I’m already a big fan of marianne! posted on November 24th, 2009

come check out Marianne Collins’ art.

click

HERE

The Happiness Project @ The Music Gallery posted on October 24th, 2009

Marianne’s and David’s piece from The Happiness Project Montreal is being displayed at the Music Gallery as part of X Avant New Music Festival.

Check out more about the show at the Music Gallery Site.

Post-POP Happiness!!! posted on October 5th, 2009

We did it! Pop Montreal and hosted The Happiness Project and offered us an incredible audience. Starting Wednesday September 30th to Sunday Oct 4th, each day we had a steady flow of enthusiastic music, art and happiness fans! We got hugs, thank yous and folks coming back a second time, weather it was just for the cookies or maybe the smiles we won’t ask, as we enjoyed having you all with us.

Happiness is an infectious feeling and spread in waves both throughout the house and the festival and we’d like to think we had something to do with it. 200-300 people came through the house each day, from 24 month-olds, to teenagers, to 60 year-olds, and we hope each one of you got to taste the fresh baked cookies and to enjoy the art work.

We would like to thank you all for coming to the show and sharing the warmth, hugs, drawings, and smiles! We had an unbelievable weekend in Montreal with The Happiness Project and the POP folks. What a great city, and what a great festival. Thank you!

The artists that participated were incredible and we could not have been luckier to have them all with us. Charlie visited on Saturday night and had a private viewing with the artists. He was deeply moved by the sincerity and thoughtfulness of the presented artwork.

We will have many more wonderful photos to post from the five day show, but for now please check out these reviews on  BlogTO, from NY city: Feast of Music, and Halifax’s The Coast.

Crush posted their own video here.

Also for this week  check the link to Radio Canada International : RCI’s The Maple Leaf Mailbag show Sunday October 27. Mary Travis interviewed Diana Prelevic and Aaron Kopff about the Happiness Project! Minute 27:20.

Lizzie and Eoin, thank you for your support !  This could not have happened without you !

Artist Bloc and The Happiness Project are off to POP Montreal posted on September 21st, 2009

Artist Bloc has had the pleasure to collaborate with 8 amazing artists in creating a living art space with works inspired by Charles Spearin’s (Broken Social Scene and Do Make Say Think) latest record The Happiness Project. All the artists have been hard at work getting ready for this exciting new exhibition and Artist Bloc is really looking forward to working with such a fantastic group. Here is the list of talented creators set with the task of re-imagining works inspired by the wonderful record.

Crush, Inc. / Beluga Studio / Nicole Legault / David Collier & Marianne Collins / Marijke Bouchier / Svea Vikander / Amy Vickberg / Corri Lynn Tetz /

If you are in town for the festival please come by and say hi, we would love to see your smiling face and spread some happiness!

All of us would like to thank Charlie for being inspired and in turn inspiring
us to make this show happen.

Bisous Bisous!

The Happiness Project by 8 very special artists

5202 Hutchison, 30 sept - 4 oct, 14h00 - 20h00

The Happiness Project will jump your heart into your mouth and make it smile big and wide. A multidiscipinary, experimental apartment exhibition based on Charles Spearin’s (Broken Social Scene, Do Make SayThink) record of the same name, it features a stellar cast of artists who take over every room of a storied apartment. Come & visit the house.

ARTIST PROFILES

Marijke Bouchier

If it is anything, my work is about darkness. If it is anything, my work is about light. If it is anything, my work is about the pursuit of happiness. If it is anything, my work is about arrival at an undefined location. If it is anything, my work is about home. If it is anything, my work is about ambiguous spaces. If it is anything, my work is about monsters under the bed. If it is anything, my work is about the illusion of safety. If it is anything, my work is about a cultural production of fear. If it is anything, my work is about the promise of improvement. If it is anything, my work is about expectations. If it is anything, my work is about the delineation of spaces, what is contained within and what is keep at bay. If it is anything, my work is about the proposition of grossly oversimplified emotional states. If it is anything, my work is about the uncanny. If it is anything, my work is about recurring narratives. If it is anything, my work is about absence and projection. If it is anything, my work is about sustained childhood ideals. If it is anything, my work is about naive belief systems. If it is anything, my work explores the increasingly blurred boundary between fact and fiction, the real and the imagined. If it is anything, my work is about control. If it is anything, my work is about secret wishes. If it is anything, my work is about the failure to sustain impossible ideals. If it is anything, my work is about trying to sustain impossible ideals regardless of the impossibility to do so. If it is anything, my work is about the horrific anomaly of apparent perfection. If it is anything, my work is about unquestioned conformity. If it is anything, my work is an investigation of perceived normality. If it is anything, my work is about the standardisation of madness. If it is anything, my work is about violence. If it is anything, my work is about happy endings. If it is anything, my work is about seduction. If it is anything, my work is a rejection of absolute truth. If it is anything, my work is about desperation. If it is anything, my work is about an implicit unknowingness. If it is anything, my work is a speculative attempt to understand the complexity of emotional experience. If it is anything, my work is about multiplicity, repetition and return. If it is anything, my work is a tribute to repressed mysticism. If it is anything, my work is about perceived needs, wants and projected desires. If it is anything, my work is a rumination of relative truths. If it is anything, my work is part of a gothic resurgence. my work, if it is anything, is a supposition that things are not as they seem.

Marijke Bouchier is an interdisciplinary artist working with objects, sound, drawing and installation.  Originally from New Zealand, Marijke has been based in Montreal since 2007 and is currently completing the final year of her Masters degree at Concordia University. With a shared interest in ideas surrounding sustained happiness, installation plays off the issues raised in the track Anna by reflecting on  notions of home and the domestic space, naive perception and childhood.

David Collier & Marianne Collins

In the track entitled Ondine the music toys with the child’s rejection of reality.  We’ve taken the child’s dismissal even further, transforming her room into her world, a realm where imagination takes the lead.  Kids float like balloons, hold the universe within, have a shadow twin and crawl out of paintings.  A space where a father is not grounded to his opinion but is instead malleable and floats in the wind.  Where secret windows hide behind corners.
David Collier was born in Stellarton, NS in 1983.  He graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2005 with a BFA, studying painting, drawing and illustration.  He has sold works to private collections throughout Canada and has participated in numerous exhibitions in Halifax.  He currently lives and works with his partner in Montreal.

Marianne Collins was born in 1983 and grew up in London, Ontario, Canada.  She studied art in a specialized program at Bealart H.B. Beal Secondary School.  Her move to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2002 marked the beginning of her Bachelor of Fine Arts;  Major in Fine Arts (Printmaking) degree at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, now NSCAD University.  After graduating in 2005, Marianne worked and participated in several gallery exhibitions and arts and crafts fairs.  These resulted in many sales and commissions.  Marianne lived and worked in Paris, France for a year and then returned to Halifax to continue to work and exhibit as a visual artist.
Marianne now resides in Montreal, Quebec with her partner, where she is currently working towards the completion of several bodies of work, with support from the Quebec government.

Amy Vickberg & Corri-Lynn Tetz
“”"”We can dress kids up like grownups, and put high expectations on them. We can labour over details they might never notice. We can show them that training and discipline are the tools to achieve freedom within art, and that limitations are inherently inspiration….or we can turn on outkast and see what happens.

“”"”"”"”"”"Happiness is losing your mind on the dancefloor.”"”"”"

Amy Vickberg is a multi-media artist with a background in dance, a love of music and a home in Montreal. The common thread through her work would be the joy of process (usually obsessive) that while being transparent and honest has a wit and hopefully, the ability to surprise and delight. Some previous projects include Place Magazine, a collaboration with artist Jennifer Hamilton (www.placemag.org) and The Montreal Musical Mitosis, a hand drawn network graph. The graph was created to show connections through common members in Montreal bands and can be seen morphing currently at L’Espace Reunion (6600 Hutchinson) during the festival.

Corri-Lynn Tetz is a visual artist based in Montreal.  A graduate of Emily Carr, her paintings and drawings appropriate found images and focus on the space between a recalled event and it’s representation. Her work can be seen on the cover of Besnard Lake’s album, Dark Horse, was included in A Silver Mount Zion’s, 13 Blues for 13 Moons and was most recently published in the Magenta Foundation’s survey of Canadian painting, Carte Blanche Painting.

Nicole Aline Legault

Growing up with a mother who is legally blind has strongly influenced the way I perceived the world around me. In a way, it allowed me to become more aware of my surroundings, to be able to express with words what i knew my mother would never be able to see with her eyes. In a lot of my work, I try to limit myself to emotions and sight as much of the imagery used is perplexing or nonsensical.  My work for the Happiness Project Exhibit ranges from images I made for the short film (directed and animated by Christopher Mills), lonely houses lit with warmth, portraits of people hanging out with some of my favorite animals, to a glowing owl in a window.

Nicole Aline Legault graduated from NSCAD University in 2006 with a BFA (Major in Fine Arts, Minor in Drawing). She creates a wide variety of images using pen and ink to charcoal and wire.  The past couple years have made way for opportunities to work on numerous music videos and shorts, set design and art direction (The Happiness Project, Buck 65, The Acorn, etc…).  She has shown her personal work in numerous exhibits across Canada and has been published in a few on and offline magazines for her lookidrewyou! series. She is currently looking for a studio and a new bike (for next summer).

Svea Vikander

Vanessa’ has always been my favourite Happiness Project track. Last winter, I listened to it each night as I walked back from my studio. The trees, the wind, the traffic lights, my steps on the pavement – all seemed to fall into its rhythm, its hope and movement. In the coldest hours of winter, this song helped me thaw.

All of a sudden I felt my body moving inside.

The cochlear implant is only the newest in thousands of years of treatments to “cure” deafness. Some were ineffective while others were cruel and inhumane: prehistoric cultures placed stones in deaf children’s ears, ancient Greeks brought shells from far-off lands to use as hearing trumpets; and doctors of the late19th Century used electro-shock treatment to perforate the tympanic membrane.

Centuries of such treatment have given deaf culture good reason to be suspicious of medical attempts to “cure” their world. And so, while Vanessa’s story is striking, intimate and beautiful, it does not represent the experiences of all deaf people. Not every deaf person hopes to gain hearing. As Vanessa says herself, she was a happy person without it.

But she felt the call, a drive toward sound, a willingness to undergo “a big surgery” that changed her life. Spearin’s song echoes this call, bringing us along as it builds slowly, deep rumbling sound rife with pauses, explanations and silences, rising to a crescendo, the widening smile in her voice: all of a sudden.

In this installation I have followed the movement toward movement. History and its artefacts can become imbedded within us, but ice melts, transforms from solid to liquid, static to flowing. It is the same process that gives us gushing streams and rivers each spring, blood pulsing smoothly through veins and arteries; the body moving inside.

Svea Vikander is the nicest, most creative and intelligent narcissist she knows. a native of Vancouver, British Columbia, she was born into a house of artists, musicians, writers, actors and – let’s be honest – a thief, a drug-addict and a divorced parent or two. she attended the most alternative elementary school in north america and has been privileging her subjectivity ever since. in 2006 she graduated from the university of toronto with a degree in psychology, english, linguistics, and paradigms and archetypes. she applies herself as often as she applies her lip-gloss, which is to say, all too often. she has studied film-making, jewelry design, web design, writing, buddhism, visual studies, arts administration, psychotherapy and most recently, business management, french, and sociology of the body. in january 2009 she co-founded studio béluga, a work and exhibition space for creative people who like to splash water onto the floor.

Crush

We were drawn to Mr. Gowrie’s piece for a couple of reasons. The story he was telling was so poignant and compelling and had the potential for incredible sadness yet he was so direct and positive. The piece becomes really beautiful and uplifting. We wanted to create something that allows people to have their own experience with it. We felt that by isolating the parts of the track and then introducing them through discovery, we give people the chance to make it their own. We introduced the idea of the room as icon, and the presence of Mr. Gowrie as a kind of totemic one. The chest of drawers represents the prison of time, and the narrative provides a counterpoint to the spoken word. Light adds the emotional flavour missing from the blank reality of the room.

Crush is a design/directing collective based in Toronto. Crush has been around since 1998, and has been a major component in Toronto’s design and post production industry. Crush works in advertising, music videos, the film world and in places where creativity and technology meet. Crush have done graphic and animation collaborations with Moby, Richie Hawtin and REM. They have worked on viral video projects with Douglas Coupland and art installations with Marco Brambilla. Additionally Crush have done street projections for Nuit Blanche with Vespa.

Crush’s designers and directors, Gary Thomas, Stefan Woronko, Sean Cochrane, and Yoho Yue, among others have been awarded around the world for their work and continue to play and learn.

Artist Bloc and SweetieTruck

The smell of fresh baked cookies, straight out of the oven…this is happiness. This is an instant smell of home and all good things that come with it. As Mrs. Morris says: Happiness is Love. Love makes you feel happy.Every good home has plenty of love. And every good treat has lots of love in it. Let us give you a small token of our love and offer an instant sense of home.

Have  a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie! Indulge in the aroma and taste of happiness. Stay with us a while, sit at our table, and tell us what happiness is to you.

Artist Bloc is a collective of artists, producers and filmmakers interested in exploring and revealing the creative artistic process through the production of documentaries, exhibits and installations and joining interdisciplinary techniques into cohesive, rich experiences.  Aaron Kopff, Scott Nihill, Agi Gutkowska, Diana Prelevic, and Norman Wong are the heart and soul of this project and Artist Bloc 2006 to now.

SweetieTruck was founded in 2008 by Eoin O Leary to house his latest creative endeavours. Upcoming projects include: the Stars releases and tours, consulting work for POP Montreal (www.popmontreal.com) and a new subscription- based music club, which revolves around one-day collaborations between Montreal musicians.

We would all like to thank Charlie for being inspired and in turn inspiring us to make this show happen!