An Urthwurks Studio Tour (video by Laurent Munier)

A good friend of ours, Laurent Munier visited our studio in December with his cool little flip camera. He wanted to show us what we could do with a small video camera.  A little peak of what we do at our humble abode!  Here we work on the finishing touches of Rodney Graham’s Possible Abstractions.

Why do we Love Herman Miller Originals?

This is why.

February 4 – 27, 2010: JAMES NIZAM – MEMORANDOMS

One of my best friends and former roommates. Artist, James Nizam is having an exhibition at Gallery Jones.  We are so lucky to have a number of his works in our home.  Opening Reception is on Thursday February 4th, 6 to 9pm. I hope to see you all there! Support the local art. For more info go to his FACEBOOK EVENTS PAGE.

On the occasion of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Gallery Jones is pleased to announce James Nizam’s exhibition, Memorandoms which continues Nizam’s use of vacated domestic interiors as the backbone of his photography, the provisional location of his studio, and the source of materials. In this case the site is the former Little Mountain housing project on 33rd to 37th Avenues, between Ontario and Main Street, what was the oldest public housing development in Vancouver, recently demolished to make way for a higher density combination of market condominiums and social housing. At one time these low rise buildings situated around grassy common areas across the street from Queen Elizabeth Park would have been attractive housing. Large windows threw light onto hardwood floors of square well built rooms, but that was decades ago. One year ago Nizam was granted access to the slated complex where he assumed residence to an empty third floor apartment. There he set up a camera, and over the course of several months, documented a series of ephemeral sculptures that he constructed from accumulations of remnants such as doors, drawers, shelves, and various other standardized architectural furnishings. Similar to each of Nizam’s previous photographic series two dominant and constant ideas persist with this new body of work: the lost or abandoned domicile, and that the personal is political. In Memorandoms, though the type of the home used has shifted towards the social, Nizam’s work in them continues to move towards greater refinement and sophistication.

Tony Goes to Barcelona by Guest Blogger Jonathan Cruz

Written by Jonathan Cruz at Jonathan Cruz Photography.

A good friend of mine, Tony Millares III, owns an exceptional architectural woodworking firm called Urthwurks Furniture Inc. Starting in Brooklyn, NY, he moved his shop to Vancouver in 2001 and has designed and built for Jasper Johns, Francesco Clemente, Bette Midler, ALIFE NYC and the list goes on and on.  Last year, he worked on the restoration of the Wing Sang building, which is now the home of the Rennie Collection . In the end of 2009, he was busy completing Canadian artist, Rodney Graham’s new line of work called POSSIBLE ABSTRACTIONS, which is a series of sculptures in the shape of a painting made out of wood and corian.  Tony was hired as the artist’s technical advisor and built the entire collection which is now showing at the Museu Pablo Picasso in Barcelona.  He has written a few words on his blog about the process.

In mid-January, the pieces were shipped to Barcelona along with privately owned Rodney Graham pieces that were lent to the museum for Through the Forest, Rodney’s first solo exhibit. Unexpectedly, Tony was given a well deserved first class ticket to Barcelona to attend the opening and unveiling of POSSIBLE ABSTRACTIONS and as I write this article, he is on his way home.

Over the past year and a half, I have had the opportunity to shoot a lot of his work, and looking through te lens, I have learned that he is an extreme perfectionist when it comes to his own work.   I have never seen so much passion and love put into every detail.  With each job, he hones his skills as a designer and craftsman and he blows my mind every time I shoot his work.   The photos I took are only a fracture of what went on behind the scenes in the last few weeks before the opening in Barcelona.

“Ok, what’s next?”

Welcome home Tony, and congratulations to you and you team at Urthwurks!

The Arrival of Possible Abstractions

We honestly weren’t sure if we could do it in time for the show.  It was hours and hours of sanding corian,  then even more hours of spraying the pieces, and then finally assembling everything together. Our shop ran 24 hours for the last few weeks and we all rarely saw our better halves.

The Museu Pablo Picasso put some photos of the pieces getting installed.  I look at this and can’t be happier.

Design Solutions in Face of Disaster

Montreal (Canada) – In a global appeal following the devastation in Haiti, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) has launched a call to designers from all disciplines to unite in an open dialogue with international relief organisations to assess potential design-effective rehabilitation projects. In support of the UN’s efforts to help the Haitian people overcome challenges in relation to the country’s reconstruction plans, designers, academics and design students, as well as experienced developmental workers are encouraged to join the discussion and become a fan of the ‘Uniting Designers in Disaster‘ page on Facebook.

Rodney Graham at the Museu Picasso

Dates: Open to the public from 29 January to 18 May 2010
Curator: Friedrich Meschede
Organized by: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in co-production with the Museum für Gegenwartskunst and the Hamburger Basel Kunsthalle in collaboration with the Museu Picasso de Barcelona.

The Museu Picasso de Barcelona will host the project Possible Abstractions by Canadian artist Rodney Graham, created especially for the Museum on the occasion of the major retrospective Through the Forest being presented at the MACBA, which will bring together hundreds of Graham’s works from the years 1978 to 2008. The MACBA show will include the series of paintings Picasso, My Master (2005), Graham’s first incursion into painting, which recreates with a touch of humour the aura of mastery surrounding Picasso’s work.

This project is the first in a series of interventions and collaborations by working artists in the Museum’s programme. One of our priorities is to bring out the close links between Picasso and the idea of creation and of process rather than result and to situate him once more in the long line of artists whose work was a spur to new creativity.

Photo taken by: Jonathan Cruz Photography