Coasters

 

Kelly Mark

Last month the CBC asked me to write about Toronto artist Kelly Mark, and in particular, an ill-fated collaboration we worked on together for two years. That story can be read here: 

More recently, Momus ran a piece called “Remembering Kelly Mark”, featuring recollections from publisher Sky Goodden and other close friends, collaborators, and supporters, including Micah Lexier, Christina Ritchie, Anthony Cooper, Dell Pohlman and Lauren Raymore Pohlman, Dean Baldwin Lew, Paulette Phillips, and Paul E. Bain. Roula and I both contributed brief remembrances, also. 

It can be read at Momus.ca, here. 

"Kelly Mark had big dick energy. She was a total cunt. I loved her. [...]

Kelly was a master of minutiae. She was ever-dissecting work patterns, isolating fragments, and process into component parts for examination, where actions in repetition help dissolve our illusions.

Refusing an artist fee in lieu of minimum wage, she gives us a lens to observe our unpaid labor. The drywaller earns more. I began conversations about potential projects with, “What’s your catering budget?” (it’s always higher than artist fees). These institutional critiques aimed at assumed patterns were a delight to unbalance in cahoots. I take joy in playing bartender to patrons who treat me as one and Kelly’s “STAFF” jacket is emblematic of this cloak-and-dagger where we hide in plain sight to gain entry. As artists our unique power can be a chameleonic approach to social class. [...]

Kelly, I am angry at you for not letting me in on the plan. Angrier at myself, far away, for not knowing. I’ll carry on your light, flickering off this Zippo you left me . . . sleep well, friend.”

- Dean Baldwin Lew

Dean Baldwin Lew | Eel’s Wallet

Dean Baldwin Lew

Eel’s Wallet

Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2014

16 x 11 x 3.5 cm (closed) 16 x 21.5 x 2 cm (open)

Edition of 47 signed and numbered copies

A continuation of the artist's many alcohol-themed projects (including bars for Nuit Blanche, the Venice Bienalle, etc., etc.) this eel-skin wallet contains virtually every possible event drink ticket currently in circulation. Buy one, and wherever you are the drinks are always on the house.

"My favourite? “Eel’s Wallet” by Dean Baldwin, an edition of 47 wallets stuffed full of drinks tickets, which bizarrely becomes some sort of “book” for which we have no name."

- AA Bronson, Time Out Magazine "Five Picks from the London Art Book Fair".

Baldwin Lew's debut exhibition at MKG127 opens today. Titled Not only is everything ours but also everyone else’s, the show runs until November 18th, 2023, with new interventions throughout the run. 

Bibliography

 

Tomorrow is the last day to see the MKG127 summer group exhibition Bibliography, which features novels, math books, textbooks, phone books, matchbooks and more, by Dean Baldwin Lew, Alan Belcher, Adam David Brown, Bill Burns, Michael Dumontier, Dave Dyment, Liza Eurich, Sara Graham, Instant Coffee, Laura Kikauka, Kristiina Lahde, Jason Lujan, Gwen MacGregor, John Marriott, Luke Parnell, Roula Partheniou, Geoffrey Pugen, Jayce Salloum, Monica Tap, Joy Walker, and Laurel Woodcock.

Press release: 

"The format of the book has proved remarkably resilient in the face of breakthroughs in other technologies. Its early demise has been predicted continually – with the advent of cinema, television, the personal computer and the e-book reader. Even the phonograph was once cause for alarm, as evidenced in Octave Uzanne’s short story from 1894, The End of Books:

“If by books you are to be understood as referring to our innumerable collections of paper, printed, sewed, and bound in a cover announcing the title of the work, I own to you frankly that I do not believe (and the progress of electricity and modern mechanism forbids me to believe) that Gutenberg’s invention can do otherwise than sooner or later fall into desuetude as a means of current interpretation of our mental products.”

Bibliophiles needn’t have worried. While the death knell rang throughout the last century-plus, the codex held steady. Today physical books still outsell their electronic counterparts four-to-one. Sixty-eight percent of readers between the age of 18 and 29 prefer printed volumes, suggesting the trend is not drifting downward.

This exhibition celebrates the multi-faceted form of the book with a wide array of treatments, from foregrounding text, typography, the page, the title, or the cover, to using the form of the book as context for content."

For more information, visit the MKG127 website, here. 

Bibliography

 

My relationship with gallerist Michael Klein can be traced back to our shared love of books and records. We met when he would come to Art Metropole on Friday nights, for Cocktails. He had worked there a decade or so before me, and left to raise his two children. 

Once they were old enough, he decided to open his own commercial gallery, and invited Roula and I to join the roster. At the time (reductively) I made records and she made books. The three of us are also in Bookclub together, a group of ten artists, authors, publishers and curators who collect artists’ publications (the others members are Micah Lexier, Bill Clarke, Paul Van Kooy, Wendy Gomoll, Derek Sullivan, Sarah Robayo Sheridan, and Dereck McCormack). 

In 2018, MKG127 hosted a show called Record Shop, in which artists such as Sonny Assu, Deanna Bowen, Geoffrey Pugen, Marla Hlady, Christof Migone, Eleanor King, Jacob Whibley, Michael Dumontier, Suzie Smith, Instant Coffee, Jeffrey & Humphrey and Laura Kikauka presented work made with “record shop materials”, such as posters and playlists, and the vinyl record itself (it’s “material and sentiment”). 

Five years later, the gallery follows up with an exhibition about books. Titled, Bibliography, the show explores various formal and conceptual investigations into the form of the folio, the codex, etc. It opens today at 2pm. 

My contribution is the size-as photo above, titled Nothing To Infinity. 

For more information, see the press release below or visit the gallery website, here. 

July 8 – August 19

Opening Saturday, July 8, 2-5 PM

MKG127 is excited to present Bibliography, a group exhibition including new and existing works by gallery artists including:

Dean Baldwin Lew, Alan Belcher, Adam David Brown, Bill Burns, Michael Dumontier, Dave Dyment, Liza Eurich, Sara Graham, Instant Coffee, Laura Kikauka, Kristiina Lahde, Jason Lujan, Gwen MacGregor, John Marriott, Luke Parnell, Roula Partheniou, Geoffrey Pugen, Jayce Salloum, Monica Tap, Joy Walker, and Laurel Woodcock.

The format of the book has proved remarkably resilient in the face of breakthroughs in other technologies. Its early demise has been predicted continually – with the advent of cinema, television, the personal computer and the e-book reader. Even the phonograph was once cause for alarm, as evidenced in Octave Uzanne’s short story from 1894, The End of Books:

“If by books you are to be understood as referring to our innumerable collections of paper, printed, sewed, and bound in a cover announcing the title of the work, I own to you frankly that I do not believe (and the progress of electricity and modern mechanism forbids me to believe) that Gutenberg’s invention can do otherwise than sooner or later fall into desuetude as a means of current interpretation of our mental products.”

Bibliophiles needn’t have worried. While the death knell rang throughout the last century-plus, the codex held steady. Today physical books still outsell their electronic counterparts four-to-one. Sixty-eight percent of readers between the age of 18 and 29 prefer printed volumes, suggesting the trend is not drifting downward.

This exhibition celebrates the multi-faceted form of the book with a wide array of treatments, from foregrounding text, typography, the page, the title, or the cover, to using the form of the book as context for content.

Vanessa Maltese | Crowd

 

Vanessa Maltese

Crowd

Dufftown, Scotland: Glenfiddich, 2023

8.5 cm diameter 

Edition size unknown

Last week I was in Toronto to host an event for the Glenfiddich Artist-in-Residence program, at the Gladstone Hotel. This was the first in-person event in three years as Covid caused the program to be cancelled for 2020, and the last two years were held over Zoom. 

Participants in the Zoom event were sent parcels in the mail that included whisky, Glenfiddich swag and and an artist multiple. The first year included an etched glass by Christof Migone & Marla Hlady, and a coaster by Dean Baldwin Lew. Last year was a second coaster project, by Lee Henderson. 

This year former-resident Vanessa Maltese was invited to produce the third coaster project. She returned to her 2018 project, which explored the subject of pareidolia - the phenomenon in which the human brain perceive familiar shapes in unfamiliar surroundings. Titled Crowd, the set of three coasters depict drink stains which suggest faces. 

The selected artist for the summer of 2023 was announced at the event: Derek Liddington. Derek's proposal was that he was going to hunt for giants in the Scottish landscape, a logical continuation from his current exhibition at Daniel Faria Gallery. 

Dean Baldwin Lew | Mixed Drinks

Dean Baldwin Lew

Mixed Drinks

Toronto, Canada: Museum of Canadian Art, 2022

190 pp., 11.5 x 7 x 1.3 cm. softcover

Edition size unknown

'The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends Is the Highest Form of Art" claimed San Francisco artist Tom Marioni, in the title of his proto-relational-aesthetics work from 1970. I can't think of an artist who better inhabits the sentiment than Dean Baldwin Lew. He has hosted countless events that bring people together around food and drink, typically serving alcohol from behind bars that he has fashioned out of travel trunks, pianos, and - for the closing exhibition of the old MoCA Toronto space - a yacht turned on its side (see below). 

When I was at Mercer Union he produced a mini-bar for a group show I put together, by building the smallest possible functioning saloon. It could uncomfortably seat maybe four patrons at a time, because everything was scaled down to the size of hotel mini-bar bottles (see below). He would leave his card on the counter and visitors could call him anytime and he would arrive (through a hole in the wall) to serve them up a cocktail. Part-way through the exhibition we held an 'open mic night', from a stage the size of an LP jacket. Performers included a singer-songwriter, a comic, a steel drum player, and a performance artist (Ulysses Castellanos, who tried to light his dick on fire). 

Last fall Toronto's Museum of Contemporary Art hosted an exhibition by Thomas Demand called House of Cards. Alongside Demand's primarily photographic work, the exhibition featured guest artists Martin Boyce, Kelly Jazvac, Caruso St John and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Tiravanija became the poster boy for 'relational' work but his practice always left me a little cold, particularly when Toronto had the Instant Coffee Trailers and Dean Baldwin's bars. 

MoCA wisely invited Baldwin Lew as a guest to the guest artists, particularly Tiravanija's karaoke bar. His contribution is a cocktail recipe book. Thomas Demand, Martin Boyce, Kelly Jazvac and Rirkrit Tiravanija all contributed drinks. As did fifty other artists and friends of Baldwin Lew: Abbas Akhavan, Aman Sandhu, Bridget Moser, Callum Schuster, David Liss, Debashis Sinha, Diane Borsato, Eleanor King, FASTWURMS, Guillaume Adjutor Provost, Jennifer Rose Sciarrino, Jeon-Heon Bae 배종헌, Jon Sasaki, Joni Cheung, Joseph Tisiga, Karen Kraven, Katie Bethune-Leaman, Kristan Horton, Lili Huston-Herterich, Maria Simmons, Mégane Voghell, Michel de Broin, Nadège Grebmeier Forget, Oliver Husain, Peaches, Popsy Johnstone, Radames “Juni” Figueroa, Ryan Gander and Simon Turnbull, Scott Rogers, Stephanie Comilang, Ulysses Castellanos, Vanessa Maltese, Vera Frenkel and many others. 

Here are some sample recipes: 

Bridget Moser

High Nuun Margarita (an active lifestyle cocktail)

 

2 oz silver tequila

1/2 oz Cointreau

1 Nuun Sport hydrating electrolyte tablet in Fresh Lime flavour (*if a caffeine-free option is preferred, sub Lemon Lime flavour)

salt for glass (optional)

ice cubes

lime wedge (optional)

 

1. Salt the glass (optional). Rub lime wedge around the rim of glass and dip rim in salt. If you are using a Nalgene water bottle, Hydro Flask, Hydrapak Softflask, etc., you may prefer to skip this step.

 

2. Dissolve Nuun hydrating electrolyte tablet in 4 to 6 oz of cold water in a cocktail shaker. Wait a few minutes. 

 

3. Once dissolved, add tequila, Cointreau, and ice. Shake vigorously for 10 seconds or desired workout period. Strain into prepared cocktail glass or preferred hydration vessel. Garnish with a lime wedge if desired or possible.

 

Best consumed mid-day, around 12:00 pm.

 

Bridget Moser is a video and performance artist who lives and works in Toronto. She is also a runner training for a half marathon.

 

OPAVIVARÁ! 

Golden Shower

1 barril de 20L de cerveja artesanal (sugerimos lager, blond ou pilsen)

1 vaso sanitário

1 ducha higiênica

1 bobina de alumínio

1 cilindro de gás CO2

peças de conexão

muito gelo

um bando de pessoas

Pegue um vaso sanitário e se livre da caixa acoplada. Pegue o barril de 20L de cerveja e coloque em seu lugar. Ponha a bobina de alumínio dentro do vaso, conecte uma das extremidades ao barril e a outra à ducha higiênica. Ajuste a pressão de CO2, certificando-se de que a cerveja esteja fluindo, quando servida pela duchinha. Cubra a serpentina dentro do vaso sanitário com gelo e chama os amigos para abrirem suas bocas e tomarem um refrescante Golden Shower!!

 

Diane Borsato

Hot milky tea

 

Assam (strong, black) tea, boiling hot water, milk

 

First take a long walk up a steep trail.

Swim in cold water.

Walk home in the rain, cold and sore.

Swim again (you are already soaking wet, after all).

Take off your wet clothes, wrap yourself in a warm sweater, towel or bathrobe

and prepare tea as follows:

Add 1 heaping tbsp. of tea leaves into a filter, set in a large mug.

Heat water in a kettle to boiling. Just as soon as the water boils, turn off the heat

and pour the very hot water through the tea into the cup.

Cover with a saucer, and steep for 3 to 3 ½ minutes. Use a timer to be precise.

Uncover, remove filter, and add milk to the tea.

Enjoy the hot milky tea, gratefully.

 

Caroline Monnet

Ti Jacques

 

1 dose de sirop d’érable

5 dose de rhum Agricole

Quartiers de lime

Menthe fraiche

           

Dans un petit verre, verser 1 dose de sirop d’érable.

Écrasez dans le verre un quartier de lime pour faire sortir le jus.

À l’aide d’un bâton en bois écraser la lime au fond du verre avec la menthe.

Ajouter le rhum. Assurez-vous d’utiliser un rhum de qualité, de préférence des Antilles.

Mélanger. On peut ajouter des glaçons, mais mon parrain Jacques, le boit sans, comme tous les marins bretons.

 

I regret that I was too busy to participate, but I ended up in the book anyway - mocked for multiples, no less: 

Jon Sasaki

Dave's Swamp Water

A little splash stolen from every bottle in Dave Dyment's liquor cabinet, replaced with an equivalent amount of water.

Prepare two mason jars ahead of time, one containing distilled water and the other empty. Arrive at Dave's house and find a way to get invited inside. Once inside, distract him by asking about a book or a multiple or a rare record or some such thing; when he leaves the room to retrieve it, start filling your empty mason jar. The process is complete when you have roughly 4 oz of mixed liquor, or when Dave is about to return to the room.

Baldwin's own cocktail involves taking a pineapple on a camping trip, and reminds me of my earliest memory of him. We were at the party for Rebecca Belmore, hosted by the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, almost twenty years ago. There was an open bar and a long table of food. Baldwin began repurposing pineapples as tumblers and serving drinks from them, perhaps surreptitiously, after the bar was closed (my memories are hazy).  

Mixed Drinks was made possible with support from Paul Bain and Aaron Kirsch. It is available from Art Metropole, for $15.00 CDN, here. The drink ticket bookmarks and handwritten drink coasters were given out at the launch party in the fall, which I'll consider as part of the (free) deluxe edition. 

Dean Baldwin | Eel’s Wallet

Dean Baldwin
Eel’s Wallet
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2014
16 x 11 x 3.5 cm (closed) 16 x 21.5 x 2 cm (open)
Edition of 47 signed and numbered copies

A continuation of the artist's many alcohol-themed projects (including bars for Nuit Blanche, the Venice Bienalle, etc., etc.) this eel-skin wallet contains virtually every possible event drink ticket currently in use. Buy one, and wherever you are the drinks are always on the house.

Available from www.nothingelsepress.com. 


Nothing Else Press and Eel's Wallet chosen by AA Bronson as one of his top five favourites at the London Art Book Fair last month:

"Named after Dick Higgins Fluxus-heavy press of the ’60s and ’70s, Something Else Press, this young publisher seemed the only ones present to have produced an entire new line of works especially for the Fair. My favourite? “Eel’s Wallet” by Dean Baldwin, an edition of 47 wallets stuffed full of drinks tickets, which bizarrely becomes some sort of “book” for which we have no name."

- AA Bronson, Time Out Magazine "Five Picks from the London Art Book Fair".