FUTURE EVENTS

TM Glass: The Audible Language of Flowers

Thursday August 8th, 2019. 5:30pm

Onsite Gallery, OCAD University

199 Richmond St West, Toronto

Image: T.M. Glass, Azaleas and Tulips in a European Vessel (detail), 2018, archival pigment ink on archival cotton rag paper fused to Dibond, 58" x 58".

Guided tour of the exhibition for

WMSC members and their friends, 5:30 pm

Public lecture (free admission) 6:30 pm

Complexity versus Simplicity: Historic Influences on the Contemporary Work of T.M. Glass

Art historian Jennifer Franks will discuss the pendulum swing between complexity and simplicity throughout art history, while highlighting the historic influences in the contemporary work of T.M. Glass.

T.M. Glass: The Audible Language of Flowers presents recent series of images by lens-based artist T.M. Glass that feature blooms and vessels from unique gardens across the globe. Glass' distinct photographic style is characterized by extensive digital embellishment of textures and colours to enhance the emotion and geometry of flowers. Recently, the artist’s large-scale flower images expanded into the third dimension through advanced 3-D printing technology. Inspired by 17th century European flower paintings, the artist contends that contemporary digital photographers are also painters who work with pixels instead of oils. T.M. Glass is a digital artist based in Toronto, whose practice explores the historical, technological, and aesthetic conditions of photography to stretch it beyond its traditional definition. The works have been showcased in multiple solo exhibitions and held in private collections in the Canada, the United States, Britain, France, and Australia. Glass turned to photography as the primary mode of production after studying sculpture at the Ontario College of Art and Design and pursuing a distinguished career in writing and production for film and television. Glass uses rapidly advancing digital technology to celebrate the beauty of nature.

RSVP by August 1

E-mail: info@wmsc.ca or phone: 416-233-7686

Getting there: Osgoode subway station

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AGM 
Presentation on: African Textiles

Monday September 16th, 2019. 7:00pm

Textile Museum of Canada
55 Centre Avenue, Toronto

Tent blanket from Mali

Following the Annual General Meeting, a presentation by Barbara McCann focusing on the historical background of cloth trading and migration of people, the use of cloth to express cultural values and important events, socio-economic issues including gender-based roles which have influenced textile development, as well as amazing innovations and use of recycled materials.

Getting there: St Patrick subway station

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Canadian Society of Decorative Arts Symposium

Thursday September 26 - 29th, 2019 

Kingston, Ontario

Agnes Etherton Art Centre

An invitation from our friends with the Canadian Society of Decorative Arts

Join the many decorative arts collectors, experts and enthusiasts who plan to be among the delegates in Kingston, September 26-29th.  Early bird rates end June 30th!

Honouring the past and learning about current practice in the decorative arts is reflected in this year’s theme: Trends and Traditions. To that end, the CSDA/CCAD Programming Committee has been hard at work planning and delivering an exceptional line up of lectures and events led by a stellar group of regional, national and international scholars, experts, curators, collectors and leading contemporary makers of decorative arts. Symposium delegates will also enjoy exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to private and public collections and studios, and visits to important sites and cultural attractions in the area on guided walking tours.

For more information:  https://csda-ccad.org/Events

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Ceramics in Victorian Paintings and Literature:

If the teacup could speak it would tell some wondrous tales!

Tuesday October 15th, 2019. 7:00pm

Toronto Reference Library, Beeton Auditorium

789 Yonge Street, Toronto

Ellen L Clacy, "Marigold's: The China Closet, Knole", c. 1880

In her richly illustrated lecture, Dr. Rachel Gotlieb presents new ways of looking at and reading ceramic objects in Victorian paintings and literature. Crisscrossing the categories of narrative, genre, social realism, Pre-Raphaelite and Aestheticism, she explores how artists incorporated pottery and porcelain in their work to reveal how they charged them with symbolic meaning. The method by which artists represented ceramics dictated a particular grammar and language: tableware centred around a family meal, especially tea time, blue transferware housed in a dresser or women serving ceramic platters filled with food. These compositions comprised the visual rhetoric of ceramic representations that both artists and writers employed, personalized and critiqued. Moreover, specific objects such as the humble tea-cup, distinguished by colour, size, shape and placement both in relation to the body and within the idealistically or realistically rendered room often expressed attributes related to gender, taste, and morality. Examining the visual representational rhetoric of ceramics in paintings, particularly in the context of the popular press and literature by Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot and Anthony Trollope shows that they were infused and coded with deep metaphorical meanings. This veiled symbolism was typically understood by different stratifications of Victorian society.

Dr. Gotlieb is Adjunct Curator at the Gardiner Museum. She was previously the Gardiner’s Chief Curator and Interim Executive Director. She teaches design history at Sheridan College, Faculty of Bachelor of Craft and Design. In 2017 she was the Theodore Randall International Chair in Art and Design at Alfred University in New York and a Research Fellow at Winterthur Museum and Library in Delaware. Gotlieb is currently writing a book titled “Ceramics in the Era Victorian: Meanings and Metaphors”.

Getting there: Yonge/Bloor subway station

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We're finalizing plans for some more exciting events for 2019. Keep coming back to check for details and/or follow us on Instagram,  Twitter and Facebook!

Reminder: WMSC members have priority booking for trips and other events that require registration and have limited numbers. Join us today!