Sourcing & Making Pigments & Paints: Anong Beam

 

Sourcing & Making Pigments & Paints

Art + Craft 

April 28, 2022, Time: 7:30 PM EDT

Members only Zoom Event 

Artist and paint maker Anong Migwans Beam lives and works in her home community of M'Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island. Raised by artist parents Ann and Carl Beam, she was homeschooled and apprenticed with her father in ceramic, pigment and clay gathering as well as in his painting and photography studio. In addition to the School of Fine Arts in Boston and the Ontario College of Art and Design, she studied at the Institute of American Indian Art.

Anong has also drawn inspiration from the work of William Morris.

In 2018 she founded Beam Paints, makers of plastic free paints and watercolours inspired by her culture and pigment gathering of her youth. 

“With our Indigenous paint tradition, we seek to celebrate the colours of the wide world with the intimacy of the northern forest - and in this fusion create paint that makes you and your paintings feel vibrantly alive."

Visit https://www.beampaints.com/

WMSC 2022 Cake: Flora

 Our cake design this year is 'Flora', an 1891 pattern by William Morris.

The cake is a lemon and lilac honey sponge with a hibiscus-strawberry jelly and orange blossom buttercream. The pattern recalls illuminated medieval manuscripts with floral motifs in bright blues, greens, and reds.

The 'Flora' wallpaper, a pattern featuring a variety of flowers, with undulating green stems with large yellow flowers running vertically; pink, green, blue, yellow and orange on a pale ground. A colour woodblock print on paper.

To watch how it was made, enjoy the video below:

Happy 188th Birthday William Morris!

 Our friends at the Robertson Davies Library at Massey College have a wonderful video about Morris and the Kelmscott Press!

Today we celebrate 188 years of William Morris. William Morris was one of the most significant figures in the arts and crafts movement, a man of far ranging creativity and knowledge. He loved reading and nature above all else which shows in his designs and artwork.

 

William Morris' 188th Birthday Celebration

Arts & Crafts Gardens

March 27, 2022, Time: 3 PM EST

Members only Zoom Event 

WMSC board member Ksenija Klinger will give an illustrated lecture on the history and design of six Arts and Crafts gardens in the UK. Ksenija is a retired architect, urban planner and designer who continues to be passionate about beauty and well executed design.

Afterwards a toast to William Morris, and the unveiling of the 2022 cake!

UK: Online Lecture: A Remarkable Woman: The Art of May Morris

 

FEBRUARY 15, 2022 

18:00 UK time

13:00 Canada (1 pm EST)

Overshadowed for many years by her more famous father, May Morris is now beginning to gain the recognition she deserves as being an incredibly talented craftswoman in her own right. Teacher, lecturer, editor, jeweller and designer, May was accomplished in a wide range of crafts, but it is her work as an embroiderer that is considered to be her greatest achievement. May’s knowledge of needlework, her talent for designing and her brilliance with the needle led to raising the status of embroidery to fine art. This talk will cover May’s life and work, with a focus on her beautiful designs and completed embroideries, demonstrating why May should be regarded as one of the most significant artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Helen Elletson has been Research and Development Curator at the William Morris Society since 2000 and Research Curator at the Emery Walker Trust since 2010. Amongst Helen’s publications are A History of Kelmscott House (2009) and Highlights of the William Morris Society’s Collection (2015), as well as articles on the Arts and Crafts movement including A Feeling for Beauty: May Morris, Emery Walker, and the Arts and Crafts of Hammersmith in Country Life (2017).

This is an online talk, held on Zoom.

Sign up here: https://williammorrissociety.org/event/online-lecture-a-remarkable-woman-the-art-of-may-morris/

Perspectives on Pre-Raphaelite Art Lectures

 

Part I: Perspectives on Pre-Raphaelite Art

Sunday January 16th, 2022 at 2:00 pm EST

Members only Zoom Event 

John Everett Millais, Ophelia (1851-2)

This lecture is by Dr. John Wolforth, Prof. Emeritus, McGill. This lecture will focus on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the youthful ambitions of its founders.

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Part II: The Later Pre-Raphaelites

Tuesday February 8th, 2022 at 7:30 pm EST

Members only Zoom Event 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Joan of Arc (1882)

This lecture is by Dr. John Wolforth, Prof. Emeritus, McGill. This talk will look at the later years of the movement.

Couldn't make this lecture?

Some suggested reading:

Fiona MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite

Simeon Solomon Research Archive

The Pre-Raphaelite Collection at UBC: Angeli-Dennis Collection

Toronto's Gargoyles and Grotesques Online Map

Birge-Carnegie Library North-West entrance, University of Toronto

Photo by Lera Kotsyuba

Despite its relatively young age compared to old-world cities, Toronto has managed to build up an architectural landscape boasting some surprising variety. Though the city's built form is becoming dominated by glass towers, earlier periods brought architectural opulence to the skyline in a different form.

A now-dying art, elaborately carved masonry details define some of Toronto's best-known landmarks. It was a common way for grand buildings to distinguish themselves as late as the early 20th century, when modern construction and design principles began to limit the demand for skilled stonemasons.

Their work lives on in buildings — and in some cases, ruins — around the city, much of it either hidden away in the details or faded into obscurity over the passing decades.

But one anonymous architecture enthusiast wants it all to be rediscovered, creating a comprehensive map with roughly 175 entries of the gargoyles and grotesques that adorn early Toronto buildings.

the map's densest concentration of gargoyles and grotesques can be found in the city centre, with isolated pockets further out in neighbourhoods like High Park, The Junction, and The Beaches.

Looking at the map will tell you where to find these carved bits of history, but it won't tell you much about them.

• Artist Duane Linklater initiated the Don Valley Park Art Program with a striking installation of cast replicas of gargoyles adorning prominent Toronto buildings: Monsters for Beauty, Permanence and Individuality 
  
  
• For other information on Toronto grotesques, take a look at Terry Murray's Faces on Places: A Grotesque Tour of Toronto (2007).