Curiosities, Sketching with Words - AND - Catalysts, Part 2 ... on the road!

Feel like I've been flying lately ... not flying dreams, unfortunately!So much going on:- Had a fantastic time with Shawna Lemay co-faciliating the Sketching with Words workshop at Harcourt House for the Edmonton Poetry Festival last weekend! It was an amazing afternoon of writing and drawing and thinking and talking about all the connections between those lines on the page: the ones we write and the ones we draw, both to capture wheat we experience of the world as we know it. I feel extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to work with Shawna, and such a great group of eager, talented people!- Almost finished a mixed media assemblage for the fast& dirty collective's upcoming po-up exhibition called Curiosities which will be coming to Edmonton streets the first weekend in June ...The curators have this to say about the project:Curiosities: a fast & dirty project is an exploration of the politics of furniture. The project is a collaboration between five Edmonton curators: Jennifer Rae Forsyth, Robert Harpin, Kristen Hutchinson, Carolyn Jervis, and Kyla Tichkowsky and twenty artists: Matt Arrigo, Jeff Bai, Marnie Blair, Blair Brennan, Raylene Campbell, Sherri Chaba, Olivia Chow, Jennifer Rae Forsyth, Robert Harpin, Nickelas Johnson, Kristen Hutchinson, Adriean Koleric, Sydney Lancaster, Dawn Saunders Dahl, Sergio Serrano, Tyler Sherard, Alex Stewart, Claire Uhlick, and Ryan Wolters. Each curator has chosen a chest of drawers to accommodate artworks based on five different themes: intimacy, line, collections, landscape, and family. Each artist will be given a single drawer from one of these dressers to create a site-specific artwork.Curiosities will be exhibited in a rental van from June 1-June 3 2012 in three different locations in Edmonton. The project asks artists and viewers to think about each dresser as a cabinet of curiosities and to consider each drawer as a small laboratory for investigation and experimentation. Drawers are intensely private spaces; they contain everything from the most precious, personal objects to everyday detritus that we just haven’t gotten around to getting rid of. After all, who knows what’s really hidden underneath that neatly folded sweater?... and more to come, in short order!I fly to Toronto tomorrow for a couple of dates on the next leg of the Catalysts tour (and then am back east for a couple of weeks mid May)... so the last couple of weeks (since the Edmonton launch), has been a hurry-up-go-faster-get-stuff-DONE time ... hence my brevity and silence here.The launch in Edmonton went well - a nice crowd, some lovely familiar faces that I hadn't seen in a while, and some new ones, which is always a treat. So amazing to actually see the book, for real ... paper, cover, pages, text ... words!! Words we wrote. Wow. Not sure I'll ever get used to that - which is a great thing, I think.So ... the next leg looks like this:May 1st – Toronto @ the Magpie (831 Dundas Street W) with Oana A, Paul Vermeersch and Moez Surani. Catherine will be reading solo, and  we will read together as well, excerpts from our co-written essay.May 2nd -Toronto @ Pivot Reading Series at The Press Club (850 Dundas Street W.) Catherine Owen with Gabe Foreman, Steven Price & Claire Tacon. I'll be there too :).- I head back to Edmonton after this - to do a talk on another project  I'm developing with Marian Switzer called YORK, for the Edmonton Arts Council Transitory Art Program  ...... but Catherine keeps travelling and taking us into the world. She will be reading:May 3rd – Hamilton @ Victoria Park/The Staircase Theatre! With John Terpstra as well as TO authors listed above!May 5th – St Catharines w/Gregory BettsMay 8th – Ottawa @Tree with guestsMay 17th – Vancouver @Robson Reading Series with Waubgeshig Rice (Midnight Sweatlodge)May 25th – Victoria @ Planet Earth with guests.So ... now, to finish packing, panic that I've forgotten something crucial at least three times ... and board that flight in the morning!More news to follow - not doubt!