fQaroundtown: Canadian Design on the Move,

Monday, February 09, 2009

Canadian Design on the Move,

"Stag" (Wall Hanging) by Grant Heaps, 2,200 1"square pieces of cloth part of Made presents Radiant Dark 09 Elegant Corruptions: an exhibition of modern Canadian Design, February 4 th to 8th, 2009.

On the IDS 2009 Krups stage from left to right, Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan CEO, Apartment Therapy Media, apartmenttherapy.com, Harry Wakefield is the founder MoCoLoco.com Grace Bonney – Founder and Editor of Design*Sponge and Mark Challen of House & Home Media hosting a panel on Blogging on Saturday February 7, 2009 [this Design Talk was entertaining enlightening and informative there will be more about it]

This year the Interior Design Show had the usual blend of product makers and retailers along with my two favourite sections, Design GEN next featuring the “design” departments from a number of schools and Studio North showcase new Canadian designers/ makers.

I will get to the schools right now. University of Alberta Industrial Design program was there on mass as they have been in years past, this year instructor, assistant Professor Tim Antoniuk along with 5 or 6 students where there to receive my year harangue about hard verses soft product designs, in other words chairs with pillows at least, I don’t need a fully upholstered object to satisfy me. I bring this up with this group because I know about the amazing Human Ecology department located in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences . This program once called “Home Economics” is home to the University of Alberta’s Clothing and Textiles Collection, a resource not to be ignored. With courses focusing on clothing, there are a number dealing with surface construction, design, finish and pattern drafting all of which are applicable to furniture. (hey why not a vacuum cleaner with a cloth canister and conductive fibre woven Tartan soft cell phone. Something that could easily come out of one of the labs in the Hexagram department at Concordia, and there are those disposable paper cell phones in Japan.) Tim Antoniuk told me he was thinking of a project, so I’ll wait and see.

But that would involve negotiating or creating interdisciplinary study programmes or cross discipline interaction which is not gently developed in Universities, but hey the furniture design and textile students at Sheridan and OCAD don’t mix it up that often until they are out of school

that is the end of my rant, and this is about what i did see, not about what wasn't there (it bothers me that it wasn't but that's another story)

DESIGNgenNEXT at the IDS 2009

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University of Alberta department of Art and Design http://www.ualberta.ca/ARTDESIGN/ Industrial Design

No Textiles to be seen, but this running shoe brought a smile to my face.

Plastic High Top Kleenex "box" by Collin Hnetka{U of A}

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OCAD http://www.ocad.ca/home.htm

Material Art and Design houses Fibre studies. The study of Fibre at OCAD incorporates both textiles and surface/design print and encourages you to experiment with fabric and fibre structures, on- and off-loom. It incorporates computer-aided design and surface embellishments such as stitching and beading.

Industrial Design Student, Arash Sadr sitting in his Scapula Chair

This year as in years past there were no work of the fibre students from OCAD on display, but as always amongst the "Seating” they always show is a chair bolding celebrating what textiles bring to furniture in its most basic form, a covering. Industrial Design student Arash Sadra "Scapula" chair of metal tubes “slip covered” in red polyester looks as much like a piece of Martha Graham choreography dress in a red Halston dance dress as a piece of furniture. It is a stop action photo of her signature primitive stomp. It is graceful, elegant and an extraordinarily simple gesture drawing of a chair in hiding. Like last years still unidentified metal tube bench with Felt "Tongues" and Erin McCutcheon wrapped Chair from 2006, cloth does more then “Hide” or accentuate the form, it is integral to its functions.

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SHERIDAN COLLEGE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND ADVANCED LEARNING: http://www1.sheridaninstitute.ca/

Sheridan’s Textile Studio's three-year program has a broad range of printing and dyeing techniques at the core of the curriculum that are supported by excellent studio facilities that feature: two 10-metre professional print tables, a dye lab, industrial standard dye equipment, a photo screen shooting room, and a large wash down area.

Felt-making, heat-setting, resist dye techniques, photo image transfers, three-dimensional construction, surface embellishment techniques and mixed media and digital design round out the studio experience, encouraging the student to develop innovative work that employs a variety of textile techniques and approaches

Kym Monaghan-Morton, " Loretta" Silk screened fibre- reactive dyes on Cotton

Alissa Kloet, "the rest of the Story" silk screen print of digitally manipulated image on Linen, appliquéd with fabrics
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HUMBER COLLEGE

Humber College interior design and interior decorating students, knowing they could not display “Boards” put together an energetic display using thermal transfers of related images on bed pillow cases along with a crazed collection of home and fashion DIY pillows and purses. Humber offers a number of design oriented degree and diploma programmes
http://www.humber.ca/

Bachelor of Applied Arts - Interior Design, Degree - CIDA Accredited
Interior Decorating, Co-op, Diploma, School of Applied Technology
Bachelor of Applied Technology - Industrial Design, Degree, School of Applied Technology

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Studio North

The artist designer/makers of Studio North always provide a counter balance to the Glitz and Glam of the Interior Design Show. These new Canadian Designers work at a small more hand made scale that is high in quality and individual in concept and thought out in design and function. This is not mass produced work and it’s not meant to be
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Manor 12: Julie Laschuk , home decor objects, http://www.manor12.com/

Chair seat and pillows, reverse appliqué wool with embroidery floss

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School Yard: Original prints and a small environmental footprint by Katy Chan and Hilary Dennis http://www.schoolyardstudio.com/about.html

Both are members of the Contemporary Textile Studio Co-op,( http://www.textilestudio.ca/ ) in Toronto’s 401 Richmond St. complex. A centre providing facilities for printing on textiles