Claudia Gutierrez (January 13 - February 26, 2022)

January 13 - February 26, 2022
Reception: TBC
Craft Ontario Gallery, 1106 Queen Street West, Toronto

Claudia Gutierrez is a Latin-Canadian artist living in Ottawa, Canada. Her studies specialized in painting and printmaking, recently informing her exploration of textile work after completing two residencies in Ottawa, Canada and Oaxaca, Mexico. She has been an active advocate and cultural worker for the local arts community for the past decade.

Claudia Gutierrez’s practice engages in textile, printmaking, and painting mediums. By utilizing her training in embroidery, hand dying and printmaking, Gutierrez imbues a sense of methodical mark making, repetitive and meditative contrasting her process which is often reliant on chance and improvisation.

Referencing the gentrification of craft, graffiti, or "low-brow" art, she contradicts their nature by stretching, mounting and framing pieces, stripping away their utility and tactility. In doing so, they are rendered untouchable and examinable at a distance by its viewer. These shifts in the role and meaning of objects and visual references represent the movement between known and unknown, oddity and banality, dark and light, masculine and feminine until what is left is a new form entirely – a form born from the journey of those shifts. New forms tethered by past follies, ritual, communion, heritage, and memories.

claudiagutierrezart.com

Zimra Beiner (March 5 - April 23, 2022)

March 5 - April 23, 2022
Reception: TBC
Craft Ontario Gallery, 1106 Queen Street West, Toronto

Born in Toronto, Canada, Zimra Beiner has taught and exhibited his work throughout the United States and Canada. While he considers himself primarily an object maker, his work has increasingly embraced scale, composition, and the relationship between objects and space within a framework of the still life.

zimrabeiner.com

Fiona Duthie & Amee Raval (April 30 – June 18, 2022)

April 30 – June 18, 2022
Reception: TBC
Craft Ontario Gallery, 1106 Queen Street West, Toronto

Fiona Duthie is an artist/maker recognized for her dynamic surface design. She explores personal narrative using mainly textiles, focusing on relationships between people and place, and our psychological states and responses. She starts a new piece with the story and creates tactile metaphors in form, material and process to best communicate that narrative. Duthie's recent work explores resilience, in relation to the individual, society and the environment. Materiality is key to her work- charred wood, discarded offcuts from building sites, then burnt and polished, natural inks, made from charcoal collected from fire burnt forests, felted paper, a unique merging of materials and technique developed by Duthie, and ceramics. Common materials transformed through crisis or challenge but emerging stronger for the experience. The materials speak to nurturing of our inner strengths through times of crisis. Finding a path to access our interior coals and blowing gently over them, fueling our plasticity. Duthie creates large installations, made through the repetition of many smaller forms. 

Duthie has a full time studio practice on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia. Being in this beautiful natural space surrounded by forest, rocky beaches, the ocean and a strong artist community has allowed her creative practice to thrive. Duthie's work has been published in many international textile arts publications. She has exhibited widely in both public and private galleries in Canada, the US, New Zealand, Australia and the UK.

www.fionaduthie.com

"My current body of work is a take on the changing cultural landscape of my country especially with women in focus. I am captivated and mesmerized with glass as a medium. The wide spectrum of glass techniques gives me the freedom to experiment with casting, a complex form of glassmaking and an essential requirement for my body of work."

Amee Raval is a marketing professional armed with a Masters in Business Administration and has more than a decade of experience as a business professional. She decided to pursue her passion for Glass and has recently graduated from Sheridan College as a kiln and hot glass caster.

www.niravanadesigns.com

Michelle Mendlowitz (June 25 - August 13, 2022)

June 25 - August 13, 2022
Reception: TBC
Craft Ontario Gallery, 1106 Queen Street West, Toronto

"My work as a ceramic artist consists of both functional and sculptural objects. I am drawn to clay for its expressive nature as well as its ability to create utility. As an artist, I am intrigued by layers. As a maker, process plays an important role. Each working stage in a piece brings a new layer and each action leaves its mark on the finished results. The forms I create are derived from landscapes and borrowed elements from nature, architecture and the human form.

Ceramic surface plays an integral role in my work, acting as the final layer or skin of the object. Drawings are created with the intention to play with melting properties of glazes, in order to reveal and conceal the original sketches. Various textures are utilized to highlight the raw clay combined with controlled layering of glazes leaving room for the spontaneous nature of what happens in the kiln."

– Michelle Mendlowitz

www.michellemendlowitz.com

Vanessa Yanow (August 20 - October 1, 2022)

August 20 - October 1, 2022
Reception: TBC
Craft Ontario Gallery, 1106 Queen Street West, Toronto

Vanessa Yanow is a queer artist who works primarily with textiles, flame worked glass and found objects. She has been reviewed and featured in many North American publications as an exceptional fine craftsperson, but her BFA in Paint from RISD points the way back to a grounding in the visual arts, lending her work a unique strength that defies categorisation. Her sculptural work has been shown in museums in Canada, and in galleries and art fairs internationally. Her work is also part of the city of Montreal’s permanent collection, the collection of Le Musée des Maitres et Artisans in Montréal and in the Musée National in Québec City. Vanessa currently lives and works in Tiohtià:ke aka Montreal out of The Long Haul – a nonprofit, artist-run organisation that she cofounded in 2001. They offer 35 artists 18 studio spaces to make art out of and to exhibit from. They are dedicated to facilitating its members’ art production by providing affordable workspaces in a supportive, inclusive and secure environment

www.vanessayanow.com