Hello visitor!

Thanks for stopping by.
All my stuff is now over at  marisagallemit.com


See you over there!
mg

                                                                  
                                                       ottawavelovogue.com

CHINATOWN REMIXED
it's all i'm thinking about right now.
art is installed.

promos done.
(the ottawa sun/ now open with denis armstrong)

it's going to be SUNNY for the festival - first time in three years!

i am so grateful for to the Chinatown Remixed  Board of Directors - they've been all over it,  handling, organizing, managing, liaising, spreading the word - they are champs!

i am also thrilled to pieces to be paired with Karen and Leigh of High Jinx.  these are smart, savvy, powerful women.  this wonderful second-hand furniture/ curiosity shop is their vehicle for funding their own community and homelessness initiative - helping people in the community find homes and furnish their homes.  in their own words, "the way it was done in Little House on the Prairie" - neighbours helping neighbours in need.  i am inspired and in awe of their philosophy and business model.  (i've also purchased a side table and a set of mid-century steak knives in the past 2 days, this place is a treasure trove!)

i've got tomorrow off & i'm ready to party.
look out Chinatown!

you were awesome, MCA.
thank you!

it's may again and that means:
mother's day (gifts and flowers please)
and
Chinatown Remixed!

consider yourselves cordially invited.
i will be posted at High Jinx - a wonderful second-hand furniture shop - my works will hang in the picture window facing Somerset Street.  the lovely and talented Natalie Fournier will be just out front with her special brand of thought-provoking and visually arresting performance art.

i'm working with white zip-ties this time around - and attempting to capture the essence of deep sea creatures, phosphorescence, fluidity.  this material means murder for my fingertips - endless burns and cuts, like paper cuts but worse - but i seem to love the challenge of pieces that involve repetitive, labour-intensive construction.

sneak peek:


so, again:
Saturday, May 12th 130-5pm
Somerset Street West
over 40 artists of all disciplines
40 local venues
music, arts, community, vittles, bubble tea and sunshine (fingers crossed)


see y'all there!

My friend, Chris Mullington
shot this piece for CBC Bold TV's Creative Block 
in December 2011.  I love his work and I was honoured to be featured!

did some press for chinatown remixed early in the summer.  twas fun!

for Ottawa's A Channel - A Morning Weekend Edition

Saturday May 14, 2011


In Town and Out interview with Michael Bhardwaj
Saturday May 14, 2011 on CBC Radio One:

dare i declare that summer is over?
despite the balmy temperatures here in ottawa, fall is in the air - it stirs up melancholy in me, fall has always been a time of big changes for me...and every autumn brings recollections of the beginnings that found their start during this time of year.

but a moment to look back on the past few glorious, blistering months:

we moved!
it was hell.

 trae did a bunch of cool stuff:  graduated from grade school, won the league baseball tournament, donned a tux in calgary for his cousin's wedding, went to nova scotia for three weeks with his pal, zach.








we went to movies, grew things in our garden, visited with old friends, ate like vikings, (new bbq...oh the scent of grilled meats!) rode bikes, cruised around in a chartreuse dune buggy, swam a little, and sauntered around the wonderland that is ottawa in the summer.

my attempt at pesto was a collossal fail

this one was particularly delicious

cap'n amrca

 

pat's vintage meyers manx buggy




big up cruickshank crew

  

we made these!





smoque shack offerings


it was a good season...and now, onwards!



the kid's got a mouth full of metal



thanks for the kisses, sweet summer sun



let's do it



Today was the third annual kick-off to the Chinatown Remixed Art Festival - what an amazing event - 40 artists showing work in 40 different local venues, mass vernissages today between 2-5pm, live music, live dj's, taiko drummers, installation art, performance art, visual art, sculpture...amazing multi-cultural food and vibrations.



My assigment was #5, Aline's Hair Design.  All my window dressing dreams come true - i am grateful to have been given this space: a fabulous old- fashioned storefront, many windows and a few metres of non-wall space in which to suspend my pieces, horizontal surfaces to scatter my creations.








this is pretty much what it all looks like.  pieces are for sale, please contact me if there is any interest in taking one home at askmarmar@gmail.com.

so overwhelming -  the quality and quantity of inspiring and gorgeous work.  of the works that i saw today: Britta Evans-Fenton's chopsticks semaphore installation piece at Double Happiness BBQ Food... Tanis Dennis' whimsical and inquisitive ink and watercolour works at Fuschian Vietnamese Restaurant...Joa Keur's super-saturated photographs of hawaiian blooms at Co Cham...Dan Martelock's graphic canvasses depicting bold pilot-birds layered over textured backgrounds at Tin Bo Travel... Don Kwan's luminous photo-transparencies which can be viewed perfectly from the Kowloon Market's checkout lines...Guillermo Trejo wows us again this year with his kitchy and humourous screen prints which fuse mexican wrestling with asian soup at Pho Bo Ga King...Karina Bergmans' enormous and show-stopping kanji soft sculpture at Shanghai Restaurant...the list will continue over the next few weeks as i discover all 40 venues and their delights therein.

mama nature spared us the rain today, which suited me just fine as i was stationed out on the pavement in front of my art.  the Chinatown Remixed Collective reigned victorious today, the event was a huge success and i am thrilled and grateful to have been able to participate again this year!

more details at http://chinatownremixed.ca/

more soon...
xoxox

holy wow - things are a-poppin' around here!

i am happy to announce that i am the new art curator at the manx pub - i am thrilled to bits to have this opportunity to learn and organize and immerse myself yet again in more art. i've just helped to take down the art show of shannon armishaw. get a load of her work - precious (in the good way) and melancholic.  the theme of these particular works is paris;  she incorporates photo-transferred images and painted impressions of parisian buildings and layers them with mylar sketches and lace inserts. they are canvasses, shadow boxes and smaller vintage-framed pieces - a real mix of media unified by rosy colours and loose, hazy brush-strokes.

'Changed Shape and Fragmented' by shannon armishaw

'The Buildings Bright' by shannon armishaw

'Shape Shifted in the City' by shannon armishaw

'The Secrets Made It Easy' by shannon armishaw

paris was obviously the epicentre of some awakening and herein she pays tribute to this event, asking us to fill in our own blanks. look at the palette! amazing.

i am anxious to see shannon's past works, a series of portraits, in person. again she layers the paint and texture with mylar and custom-made shadow boxes.  check out her site! shannonarmishaw.wordpress.com

the way i do it is just the way i do it

2011.
it's going to take at least a month before i figure out how to replace that last zero with an extra one.
so much potential for this one, really feeling that amazing 'snakes in the belly' sensation that might be a blend of anxiety, hope, excitement and joy.
oh, what is to come?

we spent much of the holidays with my best little boy and he brought me so much focus - inspiring me to just sink into my deep maternal love (never thought i had it) and forget all other incidentals, all the weird niggly stuff that gets normally under my skin. he's still at a precious age whereby he can still hang with his mama and isn't too cool to cuddle and hold hands. for this i am grateful.
i see the signs of time passing (the boy's increasing shoe sizes, ever more of my silver hairs, josh's creaking bones) but i don't feel it whizzing by.
is it inattention on my part or is it just that i am here now, in the moment?

2011: release more baggage, stuff that i carry around that is no longer useful to me and try to replace it with new treasures that will allow for more calm, more balance, more now.


i'm building a still, to slow down the time

cyclelogik   my favourite bikeshop (and where i cut my teeth in the world of small business) is having another christmas art show!  should be a time - the past few have been doozies;  art, music, libations and laughs.

it was at this event two years back that i first showed my art!  this year my pal, matt ouimet will be performing live with his Super Awesome Club; it's funk and it's funky.  there will also be more musical surprises and amazing art on the walls.  hope i see many folks there.  give art for christmas - show everyone the love!

here are the details:


WHEN
December 3rd, 2010 @ 8PM

FEATURING
Over 40 artists
Food by Essence Catering
Tunes by MR//GREG and Super Awesome Club
 
SPONSORED BY
Mark LaFontaine of RE/MAX
Beau's All Natural Brewing Company

cyclelogik:  a grand place for a party!

cyclelogik boys in full effect:  ian and trae

super awesome club in full effect: steve and matt

cyclelogik in full effect:  alistair

cyclelogik in full effect:  justin

sometimes in life you are presented with special people who are just so clever and warm and radiant and lovely that it's worth trudging through all the other folks who show their dark shadows.  my dear friend, jennnifer cavanagh or jennycav as we call her is one of those such women.

 she is saucy and spicy, one whose mere presence makes me feel smarter and happier. 
sadly, she lives in london, england so i don't get so see her very often.  but luckily for us, she has a website where we can read her musings on art, events, music and gastronomie in ol' london town - from a fantastic canadian ex-pat perspective.

www.jennycavanagh.com

READ her!  please and thank you.
 

i wish i could go to lady samurai school.

via oldphotosjapan.com

how delightful to be a new citizen of the internets!

photo via pinterest

a girl and a machine:  the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
scored some warm nods from web friends of late, and i'm pleased as punch:

a little do-hickey  on the ARC Poetry Magazine website linking to a post of mine

and

a sweet nugget  by jess on the magpie jewellery blog.

thank you friends!

i made stuff and i had my first solo show at Wurm Gallery/ Invisible Cinema on friday, october 29th 2010.
it was RAD.




i called it Past Lives: New Works and created 7 new pieces over the course of 3 months.  in keeping with my desire to use recycled and discarded material, i made hanging objects/creatures out of old bicycle innertubes, innertube valves, the film footage from my brief stint at a film production course, an Yves St-Laurent bridegroom tuxedo and a softball.

the body of work alludes to the past lives of the materials themselves as well as to my own past lives - my long-gone roles of wife, small business owner, aspiring film-maker.  this is my most personal work so far, and the process of deconstructing and transforming the materials quite unexpectedly brought me great discomfort.  i was filing things away, declaring that some things that i held dear, items with which i used to identify myself no longer held weight in their current forms.  the hanging objects on the wall are represent then, my transformation, my new life, my now.

this was my artist statement:
 

escape:  created to do just that

past lives:  the wee ones

invisble cinema:  never-used, expired film

gaffer:  sea creature? someone asked

thanks to all the amazing folks who came to the vernissage!  works will be up until november 30th 2010.