By Bill Alexander
The National Gallery of Canada. It is a space where local artists dream of one day displaying their work, and Uta Riccius of the local Enriched Bread Artists (EBA) got in. But her art is in an office, not on the gallery walls.
At last year’s EBA open studio event, Riccius gave out snow globes that had been painted completely white, rendering them pretty much useless.
Months later, anyone who took one home received a package from Riccius in the mail. Inside they found a disposable camera and a letter asking them to take a picture of the globe in its present location, provided they had not thrown it out.
One globe ended up on a bookshelf, one in the backseat of a cluttered car, and one ended up in an office at the National Gallery of Canada.
“One person didn’t want it,” says Riccius. “He was like ‘what am I going to do with that.’ And I thought, great! That was the first person who responded that way.”
This year, Riccius is documenting this project in her studio and down the street in a house that doubles as a gallery.
It is the first time the annual open studio event has stretched beyond its usual location, an old bread factory on Gladstone
Avenue, and Riccius says she’ll move back and forth between the two.
“I wanted to reach out to another space so that everything wasn’t [at the EBA],” says
Riccius. “I wanted to have a setting that was a more domestic space.”
For 12 years, EBA has opened its doors to the public for a few days to let them roam the various studios. But this year, the event was nearly abandoned.
EBA was going to take over the third floor of 951 Gladstone Ave., put up more studios and called off the yearly event to focus on renovations. But when these expansion plans fell through, they decided to go ahead and keep the tradition alive, despite the hard work ahead.
“All the artists were especially busy this year with other shows,” says Riccius. “So there was more of an effort to get it all together.”
Other exhibits this year include an elaborate installation by Ken Emig using light to distort shapes, and Tara Donaghy’s “Marion-e-Tara,” a massive puppet suspended from the ceiling that visitors can put into motion by pulling a few strings.
There is also Karen Jordon’s self-described “great wall of toothpicks.”
In 1992, Jordon helped to transform the old bread factory into a vibrant space for artists to rent affordable studios and develop their work. She thinks that the open studio offers the city a completely different art experience.
“It’s an alternative venue for contemporary work,” says Jordon. “Part of our mandate is to bring contemporary art to the public and to allow them to approach work that is not in a formal gallery context. It’s a lot more informal, and it’s less threatening.”
Most of the artists will be on hand at EBA’s open house, and they’ll offer visitors the chance to explore their personal space. Some, like Amy Thompson, will still be working.
“It’s great for people to get a chance to look at work in progress and studios that are active,” says Thompson. “That doesn’t happen very often. Here, there is a nice mix of different people, people at different levels of their artist career.”
For Jordon, the people that pass through seem really moved by the event. She says that’s what keeps them coming back.
“What surprises me every year is how positively the general public react when they come through here,” adds Jordon. “I think they are delighted and more interested than I think they are expecting [to be]. I expect sometimes that the public might feel alienated by some of the work that goes on here. That doesn’t seem to be the case at all.”
The Enriched Bread Artists’ 12th annual open house will continue until Sunday, Oct. 31 at 951 Gladstone Ave.