John Redden

Here are a couple of photos of John Redden and Susan from Viriditas Herbal products visiting the show and checking out the apothecary cake they inspired.

Ants!

Okay, so this might not look like an extreme ant infestation, but there really were a lot of them. They seemed to like our show.

Augustos Bastos - Always in Fine Form

The last of our weekly special events was a talk by Augusto Bastos, who, true to form, did not disappoint. This video is just a few minutes from his most excellent, informative, and entertaining talk; it begins with him discussing his graduation being postponed a year due to his outspoken ways, and ends with him explaining how his mother - the "commander in chief" - convinced him to pursue basketball rather than soccer.

The quality of the video falls pretty short of the quality of Augustos' content, but hopefully you'll get the gist of what a great fellow he is, anyway.

Stephen Fowler's talk

Some photos from Stephen Fowler's excellent, entertaining, and generous - he brought freebies! - talk on the Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Book series.

from the baking archives....

In these photos - Hannah working on her t-shirt cake, me looking befuddled while Karen helped me understand fondant, and Sean's bike crash cake in progress.



(I don't know what happened to the order and alignment of this batch of photos - sometimes blogging is hard...)

I guess we'll never know how to survive accidents...

On Wednesday night, October 22nd, at 6:30pm, Francisco Alejandri and Liz Lavandeira were going share essential survival tips and describe past near disasters as part of our Born Out of Pleasure special event series. Sadly this talk has just been canceled, but don't panic, there have been no other accidents - Francisco just started a new job today and so can't get out of work for our talk.

This is too bad, but we still have one more excellent event planned for the following Wednesday night:

Augusto Bastos Slam Dunks - October 29th, 6:30pm
Darren O'Donnell will be in conversation with Augusto Bastos, guerrilla, revolutionary, accused counter-revolutionary, aviation expert, refugee, torture victim, and basketball star.

So we apologize for any confusion the canceled talk this Wednesday may cause, but hope to see you the following week. And if you really need some advice about how to survive accidents, I can tell you from previous conversations with Francisco that his survival technique involves closing his eyes and relaxing his body; basically just go with the flow. Good luck.

more cakes....

Leah Rosenberg is a friend of mine who lives in San Francisco and makes beautiful paintings and cakes. The above cake is her "5 Tiered Thesis Outline Cake", with each tier representing a section of her thesis from her MFA at the California College of Art.

I think the statement on her website regarding her cakes is really nice, and suits our show of cakes in many ways, also - though ours have been sitting in a gallery for several weeks now and I really wouldn't recommend eating them.

Leah's cake statement:
"I have spent a lot of time in the last two years making cakes while continuing to make paintings. A cake to me is a work of art with the intention of generosity. It is beautiful, it is structural, it is an evocative work of color and balance. And then people eat it. They consume it. They find it too sweet or too sticky or too vanilla-y. And then they move on. This is the generosity of art. Create with intention and then, set it free."

Sean's lovely photography...

For the 10 days we were working on this project Sean Frey was taking black and white photos with his 35mm camera; these photos weren't processed in time to be in the show itself, so we thought we'd post some of them here.

These are photos of several group meetings we had in various locations around Toronto, some sort of self-propelled super fast silver vehicle a few people kept coming across, and Harrell and Stephen in the bookshop, as well as our journey up the CN Tower where some of us walked on the glass floor. There are also two photos of two young women I don't recognize, but I believe they were posing in front of a green screen at the CN Tower. They look very nice, in any case.

Some shaky footage of a very solid performance

The Born Out of Pleasure Special Events got off to a really great start this past Wednesday night when some young folk from Camp Naivelt performed at the Power Plant. There was a lively introduction by Ester Reiter, who is a professor at York University, researcher of the secular Jewish Left, and cabin owner at Naivelt. Then Sean Frey, who organized this event and is an all-round terrific fellow, gave a brief talk about the project, and then the young people - Shifra Cooper, Helah Cooper, Eli Cooper, Zoe Jenkins, Sierra Michaelides, Kay Michaelides, Asha, Shayle, Abby Cope, Simone Pflug-Taylor, and Dylan Tate-Howarth - came out and blew our minds with their take on life on a Russian Children's Commune.

(Be prepared for some not-so-great sound and lighting quality, a very small screen, and a not-so-steady hand holding the camera - but it's totally worth it to see them scrubbing the gallery floors, walls, and shelves in the background while Sean was introducing them...they had even brought in bags of leaves to spread around the floor of the Power Plant so they'd have work to do. And then they sang, danced, and played the recorder and accordion - so great.)

Going Up

Turning a corner...

This looks like a pretty special moment - I'm sorry I missed it in person...

Our critical mass along bloor to maiko's

From the Opening...

In this photo: Sean Frey, Helen Reed, Harrell Fletcher, Karen's Emma Goldman cake, and some nice looking folk.

Born Out of Pleasure: Special Events

Starting on Wednesday, October 1st, we'll be hosting a mini-lecture series of sorts at the Power Plant to accompany our show of cakes and photos. The presentation originally scheduled for Wednesday the 24th of September has been postponed until October 22nd, so our new schedule is as follows:

Naivelt Musical Performance - October 1st, 6:30pm
Youth from Naivelt and Jumblies Theatre: a musical recreation of 1920's Twelfth Children's Work Commune

Holistic Medicine from 1960's to present - October 8th, 6:30pm
Herbalist John Redden from Viriditas Herbal Products in the Junction talks about the history of holistic medicine in Toronto.

Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Book series - October 15th, 6:30pm
Stephen Fowler of the Monkey's Paw Bookshop talks about an early form of the zine from the Pre-Depression era created by an heir of a printing press.

Surviving Accidents - October 22nd, 6:30pm
Francisco Alejandri and Liz Lavandeira - who both work at Torito Tapas Bar in Kensington Market - share essential survival tips and describe past near disasters.

Augusto Bastos Slam Dunks - October 29th, 6:30pm
Darren O'Donnell will be in conversation with Augusto Bastos, guerrilla, revolutionary, accused counter-revolutionary, aviation expert, refugee, torture victim, and basketball star.

All of these most excellent events are free to the public and will take place in the Power Plant Reading Room - you should come!