And continuing on with the good stuff…

NOVEL IDEAS @ MARS

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer.
Image from MaRS it is that constantly expanding structure on the South East corner of College and University. A think tank and hub for entrepreneurs, technology and social innovation, MaRS also offers something for those who are not thinking about VCs, market analysis and exit strategies.

Tina Urman, an educator at U of T, has a great book club, NOVEL IDEAS, where she focuses on the recent best selling fiction. Unfortunately I missed out on all but one – The Glass Room by Simon Mawer. The book is an account of a fictional couple living in Czechoslovakia in the years leading up the Second World War.

The husband is a secular Jew, the wife an agnostic Christian but in their cosmopolitan social circle their marriage of dissimilar religious histories creates no scandal and in their world the threat of Nazism is barely a shadow. They are wealthy, modern and supporters of the arts. In their desire to be avant-garde they commission an architect to build a house for them that offers rooms exposed to the outside; clear floor to ceiling glass rather than heavy baroque stone facades allow in the light but in the end offer no protection from the darkness that seeps in when the Nazis invade Czechoslovakia.

The house becomes another character in this novel but it is the only character in the book that is not fictional. The house was designed by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as a commission by a Jewish family prior to World War II and is now referred to as the The Tugendhat House.

The author’s descriptions of the structure demonstrate deep understanding of the paradigm shift that was occurring in Europe at this time and how architecture was a bold metaphor of this.

FYI – The Glass Room is a great companion book to Annie Cohen-Solal’s Leo and His Circle.

More info on NOVEL IDEAS at MaRS…

The Tugendhat House by Mies van der Rohe, Czech Republic.
Image from the New York Times.

DOORS OPEN @ EVERYWHERE IN TORONTO

Inside Mies van der Rohe’s Toronto Dominion Centre, Toronto.
Image from BlogTO.

And speaking of Mies…

…I missed van der Rohe’s Toronto Dominion Centre Tour on the DOORS OPEN circuit! 2x!

As a photographer I will fully confess to having a voyeuristic bent. And peeking into places gives me a wicked little thrill. DOORS OPEN TORONTO allows the public to a legitimate peek. Stantec’s recent transition to 401 Wellington (formerly McGregor Socks) is a fantastic space. If you are interested in how to retrofit and renovate a warehouse to successfully create a humane corporate environment then don’t miss the 2012 tour!

Toronto architect David Peterson’s condo at 55 Ritchie Avenue offered an engaging tour relevant to the rethinking of good condo design. The building was informed not only by his education in the Netherlands, but also his Caribbean background and Canadian upbringing. David makes it all work! The cherry on top was the tour of Dentist / Curator (how often can one put those 2 titles to together!) Kenneth Montague’s condo (two stories, roof top terrace and sauna, hello!). For me was like being lost in a candy store with a whole lot of well designed, sweet stuff!

As I didn’t drag my pro camera along for the walks Saturday and Sunday I defer to BlogTO’s collection for great shots of some of the buildings on display –  DOORS OPEN 2011 BlogTO photographs.

More on DOORS OPEN TORONTO…

Kenneth Montague’s (Wedge Curatorial) condo at the 55 Ritchie Condo
complex by architect David Peterson. Image from Design Lines. 

HANAN AL-SHAYKH @ LUMINATO

Hanan is a writer whose stories can be hard to swallow. Her narratives though are necessary ones and her courage has earned her the position of the definitive female writer of what is often referred to as the ‘Arab world’. Her beautiful spirit and soft, accessible demeanor conceal the bold tigress underneath.

We had occasion to meet on the second night of the LUMINATO’s performance of 1001 Nights. Hanan was asked by Tim Supple (director of Luminato’s commissioned adaptation of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream) to adapt the original stories of 1001 Nights creating a play in two parts. Each part was  performed on separate evenings with new tales interweaving with the previous night’s. An incredible feat!

While in Toronto for 1001 Nights, Hanan also gave a talk at TIFF on her books. At a time when Arab and Muslim women have to continually bump up against the relief of what the west has molded as their definitive casting I felt that the Hanan’s talk offered a complex counterpoint to the simplification of what an Arab woman is understood to be.

For books by Hanan I check out my Amazon Shop.

More on HANAN AL-SHAYKH…

Authour Hanan Al-Shaykh. Image from Arab Lit.

CONFLUENCE @ LUMINATO

Akram Khan and Nitin Sawhney performing Confluence. Image from The Star.

Actually the entire ten days of Toronto’s amazing Arts festival – LUMINATO – was one incredible highlight in my year! There were cerebral, breezy, lovely, dramatic, edgy moments as well as moments of pure ecstasy. World-renowned choreographer / dancer Akram Khan and producer / composer / musician Nitin Sawhney’s CONFLUENCE was out of this world. My skin was popping with goose pimples the entire time as I adore Nitin’s music and having a love of mystical forms of dance this performance was transcendent and left me with little words to define the emotion.

More on Choreographer / Dancer Akram Khan…

More on Producer / Composer / Musician Nitin Sawhney…

Confluence with Akram Khan and Niitin Sawhney from yeastculture on Vimeo.

BIG CITY BIG IDEAS @ U of T & NEW FORCES IN FRENCH DESIGN @ OCAD U

San Francisco Skyline. Photo by Leah Snyder.

I am lumping both of these lecture series together because in a serendipitous way their timing perfectly overlapped and giving me great synergy and even better concepts to revisit and research in 2012.

For Toronto’s Urban Strategies Inc, Big Cities Big Ideas was their 25^th anniversary celebration. Their PR people said a party would be passé so why not a lecture series open to the public instead? What a great idea as we all became an informed part of their celebration and instead of only one night of festivities it extended the entire fall!

New Forces in French Design was a collaborative effort between OCAD U, AZURE Magazine and the Consulat Général de France. The 3 lecture series featured design journalist Cédric Morisset, architect Brendan MacFarlane of Jakob + MacFarlane and architect / artist / designer / provocateur Didier Faustino.

This series exposed me to current design and architecture in France that I had no idea about and I was thrilled to experience it from the view point of its creators and innovators.

More info on NEW FORCES IN FRENCH DESIGN…

FYI – IDS jams on the New Forces in French Design riff on Friday during their Trade Talks on opening day of the Show.

“Forward thinking Parisian designer, Matali Crasset is recognized internationally for her transformative concepts that push the boundaries of contemporary design.”

Find out more  about Matali  Crasset and the event on IDS…

The Financial District, King Street, Toronto. Photo by Leah Snyder.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC SING-A-LONG @ TIFF

And the final highlight, just as 2011 was wrapping up, was The Sound of Music sing-a-long at TIFF. Audience participation! And I sang the whole way through! Yes, here you have it I am a sucker for musical mush by Rodgers & Hammerstein. Captain Von Trapp was my first crush and I fancied someday someone would sing to me in a gazebo about his miserable-childhood-but-he-must-have-done-something-good-because he found MOI!

It’s mozzarella all the way, loaded with sweet cheesy moments but it starts the new year off right as the moral of the story: DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM.

And when 2012 brings its first predicament ask yourself:

“WHAT WOULD MARIA DO?”

Hamsa, Khamsah, Hand of Myriam as well as the Hand of Fatima.

Regardless of her name her hand joins three religions in the symbolic quest to push away the evil eye and attract luck. I lost my Moroccan ‘Hand of Fatima’ and was thinking the other day I need to get me one when I saw one on the neck of some hairdresser and then on twitter by a jewellery designer, Ayala Raiter.

Images below from studio of artist Nava Waxman.

Images of an encaustic piece by Nava Waxman along with wood busts from a Nairobi market and
a vintage kimono. Hand of Fatima incorporated into the encaustic piece lower right corner.

See more of Nava’s exquisite encaustic collages.

See More of Ayala’s mystical jewellery.

Here at my sister’s cottage. Holiday time? Not for me. Just a change of scenery. When I look up from my computer today I can see trees instead of the neighbour’s brick wall – the view from my office at home in Toronto. My plan is to read a book a day (along with organize my receipts, sort through my files on the computer, finish up 2 client websites, and do some online research, blahblahblah…!)

My mom says there is no way I am going to read 10 books in 10 days. And we know how we are when we are told by a parent that we can’t do something! The lingering 4 yr old in us gets defiant. Thanks Mom. Now I have some cheeky energy in me and I am going to prove you wrong!

Here’s the list:
“Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit” by Tom Rand (already started on that one)
“Contemporary African Art Since 1980” by Enwezor Okeke-Agulu (started on that one too and saw Okeke-Agulu lecture on this, so I kinda did the Coles note version in person, right?)
“Afro-Modern: Journey Through the Black Atlantic” Edited by Tanya Barson & Peter Gorschluter
“A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader” Edited by Antony Easthope & Kate McGowan
(oh boy, this one is a tough read, tried a few times, must do it with a coffee in hand)
“Theory of the Avant-Garde” Peter Burger (another oh boy…)
“Post-modernism and Popular Culture” Angela McRobbie
“Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker” Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw
“Believing is Seeing: Creating the Cultural of Art” Mary Anne Staniszewski
“Beirut 39: New Writing from the Arab World” Edited by Samuel Shimon
“The Book of Secrets” M. G. Vassanji
“On Photography” Susan Sontag
“Sammy and Rosie Get Laid” Hanif Kureishi (read when it came out, but think it is time for a re-read)
“Conversations with Tariq Ali: Speaking of Empire and Resistance” Tariq Ali
“India: A Million Mutinies Now” V.S. Naipul
(read and re-read now reading again)
“The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture” by Robert Fulford

Ok, so apparently I can read by I cannot count! There are actually 15 books in the photograph and two are missing – Hanan Al-Shayk’s “Beirut Blues” (which I decided not to count as I am almost done. Thought I could finish on the way up but it was too hot in the car to bother, Hanan’s writing deserves my utmost attention) and “Post-Modernism for Beginners”. I brought this one along more as a reference rather than a read because with Post-Modernism, no matter how much I study critical theory and read all the texts by intense French intellectuals, I always feel like a beginner!

Some of the collection.

I am a bit of a nutter when it comes to books and magazines. I try not to go anywhere near a book store when the cash flow is low. The pain is too intense. Candy I can say no to and I am willing to say bye-bye to a sizzling pair of heels. Chocolate I can pass on as well as cute boys (with chocolate) making a pass at me.

The hardest thing to leave behind is a good book.

Now a good book & a good man?
Grab me a seat thank-you very much, I am going to stay awhile. How can I pass that up?

The rest of the collection.

My room on the last snowy Sunday morning

I attended a great documentary during the REEL ARTIST Film Festival back in February. If anyone is a fan of the artist Sol LeWitt then I say get yourself a copy of the DVD! You can purchase the DVD “Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings” online at the Checkerboard Film Foundation website. (FYI – My birthday is March 1, present suggestion ;) )

The documentary by Checkboard founder, Edgar B. Howard, was really fantastic. I have had a sideline interest in LeWitt’s work for awhile now, but this tipped me over the top and pushed me in with the dedicated. For anyone who doesn’t understand what the 20th century fuss was regarding abstract and non-representational art, this movie may convert you. LeWitt’s arrival at his concepts, the progression of each of his works, and the laborious, yet meditative, effort of the execution of the Wall Drawings is transcendent.

Much of the film was centred around MASS MoCA’s exhibit of LeWitt’s work that was installed in situ, after his death by assistants following his instructions…more on this later as this subject is a whole other post!

But the point of this post was that I was intrigued with the director’s decision to respect LeWitt’s request to not be in front of the camera. Nowhere in the documentary do we see LeWitt. You feel him though, and for me, not just through showing his masterpieces, but simply and most beautifully by showing us his studio – his personal space. The camera slowly pans around the inspiring location that was LeWitt’s place of work, his creative space where visions were dreamed then brought to life. There are all the relics of his everyday life as well as his career successes. The space has a patina of nostalgia with little keepsakes given to him by his children, and other odds and ends. His shoes. So wonderfully intimate. It was the perfect choice in lieu of the artist and I think it gave us more of a feeling of who LeWitt is then even having his physical presence in the film.

As a portrait artist who mainly uses photography as a medium, it is always such a challenge to capture just who your subject is in a simple, straightforward, one dimensional representation. Before I saw the documentary I was contemplating a project where I took photographs of artists’ working spaces, keeping the artists out though because someone’s space, the things that you find or even don’t find in that space, can speak so much as to who they are.

Last snowy Sunday.

Like LeWitt, I am not a big fan of being in front of the camera and much prefer the comfort of directing from behind it, but to give my readers a glimpse as to who I am I decided on the last snowy Sunday morning of winter to snap, from my bed, my space where dreams take place. It just took me a bit of time and 40 degree recording breaking heat to get it all organized!

L.

My bedside & heavy reading that encourages sleep. No offensive to Ms. Simone.

Jamais sans mes babouches…

& never without my heels either.

Painting by Soheila Esfahani, poetry by Rumi, feather by God.

Lord Ganesha – The Remover of All Obstacles.

My altar with gifts I find on my walks.

I cannot exist without a pile of books and magazines close to my bed / head.

The fuller picture.