.craftyear2007.ca/
http://www.truck.ca/