Aboard the Art Bus

Contemporary Art has Legs

Fabulous, busy day yesterday. I finally got a chance to hop aboard the Art bus–a seasonal event organised by Toronto collectors and contemporary art mavens Susie Kololian and Sue Kidd, who run an art excursion endeavour they call Variant Path–which I am shortly to discover is nothing like the relaxed meander the name suggests.

Variant Path takes art trips to art cities like Montreal and Berlin and London , but they also host a couple of days in Toronto every year where they drag a group of  art-seekers around to galleries and studios to meet the artists and talk to gallery owners–sort of like a ladies’  Day with VIP art access. The days are always over-subscribed and so I’ve never managed to make it. But this year I pledged to go, and it was great fun, like being on a school field trip, but with grown-ups. Continue reading…

IDS 2010

This past weekend was a blur–it was the 10th anniversary of the Interior Design Show, and the showrunner-in-chief, Shauna Levy, who I regard as one of the key connectors in Toronto in terms of putting people and great ideas together and making things happen had pulled out all the stops, hosting incredible speakers from the world of design and extending the show into a number of offsite simultaneous events and exhibitions that made it into a full-fledged international design week.

The opening night party had a particularly nice buzz about it. People seemed thrilled to be in the new smaller venue, the Metro Covention Centre, if only because it actually has windows onto the street and natural light.

I chatted over champagne (Veuve Cliquot was a sponsor, and they kept it flowing) with designer Clayton Budd of 64th and Queen, who is currently working on a re-cooling of developer Peter Freed’s corporate website and was overjoyed that he wasn’t doing a design space at the show this year.

 ”Last year’s Opening night I was a total wreck. I had spent the three days beforehand working around the clock trying  to get our space ready,” said Clayton. “This year I get to just hang around and enjoy myself.”

Gossip king Shinan Govani was there, sporting hair so long in front that with a bit of hair wax he could have been an excellent Elvis impersonator. Speaking of wild male coiffures, gallery owner Jamie Angell was also there, with his trademark high-energy and blue-tinted glasses. His new gallery space, which is much larger, is just about together.

I bumped into both Les Mandelbaum and Paul Rowan of Umbra, separately. I bought Les a drink because he had got through the line-up to the bar only to find you needed drink tickets. Les complained that now that he has a cottage and a ski cabin he never gets to travel anywhere with his kids. “you think you’re doing yourself a favour when you get these vacation homes,” said Les, “but then you feel guilty going anywhere else.”

Paul Rowan and his wife were admiring the ingenuity of the Drake General Store’s on-site pop-up store which was made of a pile of upturned shopping carts painted primary colours. When I told them I was on my way to Israel next week (yes I am, for More magazine–it’s a trip themed around women of the Old Testament), they recommended I read The Red Tent in preparation.

I walked the show aisles with photographer Susan Gouinlock, Spafax Managing Director Raymond Girard and Kate Thornley-Hall of Source UK. Raymond was interviewing everyone in sight about their favourite airlines and airports. I couldn’t come up with anything better than the tiny one-room airport  I once flew into on Union island, where the same two guys unloaded the luggage, and then ran inside to man customs in this adorable turquoise painted concrete building.

Raymond had submitted designs for the show’s carpet competition and hadn’t been selected. We all agreed that the winning submissions were good, but not stellar– and not just because we all love Raymond.

The next morning, with a bit of a day-after head (we finished the night at the after-party at Ame for delicious sushi and more champagne), I walked the show to actually check out some of the new product and designs for More magazine (go to www.more.ca, for my 2010 Trend report).

The highlight of the day was the 5 pm Pecha-kucha–a sort of live rap, where the speakers pick 20 slides and talk over them for 20 seconds each. Cobi Ladner, Shinan, designer David Dixon and 3rd Uncle’s Arriz Hassam were among the rappers. Cobi was dreading it. I sat with the always lovely House & Home editor Suzanne Dimma, who was a nervous wreck for her new husband Arriz. “He is thoughtful so he tends to talk slowly,” worried Suzanne. “I’m not sure that this is going to go very well.”

Arriz pulled it off in style, of course and I was particularly impressed with David Dixon’s presentation. He had great slides, and talked about inspiration in a way that gave you a little window to the inside of his head.

The big highlight of the show in my opinion was the chance to meet (and hear) the brilliant Barbara Hulanicki, founder of London’s swinging Biba back in the 60s and the single most influential designer responsible for the boutiquing of formerly derelict South Beach in Miami. At 73, she is still cooler than cool–un-lifted, super-chic, all in black with a trademark blonde fringe and huge black glasses. She was funny and self-deprecating and kind of dreamy in a still-youthful way. It was such a thrill to meet her I honestly can’t recall much of what she said other than that she was just the bomb and gave me hope that coolness is still possible in your 70s, even as a woman (a possibility that in my increasingly invisible late 40s, I am beginning to doubt). I had her sign a copy of her book, A to Biba for me as a reminder. Maybe you just have to make it through the rough bit of mid-life before coming out the other, better side?

On Saturday afternoon I hosted a panel with the delightful Dee Dee Hannah of Taylor-Hannah architects, Karsten Ruwoldt of Audi, Taryn Doobay of RADO watches and the charming designer/chef/restauarateurs Guy and Michael Rubino, owners of Ame. Our topic was the pressing question of Luxury (for text of my speech on the subject read on: Continue reading…

New Year, New Obsessions

I wasn’t surprised in the slightest to see The Hangover win a Golden Globe–everyone (even in the over 40 set) is constantly quoting from it, and apparently it was the hottest DVD rental for New Year’s Day.  We rented it and lay on the couch in a stupor on New Year’s Day ourselves. Not that we were so incredibly hung over that morning from too much drinking (I consider New Year’s Amateur hour and generally refuse to participate in the forced partying), but because we all seem to be stunned and hung over from the great tumult and upheaval that was 2009.

It’s a new year, however, and suddenly there are signs of new things to obsess over. Here are 5 or 6 that are obsessing me.

1. Snoods. What is it with the floppy beret style headgear that all the cute young girls are suddenly burdening themselves with on the street? Talk about a way to bring down your look! These droopy, knitted cloches make even the perkiest, leggiest of 20-somethings look like sad sacks. I don’t think they are trying to channel the  Joan Crawford kind of snood that was popular in the 50s as an update of Juliet’s little medieval beaded bun-holder in Romeo and Juliet, but rather a cross between a 70s floppy hat and a gamine beret. Anyhow, they are the most hungover looking headdress ever. And there isn’t a cute young thing on the street lately without one.
2. Butter. When I discovered real French butter in New York a couple of years ago and how unbelievably pure and delicious it was, I started to make it a rather fattening habit of buying one of thoe foldable coolers and smuggling it home amongst  my socks and underwear in my suitcase every time I was in NY. Now I can find it here, at one of many new overpriced indie gourmet cheese stores for a mere $18 for Echire in  one of those little straw baskets that are like tiny versions of the ones you see in vegetable markets and we have it all the time. The ready availability, I am sorry to say, has not dampened my enthusiasm for it. And a new fashion, apparently the latest foodie trend in restaurants for 2010, is brown butter–a delicious 50s French way of injecting extra calories that is both incredibly simple (you just let butter caramelise, essentially) and unbelievably delighful on the simplest dish. I had it over rainbow trout at Deluxe on Ossington the other night and I licked my plate clean like a cat.
3.  Clogs. Just got my real Swedish Troentorp chefs clogs repaired, thank goodness (I must have a high instep or something, because their padded trim around the clog’s opening had burst apart, spewing foam) because I discovered that there is no longer any such thing as Troentorp anymore (the co has been sold or re-named or just modernised) and now there is an international run on clogs. My clog sisters Kate and Susan and I now consider ourselves way ahead of the curve because everybody from Karl Lagerfeld (who showed models on the S/S 2010 runway in Chanel suits and wooden heeled CC clogs) to the cool girls are all over the clog trend for spring. Susan is so ahead of the pack she has an entire clog wardrobe.
4. Siphon coffee. Ok, I am completely smitten by the whole tiny indie storefront cafe phenom. My local, Ezra’s Pound, is so incredible, I go out of my way to swing by every morning for an Americano that is without a doubt the finest I have ever had, and every day I stop in, it seems it’s busier than the day before. Ezra himself, who is tall and somewhat reticent to the point of geeky but a coffee and fine food obsessive (Ok, he actually makes his own butter for the cafe, which people might have thought was somewhat crazy a decade ago but now is the height of cool) is now somewhat of a local celebrity–my sister invited him to a gathering at her place for the holidays and it was like he was the star attraction. Another incredible coffee place I stop by whenever I have the opportunity is an even tinier, funkier spot called Sam James, after its owner, who is as cute as a Bruce weber model. And Sam James ups the ante on obsessive–his latest craze is Siphon coffee, which looks like some sort of handmade bong or drug paraphernalia, all tubes and beakers and bunsen burners–but it is a sort of modern percolator ritual. He hand grinds the coffe first in a wall-mounted German-looking ceramic grinder, then fills a low beaker with water, places it above a burning flame, attaches various tubes and vials to it, and voila, the cold water is sucked up and then replaced with this gorgeous old-world coffee. The whole thing is beyond theatrical and way precious, although the coffee is delicious.
5. Why is everybody obssessed with MTV’s new Jersey Shore? The Guidos and Guidettes who “represent” the Guido lifestyle of “tanning and hair gel and fist-pumping” are like comic book characters from  a 50s musical, like West Side story on MTV. Beyond their general amorality, pointlessness and decadence, can someone tell me what these cartoons have to tell us about now? Maybe its the throwback nature of their presentation that’s the point? I just don’t get it.
6. Likewise, all the objections to Jason Reitman’s Up In the Air, which I happen to think is entirely genius, a brilliant encapsulation of the floating emptiness of middle America’s mid-life crisis, rendered in the soulless office-taupe halls of the Holiday Inns and Westins in Dubuque and Desmoines. In my view, it’s an exact picture of where we at–losing jobs, losing focus, utterly losing the point.