FRI/SAT/SUN/MON!!!!


I been bad, so sorry, life was hectic, life is hectic and occasionally intense. I have not been near you Blog and there's so much I have to say, so much that I've been meaning to say.
In the meanwhile, I will be practicing the art of public speaking over the weekend.
I'm part of some Performance Galore at an event called STOP TALKING 2 which may be like LOOK WHO'S TALKING 2 but without the breeding. Friday, November 27, 9:30pm - 11:15pm at GOOD BLOOD BAD BLOOD, 13 KENSINGTON Avenue (Kensington Market). Thinking I may talk about My Dream Bar at this event...
"But Robert, you don't drink!"
"Ha ha, true and it's all a part of...My Dream Bar..."
I hope you haven't all heard it already....
Thennn the next nite, saturday November 28th, I'll be yammering at this:
!!!!!!!!!
LATE all NIGHT ART PARTY!!

House of Everlasting Super Joy presents a total transformation of our space bringing the demons and deities from our minds to our walls! But not only the walls! The floors! hanging like scurvy dawgs from the ceiling!

The idea is this, the wizards of today will use any media to cast their spells, to cultivate psychic energy. Part of the future wizards job is too expand the capacity for a room full of people to generate positive orgones, thus allowing the audience to feel freer, to think positively in the face of evil, to talk to that girl youve been noticing for a few weeks.

VIDEO PROJECTION BY JOL THOMSON

MURALS DRAWINGS AND PRINTS BY
TOMAS DEL BALSO
DAN ROCCA
Alexandra Mackenzie

INSTALLATION BY
Neelam Kler
Dimitri Karakostas
movie prop installation by exploding motor car!!

PERFORMANCE BY
JON MCurley
Robert Dayton
Alex Coleurs

Tarp Installation by Vanessa Bee Rieger AND David Hanes
There will be refreshments, NEW ORLEANS STYLE RICE AND BEANS!
FUN ALL NIGHT!


Thennnn the next nite at FEELINGS it's a return to MOODS:
Before FEELINGS was MOODS with DJ Body beautiful and Sipreano.
Then DJ Body Beautiful's co-hort Sipreano left and it all changed...but this nite is a return to MOODS with a special post-recitation mini-set by Sip!
We start after bar trivia which ends between 9:30 and 10.
Sip will pop in laaaater. He has something to take care of first.
No cover but the cover of night. Sunday. the Ossington (61 Ossington).

Then Monday the 30th is UNVEILING!!! So excited about this:
"THE UNVEILING"

Monday, Nov. 30, 2009, 10pm (don't be late as we are rarely very tardy)
The Ossington (61 Ossington Ave., Toronto)
Free admission
Followed by a soiree/party
ONE-NIGHT-ONLY!

"Unveiling #2"
Hosts Robert Dayton, Junior, and William A. Davison dramatically unveil the latest and never-before-seen (until this very eve) creation of artist Fiona Smyth, fresh from her intensely stunning show at the INDEXG Gallery (read review here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/the-true-north-plastic-and-dyspeptic/article1336915/ )

This is exciting as Fiona is a major seen and unseen influence on the current widespread drawing front. Fiona will also be selling the second issue of her art mag THE WILDING at this event!

Then they will be auctioning off this masterpiece with minimum bid starting at just 50 dollars !!! A low price for this amazing work by this important artist...

This will be followed by a soiree/party
ONE-NIGHT-ONLY! So if you want to bid and possibly attain this never-before-seen work by a great artist, you best attend! Even if you are broke like us, you do not want to miss this opportunity of UNVEILING....

"The Unveiling" is a new series of one-night-only soirees/exhibitions, held monthly (more or less) in the back room of The Ossington Bar, which playfully reinvent a romantic and antiquated concept - that of a single artist "unveiling" their latest creation for a gathering of colleagues, collectors, critics, and cultural elite. The series is organized and hosted by local artists/curators William A. Davison and Robert Dayton and presented as part of Intervention Mondays.

"It's largely an excuse to have a party once a month. We don't take anything too seriously and we fully recognize the potential for humor in this idea. We want to emphasize the fun factor." says spokesperson and series originator Davison. Indeed, for those who know the work of either Davison or Dayton, a humorous, subversive approach is not at all unexpected. "At the same time," Davison continues, "we have a deep respect for the work we will be presenting and we feel that this series will provide a highly unique, entertaining, and engaging way for some of our favorite artists to show their recent creations."


BIO
Fiona Smyth is a Toronto based artist exploring popular and alternative cultural icons and imagery. Smyth's work probes these timely societal, sometimes intense and always relevant topics with a sense of humour, wonder and catastrophic consequence. She also employs surrealist, abstractionist, spiritual, feminist and pro-sexual strategies to achieve her unique aesthetic. Her use of media also reflects this range of interest by using different formats from which to engage her audience including comics,
illustration, painting, animation, music covers, web-based art and her fabulous murals. Smyth has exhibited in Taichung /Taiwan, Venice/ Lido, Jeollabuk-Do/ South Korea, New York City, Winnipeg and most recently The Parkdale Gyre at INDEXG in Toronto.

For upcoming gigs check www.myspace.com/fionasmyth

And I have to try to get a grant written by Tuesday...oy vey....
How are you?

"THE UNVEILING"


"THE UNVEILING"

Monday, Oct. 26, 2009, 10pm (don't be late as we are rarely very tardy)
The Ossington (61 Ossington Street, Toronto)
Free admission

"Unveiling #1"
Hosts Robert Dayton, Junior and William A. Davison dramatically unveil the latest and never-before-seen (until this very eve) creation of artist and musician Drue Langlois!

Then they will be auctioning off this masterpiece with minimum bid starting at just 50 dollars !!! A low price for this amazing work by this important artist...

This will be followed by a soiree/party
ONE-NIGHT-ONLY! So if you want to bid and possibly attain this never-before-seen stunning curiousity, you best attend! Even if you are broke like us, you do not want to miss this opportunity of UNVEILING (and we-as the only eyes besides the artist that have seen this work- guarantee that this work is amazing....)



"The Unveiling" is a new series of one-night-only soirees/exhibitions, held monthly (more or less) in the back room of The Ossington Bar, which playfully reinvent a romantic and antiquated concept - that of a single artist "unveiling" their latest creation for a gathering of colleagues, collectors, critics, and cultural elite. The series is organized and hosted by local artists/curators William A. Davison and Robert Dayton.

The series kicks off on Oct. 26th as "Unveiling #1" presents the latest soft sculpture/doll creation of artist, comics creator, animator, musician and former Royal Art Lodge member Drue Langlois. Please note that the artist will not be present at this unveiling. However, Mr. Langlois has given the organizers explicit instructions on how to present his work, which Messrs. Dayton and Davison will execute in their own inimitable style.

DRUE LANGLOIS ARTIST STATEMENT:
"Compare an early drawing of Goofy (from "Lonesome Ghosts" let’s say) to the dog from "Family Guy". Do you believe that Brian Griffin is a living creature or do you imagine, like I do, a bored person drawing a flat, uninspired drawing on a computer and someone recording dialogue in a sound booth? Since the style is so unconvincing, I wouldn't feel anything if the character was suddenly stabbed by someone. In Lonesome Ghosts, the forms and environments are vividly convincing, so that by the time Goofy sees his rear end and, thinking it is a ghost, shoves a nail into it, you can really feel that he is in a lot of pain.

Pre-70's Disney animation was my first exposure to art at an early age. Goofy's complicated snout (with two chiclet teeth) intrigued me and I worked hard to learn how to draw it. Although not clearly defined in my own mind at the time, I could see that this company's principles on character design (and how important they considered structure to be) were superior to the flat design techniques of other cartoon companies from the 70's onwards.

I have studied the application of form for many years and it makes its’ way into my illustrations and dolls. I am surprised that I do not see it being used by people more often. Flat, decorative character styles in artwork and toy design are stale, like wallpaper. Personally, my eye just passes right over this style, no matter how garish they make the colours.

A love for structural principles is not necessarily a witless nostalgia for a certain time period, they just happened to have been applied more in the past. Realistically sculptured designs and an understanding of perspective appeal to the parts of your mind that want to feel how the parts fit together, or that help you imagine being in the character's environment. These things can be applied to new projects to make people really feel the nail in the ass."


DRUE LANGLOIS BIO:

"I have been making artwork since I was very young, being inspired by pre-70's Disney animation. The cartoons led me to an interest in comic books. Starting off with Disney comics and "Harvey" books like "Spooky, the tuff little ghost", I was eventually drawn more and more toward detail and human characters.

My first art-related job was making cartoons for a local paper when I was 12. Between 1987 and 1995, I started drawing human super-hero stories that were rigid and cluttered at first eventually becoming more graceful. This was soon followed by enrollment in a Fine Arts course at the University of Manitoba (1992-1996). My brother Myles Langlois was experimenting with video during this time period and I started working on those with him.

1995 was the beginning of my musical collaborations with Myles and then, later in the year, with Michael Dumontier. This early lo-fi music, mostly acoustic guitar and singing, was recorded on a dual cassette recorder that could be used to overlap layers of sound.

In early 1996, some University of Manitoba Fine Arts students and I formed a drawing group called the "Royal Art Lodge". We also made a lot of music: Avignon, Albatross, No Pirates, and Eyeball Hurt and the Medicine (later, Double Greeting) were some of the Royal Art Lodge bands that I was involved in.

Eyeball Hurt and the Medicine (my band with Michael Dumontier) started playing shows in 1997 and we wanted to have some attractive band merchandise so we sold our homemade dolls under the band's name. These dolls were based on one that I had made for Michael as a gift in 1994.

The assembly-line style of making Royal Art Lodge drawings helped me to become prolific but the structure of my drawings began to suffer. So, semi-consciously, to ensure that I didn't become too lazy about my principles in form, I started to work on small comic books again in 1999, and independently distributing them under the banner of "Samuel Appleface Comics".

The Samuel Appleface comics, in conjunction with RAL art and music shows in Vancouver, led me to a deep involvement in zine culture for a number of years. Marc Bell, Amy Lockhart, Jason McLean, Broken Pencil Magazine, Robert Dayton, and Dame Darcy were a few of the people I worked with during those years.

Around the same time, I was becoming more successful with my solo art career and was represented by Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. Also, the dolls that Michael and I had been making were selling really well and our band started playing music shows at art gallery openings more often than bars. I switched representation to Katharine Mulherin of Toronto and have had regular shows since then.

In 2003, The Royal Art Lodge had a touring exhibit called "Ask the Dust" that went to New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Middleburg Netherlands, and Seoul Korea. I became more interested in my solo career and left the group around this time, as did Hollie Dzama and Myles Langlois. Simultaneously, Michael and I decided to stop making the "Eyeball Hurt" dolls.

In 2003-04, I continued to have solo exhibitions in Germany, Italy and Canada and I illustrated the comic book miniseries, "Captain Canuck: Unholy War". I had a show at Zeihersmith gallery in New York where I exhibited solo dolls and since then I have been making small batches of them every few months.

In 2005, I formed a new band (after moving to Montreal) called "Bold Saber" and started playing and practicing music more than ever before. In that same year, Riel Langlois and I formed the "Hot Hail Productions" company publishing a compilation of my Protoprize comics. This was followed in 2007 by "Overachiever" and a concluding chapter to the Captain Canuck miniseries.

In 2008 I holed up in Brandon, MB, working at a greenhouse, and studying animation- illustrating webisodes of the animated space opera, "Superspace" for Hot Hail. I moved to Toronto that fall and put on a few Bold Saber shows, as well as one in Chicago to coincide with a large showing of dolls at the "Home gallery".

As of 2009, Hot Hail presents weekly web comics. My newest one is "Pools of Zara", which is an ongoing story presented in a weekly punchline format.


For further information, feel free to contact The Unveiling's hosts William A. Davison and Robert Dayton.

William - davison@recordism.com
Robert - moustachedpainless@yahoo.com

Many thanks to Jubal Brown/Intervention Mondays and The Ossington!