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fire and fusion: a Canadian Enameling Exhibition

  • As many of you know, I have been working on presenting an exhibition of Canadian enamelisng since last November. The month of May is a concatenation of metalworking events, with the Society for North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) conference "Meta Mosaic" and the launch of the Toronto International Jewellery Festival (TIJF).

    “fire and fusion” was conceived as a way to feature enamelling at the new Toronto International Jewellery Festival. I contacted my friends Gabrielle Castonguay and David Hustler and asked if they thought we should go forward. They did! And we became the "Fire and fusion" team. We put out a call for entry, and we weren’t disappointed. Over 104 fantastic submissions made paring that number down to 40 a difficult and painstaking process. But it was finally accomplished, and “fire and fusion” became a reality. We had a successful opening party on May 1 and the exhibition will run to May 30 at the Rainbow Cinema Gallery in downtown Toronto (North St Lawrence Market). Open daily from 12:30pm to midnight.

    This exhibition was made possible by a generous grant from the Ontario Arts Council and the Enamelist Society

    Many thanks to “Art for all Canada” and the Rainbow Cinema for offering a venue and giving so much help and support. We were delighted to take advantage of one of the few public art spaces left in Toronto. We encourage other artists to take advantage of this fantastic opportunity.

    But mostly a hearty thanks to all those enamellists who often work in isolation without acknowledgement and support  who sent us their best work.   We were so touched as we opened each of your beautiful works of art, and saw all the love and skill that went into them. We did this for you. We hope this will be the first of many more and will mark a resurgence of interest in and appreciation of the ancient art of enamelling.

    We are compiling a Virtual Exhibition at our blog: http://fireandfusion.wordpress.com (not quite finished yet!), and created a YouTube video featuring all of the pieces. Please share on your Facebook, Twitter, website and blog! We hope this will be the first of many!