Cherie Fawcett will be wrapping up her tenure as Kwartzlab Artist in Residence at the end of the month. This week, she will be hosting both her Artist in Residence talk during Tuesday Open Night and her workshop on Wednesday.

The workshop will be directed by Cherie Fawcett and will explore memory and sentimentality. Participants of this workshop are asked to bring either a sentimental or mundane object along with them. There will be two parts for this evening. Firstly, the participants will render the object/objects that they brought with them in any style that they chose. For the second half of the workshop, participants will think of a memory or story surrounding this object and explore this concept in any style that they chose.

If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please RSVP Cherie at cherie.fawcett@gmail.com.

There will be a $5 fee for this workshop to cover the cost of supplies.

Artist Bio

Cherie Fawcett was born in Sudbury Ontario. As a child, her family frequently uprooted, and to this date she has lived in 22 different houses. Constant relocation brought with it a strong interest in the idea of relationships, recreating identities, as well as the temporality of memory. More specifically, she focuses on how documentation—whether it be photographic, film, text, or collected objects—can influence how and what we recall.

Cherie lives in Kitchener, Ontario. She received her BA from the University of Waterloo in 2011. Upon graduation, she was presented with the RCAA Howe Award. For the past few years, Cherie has curated at local galleries including The Artery Gallery and WalterFedy. She has an upcoming curation at Cambridge Galleries in September 2013. She is currently working at Kwartzlab as their Artist in Residence until the end of the 2012 year.

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Yesterday, I ran my first cryptography workshop and keysigning party at kwartzlab (actually, it was my first workshop, period). The turnout was actually a lot better than I was expecting. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take pictures.

This post is mainly about my observations on how I’d do things differently if I were to run one again (and I probably will) as well as some reference notes for the people who attended.

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Curious about the world of needle craft? Come participate in a one-night-only embroidery workshop! As kwartzlab’s current artist-in-residence, I will teach you the basics of hand embroidery. No prior experience required!

ADDED WORKSHOP BONUS: make your own reusable heat transfer patterns using a Silhouette SD machine (its like a Cricut, but way better!). Choose from an existing library of designs, create your own with the Studio software, or bring an existing .dxf file (all objects need to be ungrouped before saving as .dxf)!

Silhouette SD draws the kwartzlab logo on paper with a heat transferable ink pen

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When we acquired the second lab space for KWARTZLAB, there wasn’t much lighting or electricity in the space. Ed Maste and I have been working on getting that all up and running. As of last night, we have upgraded the lighting for the space, and it’s looking quite bright in the Shop now, as it should be.

Tags: KWartzLab, Shop
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As you all should be aware, KwartzLab (in kind co-operation with THEMUSEUM, and the generous sponsorship of the KWAwesome Fund) is hosting Hacky Hallowe’en, a carving-soldering-hacking skills workshop, on Saturday October 29. As part of this workshop, we’ll be teaching you (yes, YOU!) how to safely carve intricate designs into a pumpkin. Of course, in order to pass this wisdom down, some of us ‘Labbers first needed to learn the skill ourselves.

KwartzLab friend and pumpkin carving guru, Jeff-o, held such a workshop for us on Wednesday evening. And as a graduate of the kitchen knife & stitches school of pumpkin carving, I was first in line! I’ll share some of the tips we learned after Hacky Hallowe’en. In the meantime, however, you can take a peek at our technique!

Andrew opts for a "fancy" lid.

Pumpkins are tasty.

Taping the pattern to the pumpkin.

Transfering the pattern to the pumpkin.

Doug shows off the KWAwesome pumpkin

Awesome-looking pumpkins, that don't require blood sacrifice.

More pics over here.

Tags: hallowe'en, pictures, pumpkin carving, pumpkins
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