Jenny McMaster

Images from Coffee House Cartography

Couldn't make it to my performance at the Daily Grind during Chinatown Remixed? Check out these lovely pics curtesy Karina Bergmans.

Coffee House Cartography at China Town Remixed

Ready set go! It's my first return to performance art since 2006 and the Cake Show! Helena Blavatsky, meets Relational Art, meets Surrealism! At the Daily Grind Arts Cafe at 601 Sommerset West, May 12th from 1:30 pm to 5pm. The first stop on the China Town Remixed Circuit!

This performance/interactive art piece will use a social variant of the surrealist method of automatism to map the interaction between the artist and passer by. Dressed as a slightly eccentric Edwardian tea drinker and seated at a table in a coffee shop, I will offer tea or coffee to participants. The beverages will be served out a teapots and especially selected it's tendency to drip, over sheets of handmade paper. I will begin conversations with passers by through the use of cards with discussion topics. As the discussions progress, drip patterns and cup rings will be cast on the table's surface. Once enough information has been imprinted for a reading, the given sheet of paper will be set aside and replaced.

Between visitors, I will hand sew the discarded sheets, transforming the drip patterns into continents and the cup rings into compass roses. In such a way, maps of the social space established between the artist and visitors will be created. Participants will be welcomed to view the completed maps online as well as at an upcoming exhibition at Blink Gallery at the end of August.

 

Cross-Pollination at the Fleurbain

   

This spring I will be participating in a group exhibit at the Fleurbain, a new Montreal gallery recently started by Natasha Henderson and Tammy Schmidt. Galerie Fleurbain seeks to inspire verdant life in the city.

The group show Cross-Pollination is concerned with both biology and culture. On a micro scale, what happens when an artist combines media; drawing with ceramics, film with dance, painting with textiles or writing with cooking? In a natural setting imagine one flower crossing with another. A new flower comes to life. Perhaps this flower will only last one generation. Perhaps this flower will change the course of evolution. On a macro scale, imagine different groups sharing information, working together to reach new goals, and new dreams previously unimagined.

The exhibition features five artists (Keivan Khademi Shamami, Natasha Henderson, Jenny McMaster, Lauren Trimble, and Heather Boyd) who examine the cross-pollination of accepted and expected media and ideas within their artwork. I will be showing some of my bran-new corset pieces...I will not be able to attend the vernissage on April 21 at 7pm but I will giving an artist Artist Talk the next day, Sunday April 22 at 3pm. The show runs until June 3... visit it on weekends 3-6pm, or by appointment.The Gallery is located at 460 St Catherine Street West, #917, Montreal, QC.