City of Craft, Love and Money

A strong suggestion for those in the Toronto area, City of Craft, a wonderful event that I had the pleasure of being a part of last year is happening Dec 18 & 19 at The Theatre Centre. It only happens once a year, so don’t miss out! It's a great chance to support local crafters and buy some one of a kind holiday gifts. If you aren’t in the Toronto area, check out their website, it has lots of nifty stuff on it, including an artist interview I did this past weekend for an upcoming exhibition!

In conjunction with City of Craft, Tara Bursey has curated Love and Money, it's on from December 16 to 31st at the Ontario Crafts Council Gallery. The opening is Thursday, December 16, 7-10pm. This group show features lots of stellar artists working with the themes of craft, fine art and commerce. Unfortunately I'm not able to make it out to Toronto this year for the show, but there will be a long list of awesome people in attendance. To read more about the exhibition visit here and to read the ongoing artist interviews visit here.

I’ve finished and shipped off my piece, which is compromised of five cross-stitches of the former Canadian dollar bills. I posted an image of the 50 dollar bill a while back and I won't share the other bills until the show is over, but as a little sample of the work here is a close-up of the two dollar bill laying over the ten.

"Fotomaton: Selections"

A few months ago I was happy to be approached by Miami-born artist and photobooth connoisseur Aran S. Graham for an exhibition he was putting together. The show, "Fotomaton: Selections" is the first of many in a series of small exhibitions that feature photobooth art. I’m pleased to have two pieces in the show, other artists include Odile Marchoul from Austria and Verdi Yahooda from England.

Here’s the show information if you happen to be in Florida:
Location: Andy Gato Gallery at Barry University, 11300 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami Shores, FL 33161-6695
Opening: December 17th at 7pm

For more information, including how you can submit works for future exhibitions, contact Aran Graham at aran@aranphoto.com. The website (which is still under construction) is www.fotomaton.org.

As a teaser here is one frame from the 20 frame piece I submitted to the show. I’ll post the final work here when the exhibit has finished.

NEW PROJECT: The Photobooth Drawing Swap

My three very favourite things in the whole world are photobooth pictures of other people, sending and receiving real mail and the making drawings. And so, I’ve come up with a simple ongoing project to swap your photobooth pictures via the post for my original drawings. This is how the Photobooth Drawing Swap works:

1. You decide you would like to make a mutually beneficial trade and email me at meagsfitzgerald@hotmail.com to give me your address and request my address.

2. You then find a nearby classic black & white or colour photobooth (not a digital one), you can use Photobooth.net’s Locator* feature if you don’t know where the booths in your city are. Then have some fun and take some candid photos.

OR

2. You dig through that old shoebox or junk drawer and find those old pictures you don’t need to hang on to any more. Whether you send one individual photo, a whole strip or 10 strips, you get a one of a kind drawing/drawings. (Let me know if intend to send multiple strips and I will send you several drawings to make it at fair trade.)

3. You pop your photos in a mailbox.... wait a few days and presto! You’ll have a pleasant surprise waiting for you.

Just to give you a feel, here are some drawings from some old sketchbooks, the sort of things you might expect to get.

*I volunteer for the Locator feature on Photobooth.net and you easily can too. If you know of a photobooth in your area that has not been added to their database, click here to see how you can contribute a booth location.

Femme Avec Un Chapeau Rouge Update and Other Photobooth Projects

I have been slowly amassing more Femme Avec Un Chapeau Rouge photobooth pictures and thought that I would post an update. (Click to enlarge the image.) If you’re curious about the project please read the post I wrote for it back in April and it will make more sense. Here’s a selection of the photos I’ve taken with the mask, it includes photos from Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Sydney, Paris and Berlin.

And now’s as good as a time as any to announce that in January I’m moving to Halifax! I'm excited for the move for many reasons that I'll go more in depth about in a later post. Though specifically I am excited to take the mask with me to new East Coast towns and also to find new booth locations for Photobooth.net’s Locator feature.

I’m generally anti-digital photobooth but while travelling I’ve made a few rare exceptions to my own rule. In countries where photobooth pictures can still be used for passports, the digital booths are taken more seriously, ie. you can’t overlay a flowery border or a Wanted sign on your picture. I like differences between the French, German and Japanese borders in these supposed passport pictures.

I still have plans to make the short narrative into a photobooth animation, it’s all storyboarded and ready to go but I’m waiting until I have a free weekend, a pal who can donate their time and a whole lot of loonies.

In the meanwhile you can watch the (very) short film I made the first time I experimented with photobooth animation in 2008, The Birth of a Genius. There aren’t many frames so the transitions are quite choppy, though I think its decent considering it was shot during rush hour in the infamously tiny booth in the Bloor-Yonge Subway Station in Toronto.

Stay tuned to the blog as next week I'll be announcing a new photobooth project that you can participate in!

A Glimpse into my Collections

To my knowledge, I own more things than any person I know my age. This is for a few reasons. Firstly, I have moved eleven times in my adult life, and each move has required the purchasing of new furniture and what not. Inevitably things get confused between all the moves and needless to say I have four tea kettles, three cheese graters, fifty dish towels, a humidifier, a dehumidifier... you get the idea. Then there is also the matter that I am an interdisciplinary artist and craftsperson, and have just about every art + craft supply you can imagine. And then there is the art... oh, the woes of storing sculptures. However, I also have a lot of things because, well, I like things. I’m very tactical and garner a lot of pleasure from one-of-a-kind objects, particularly of the vintage assortment. Above is a collection I just started of old Air Mail envelopes.


As far back as I can remember I’ve been interested in collecting and organizing. As a child I collected “cool” cat posters, as a pre-teen I collected porcelain dolls, as a very awkward teenager I collected anything (and everything) Anime, and as an adult I have a few very specific vices. As I am always on the go and haven’t had a home of my own in a year and half to display my collectable goods I thought I would do a show & tell here. (Click on the images to see larger versions.)


I have quite a bit of Canadiana memorabilia from the 50’s to 80’s including many pieces from the Centennial, Expo 67 and the Montreal and Calgary Olympics. Though, currently my most prominent collection would have to be Queen Elizabeth II Coronation tins and other commemorative tins, trays and dishes from her Silver Jubilee and other royal visits to Canada. I do have a small assortment of older tins from other members of the royal family including George V, George VI and the Queen Mother. Next on my wish list is a commemorative tin (but I may have to settle for a chocolate or cigar box) of King Edward VIII, which are very rare because he was only King for eleven months and because most of his items are in more serious collections due to his affiliation with Nazi Germany. I love their colour palettes, design aesthetics and the histories behind them. The photos reflect about half the tins in of my collection. (Note the antique toy sewing machine is named “Little Queen”, adorable!)


When collecting, it’s important to me to have the whole experience. I don’t find it very satisfying to acquire something just because you can, so I don’t buy things online. (For this reason I don’t collect things that are common either, like bookmarks or rocks.) I sometimes shop at antique shops or markets but I prefer to go to flea markets because there’s nothing like the feeling of finding a diamond in the rough and bartering for a deal. Though if anybody wants to give me a Queen Elizabeth II tin, I promise I won’t object.

Jack'o'lanterns & Phot'o'booths

It had been years since I had the chance to celebrate, or even acknowledge Halloween. During the University years I was too busy making art to make a costume and last year I was in France, where no could understand the allure of dressing up and embracing the dark side for a day. So, naturally this year I was enthusiastic when Mark Meer (a Halloween expert no doubt) asked me if I would do some speciality pumpkin carving for his live late night talk show, Oh Susanna. I said yes, but first I needed a costume!

As per usual I have been busy working on various commissions and on some pieces for my own art practice, so budgeting time for making a costume was tricky. However it only took me about 45 seconds to think of this idea, as it is always on my brain anyway and justa few hours to make it.

Before going to Oh Susanna I practiced carving the show’s logo into a pumpkin and realized that drawing skills and pumpkin carving skills are not the same thing, especially if you took a five year hiatus from Halloween. I was nervous, though I’ve become used to making art on the stop with a full audience watching (check out previous posts here and here about Improv Art) and the show’s cast and audience are as kind as they come. “Susanna” (Mark hosts the show in a drag persona) also gave a drawing I did of Susanna in my Friends as Beast and Creeps series away to an audience member.

Without a doubt my highlight of evening was during intermission when an audience member approached me while I was still carving on stage. She said she had heard of "this girl" who knew everything about photobooths in Edmonton and was wondering, (based only on my costume) if I was her. It felt amazing to be recognized not by my name or face, but purely by my hobby. That means something, right?

All in all, it was a two-thumbs-up evening.

Photo credits: Top photo by Brad Fischer. Carving on stage by Theresa Wynn and the two pumpkins by me.

In anticipation of Two Hands Two Crowns

I’ve been a busy bee working away on new items for a more focused product + project line. It will replace my current line, Go Eat Some Poison Productions. (I started working under that name when I was 17, and feel like its time to update it a bit to reflect who I am now.) The new items will be available for sale on Etsy in December. In the meanwhile I'm still toying around with a new logo. The company name is Two Hands Two Crowns. I won’t go into the backstory for the name but I will say it relates to a pair of tattoos I’m getting in November. Currently I’m trying to come up with a simple but eye catching logo, though along the way I’ve had some fun experimenting with some more elaborate designs. I've had a Wacom tablet for almost a year and haven't got much use out of it (I just like drawing on paper), so playing around with these designs was good practice for my hand to screen coordination. I’ve posted some of the “just for fun” and early drafts here and would appreciate any comments/ feedback you’ve got, as it may help me solidify the final design! Click to enlarge the images.

A Long Overdue Update!

My blog has gone neglected for almost the last two months as other projects have taken priority. I’m up to my ears in new projects, commissions and collaborations. This is great, but does mean I have a few more balls in the juggling act than usual. The primary project that has consumed my time is my new website design, which is correlated to launch at the same time as when my new production company and line of crafts are ready. Here are some samples of the things I’ve been working on. The banner is part of the new craft line and the cross-stitch below is one of six old dollar bills, the series is titled Tender Tender (click to enlarge). I’m making them for a show in Toronto in December. The show, at the Ontario Crafts Council is curated by Tara Bursey and is titled Love and Money, more details here.

p.s. I was a judge for The Art of Waiting's Photobooth Contest and it was a real treat to see all the submissions! The very creative winning entries were announced at the end of September and can be found here.