Bonus!

Due to it's popularity and positive reception, the good folks at Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre have decided to extend Kunstkammer/Wunderkammer to run until September 18th. If you're in Toronto, come and check out the cabinet of curiosities while you still can!

Ink on glass

Earlier this summer I went out to Kananaskis, Alberta to visit Derek at his research campus. While there, I discovered a whole new medium: Crayola window writers. I spent hours defacing Derek et al's stunning living room view of the mountains... and I'm not sorry. A couple of months passed before I revisited this idea. I used regular permanent marker since the window markers are not translucent, and drew on two panes of glass, overlapped, and framed them. More to come.

A prize, more press, and the rest

A little while back, my Anonymous Mugshot paintings were awarded the first place prize in the Faces & Figures juried exhibition of the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto, California. Juror and curator Rene de Guzman made the selections for the show and awards.

In other news, I recently discovered some press coverage of the Grimsby Public Art Gallery's 11th Biennial Juried Exhibition: an article from NiagaraThisWeek.com, and a video report by TV Cogeco Ontario. My paintings can be seen at about the 1:20 mark, but the whole video is worth giving a watch.

It's been almost two weeks since I got back from teaching in London with Eaglearts Academy, and I miss my co-workers/new friends dearly. I got live amongst some of the most artistically talented people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. It was also an opportunity to teach international students learning English as their second or third language. I was primarily teaching Adobe Photoshop, without my own computer to teach from, so success in the class was contingent upon linguistic comprehension. This could have been extremely challenging and frustrating, but I was pleasantly surprised by their skill level and overall perseverance. It was really quite admirable.








Finally, laurapayneart.com is currently under construction and will hopefully be up and running by the end of the week. It will include a few new features, including some never-before-seen video work that I've completed in the last few months. Just clips, of course.

More on Kunstkammer/Wunderkammer

As I previously mentioned, the opening of Kunstkammer/Wunderkammer on Friday, July 23rd went very well. I met some great people and made some connections. Here is the original Akimbo exhibition posting:


















Since then, hundreds have been through the space and I've read some positive reviews. NOW Toronto listed it as a "must-see" show. R.M. Vaughan of the Globe & Mail gave it a good review also, which you can find on the website or in this Saturday's paper. Eye Weekly gave a mixed but overall pretty decent review as well, so here's my section:

"... Laura Payne’s intriguing study of James Earl Jones, Can You Tell Me? Indeed, Payne’s work, with its intention to reveal, might be closest to Spooner’s idea of a Wunderkammer object. A hypnotic loop of Jones’ audition for Sesame Street, in which he seems overly, awkwardly methodical, it is both familiar and startling. Jones could be a politician, an inmate, a terrorist, a news anchor. More than Blanchard, even, Payne makes something old and borrowed seem new again."

I must express my gratitude to the brilliant Rosemary Spooner who curated the entire show, and also I should say that it has been humbling to show my work among such talented and visionary artists as those in the show. It has been an enormous privilege.









Finally, I think my favorite moment today was discovering that not only has the Eye Weekly review been linked from the USA Today website, as they archive many publications, but that the article has been filed under "James Earl Jones". Yes!