A couple of installation shots from my thesis work, exhibited at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto in 2022. The artworks and thesis text, “A Flirting- Based Practice”, were the culmination of reflections stemming from my experiences in academia as well as middle and Southwestern America over the course of 2 months spent researching (and running away) on the road. Photos courtesy of Tony Hafkensheid 📸
🍷 This Friday, May 8, at 6pm experience Lai Wah Heen’s first winemaker’s dinner featuring a 9 course tasting menu paired with 5 elegant wines from Antonutti winery, located in Friuli, Italy.
Elena Casarotti of Antonutti winery will be present to introduce guests to the philosophy and beautiful world of their wines.
THE MENU:
Three Treasures / Pumpkin Soup / Scallop and Prawn Dumpling / Sea Bass / Lion’s Mane / Short Rib / Wagyu / Swan Pastry / Ice Cream & Amaro
THE WINE:
Traminer Aromatico / Ramato Pinot Grigio / Bertrando / Pinot Nero / Poppóne
LIMITED SEATS
Reserve through our OpenTable
#torontodining #torontorestaurants #winetasting #cantonesecuisine #winedinner
Calgary Reflections/August in the Mountains
* Took mom on her dream weekend trip to Banff
* Went to my first rodeo (ha)
* Spent a long time at maybe The best wine bar I’ve been to in recent years
* Taxidermy gophers
* Dinosaurs
* Great steak
An ode to one of the most magical places in the world, Dolly Parton’s Stampede/Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and one of the greatest silly little road trips I’ve ever been on with one of the beautiful loves of my life, @fanannabel ❤️🔥
1-5: Dolly Parton’s Stampede Dinner Attraction.
6, 7: @fanannabel and I ❤️
8-11: The Beautiful Louisiana Bayou which I miss with my whole heart.
12: Charbroiled Oysters.
13: Posing with some classic wheels at Dollywood.
Hurting and Healing (Slowly Outgrowing the Shackles of Addiction) aka completing grad school and entering the summer of 2022 in a daze:
1: Negronis on a patio in Venezia with Shaheer. ❤️
2: Mom watches me karaoke for the first time on stage at Santa’s Pub, Nashville. ❤️
3: Eating at the greatest restaurant in the world, Marjie’s, in New Orleans with Annabel. ❤️
4: My bandaged right hand, shredded but healing from the stress and grief of a recurring possible autoimmune situation, before giving my cohort’s address at our exhibition opening.
5: “What now?” A look of confusion at my Master of Visual Studies certificate.
6: Photo Booth strip from commencement.
7: My Saloon sign retiring to my garage.
8: The look I give you before suggesting something ridiculous.
9: Smithing a knife at Dollywood, Pigeon Forge.
10: The sun on my face at the Boboli Gardens, Firenze.
🐎🍑From the second loop I drove around the States back in February of 2022:
1. Exploring a wash near Wickenburg, Arizona.
2. A guest ranch interior.
3. Nudie suit embroidery from the garment collection at the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City (one of the greatest museums in the country, in my opinion).
4. Cherokee beaded purse, over 100 years old, from the National Cowboy Museum.
5, 6. The Chaparral Trading Post, on the border between New Mexico and Arizona.
7. Desert dry wash.
8. Kyle the Falconer gives his falcon a treat post-hunt.
This post is mostly dedicated to Arches National Park in Utah. At that point in my life, amidst my deep depression and a*********, I’d felt the urge to end it all so frequently. When I first drove into Arches, stepping out of my car, the landscape took my breath away and choked me up. Massive, stoic burnt orange rock formations realized over millennia. It seemed bizarre to me that I could have ever taken my life for granted, that I could have made a rash decision that would have prevented me from ever seeing something so beautiful, thousands of miles away.
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1: “Kissing Rocks”, 2022. I took this photo and realized the rocks resembled lovers when I was reviewing my documentation. It became the cover of my Masters Thesis.
2: Selfie with big rock.
3, 4: Panning the landscape at Arches.
5: Driving through the Colorado mountains at night. Another sublime experience. Turning the winding, empty roads, I stuck my head out my window whenever I could. There was an element of fear incurred both by the roads and the sheer size of the mountains— so tall I could not see the tops of them in the dark, dark night. I managed to catch this short video of the moon once the mountains opened up a little.
6: Margarita, hand for scale.
7: Another Arches video.
8: Leaving the Colorado mountains in my rear view mirror. ❤️🔥
1: My first target practice, at Machine Guns Vegas.
2: Glowing flora at the hot springs in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
3: Bronze sphinx outside Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas.
4: “Gender Fluid” for sale at Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart. @meow__wolf
5: Belly full of beer from hanging out with Joy at The Silver Stamp. ❤️
6: The “Sassy Sally’s” sign at the Neon Museum, Las Vegas. The signs in their “boneyard” would inspire me to make my 8ft long aluminum “SALOON” sign sculpture. @theneonmuseumlasvegas
7: Driving through the night, sleeping in my car, watching the sun rise.
1: La Iglesia de San Juan Batista, down the street from the old Lincoln County Courthouse from which Billy the Kid famously escaped.
2: One of a couple repurposed buildings that make up the historic site of Lincoln, NM.
3: Scanning the landscape of SouthEastern New Mexico.
4, 5: Exploring buildings near the historic military base of Fort Stanton, NM.
6: A souvenir patch gifted to me by an old gentleman named Terry— we’d chatted because of the patches on my jacket. “You must love collecting these” he’d smiled. My jacket’s a fraud, I thought to myself; I’d bought it with the patches already on it.
7, 8, 9: Exploring the White Sands. I’d almost not gone, if not for the park ranger who let me in for free. “Just be out of the park by 6pm” she winked. Had I not gone, I’d have missed out on what would end up being one of the most breathtaking, grounding experiences of my life (despite the possibility of quicksand).
10: Installation shot from my Masters Thesis exhibition, photo courtesy of Tony Hafkensheid.
Over the next little while I’ll be sharing a few of the massive bounty of photos I’ve kept from the 2 months I spent on the road while writing my Masters Thesis. That road trip would be the second of many, many drives I’d end up making to the Southwest.
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1: For the algorithm, a selfie vid walking around Roswell, NM. A man I’d chatted with at the bar told me to “be careful, it really is the Wild West out here”— one of my favourite quotes of that trip.
2: Rotating disco ball lucky cat from the Lucky Cat Museum (all a couple’s private collection) in Cincinnati, Ohio.
3: Elated selfie from the first night on the road after being in lockdown for almost 2 years— I was mentally ill and all in, convinced the trip would be my last stand on earth.
4: A life-sized alien display at the International UFO Museum and Research Centre in Roswell, New Mexico.
5: Collection of cowboy spurs from the Roswell Museum.
6: “Pat Garrett Rides to Meet Billy the Kid the Last Time” by K. Gunnor Peterson, a Danish painter, at the Roswell Museum.
7: Detailed shot of the bottom half of a Mescalero Apache ceremonial dress marking a transition from girlhood to womanhood, at the Roswell Museum.
8: $10 chicken fried steak breakfast at a roadside stop outside Oklahoma City.
9: Somewhere along the way.
Ring Ring (Big Telephone), 2021. ☎️ foam, cardboard, hot glue, aqua resin, fibreglass, latex paint, pool hose. It’s about time I started posting my backlog of works here for y’all 💋I made this sculpture during my Masters of Visual Studies at U of T for @rollsriceontheroad ‘s cheeky first MV. Think Claes Oldenburg meets Sailor Moon meets Patsy Cline meets a game of telephone meets Maurizio Cattelan meets pepto bismol meets a Christmas display meets Polly Pocket, something like that. Photos courtesy of Tony Hafkensheid 📸 from my cohort’s masters exhibition in 2022
