#4 A BRIEF HISTORY OF DISNEY | PART 3
Discover more from The smARTcircle - Toronto - Visual Arts
#4 A BRIEF HISTORY OF DISNEY | PART 3
PLUS: The Sound of Ukraine & our smARTpicks!
As the weather’s starting to get nicer, there’s no better time to venture out for a gallery crawl. smARTcircle returns once more to bring you a list of exhibitions throughout Toronto.
But first, Richard Ouzounian is back with another installation of A BRIEF HISTORY OF DISNEY, to accompany the Disney Animation: Immersive Experience exhibit. We also present a conversation with Tymur Poliansky ahead of his April 15 The Sound Of Ukraine concert at Lighthouse Immersive.
For more interviews with luminary artists, Issue 11 of smART Magazine is available now. Interested in contributing to our next issue? Find out how you can get involved with Issue 12.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF DISNEY | PART 3: The Road To Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs
by RICHARD OUZOUNIAN
Richard Ouzounian returns with another bit of Disney history. This time, we get a chance to read about the perilous beginnings of the animator’s most iconic archetype, the Princess. Turns out Snow White wasn’t a surefire hit, at least according to the industry and Disney’s own advisors (including Walt’s wife, Lillian):
But for Walt, this was so much more than an exercise in show business brinkmanship. He really believed that if his company were to grow, his artists and filmmakers had to learn how to tell the stories he had always dreamed of telling – stories larger than life that could make people laugh and cry at the same time.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was publicly announced in June of 1934. Walt not only had to make a feature, he had to train a team as well. He brought in renowned art instructor Don Graham to teach his animators how to draw from life and empowered other people like Ben Sharpsteen and Dave Hand to help provide a unifying force in the stories that were being constructed.
To Walt, “If the story is good, the picture may be good, but if the story is weak, good colour, music, and animation cannot save it.” — CONTINUE READING
The Sound of Ukraine
by LILIIA SMICHENKO
smART Magazine had a chance to speak to Ukrainian pianist and composer, Tymur Polianskyi ahead of his upcoming immersive concert, The Sound Of Ukraine, which will be comprised of musical improvisations accompanying two immersive exhibits: Immersive World of Maria Prymachenko and Immersive Shevchenko: Soul of Ukraine.
sM | The Sound of Ukraine will feature live performance, which is a fairly new component of immersive exhibits as we've had them in Canada. As a composer, what elements of the exhibit experience are you hoping to accentuate with a live ensemble?
TP ── Actually, for me, this is just as new, because all the exhibits usually have a pre-recorded soundtrack and video material which is projected onto the walls and the floor. However, this time I will perform live on the piano, and then there will also be vocalists supporting me. We decided to do this because I am the composer for these two exhibits and I know the material well. The point of live music is improvisation, it anticipates that you can play and create something new while looking at the people and their reaction to the exhibit. — CONTINUE READING
TOP EXHIBITS AND EVENTS HAPPENING NEAR YOU:
On at the AGO’s second level is You Look Beautiful Like That: Studio Photography in West and Central Africa, featuring more than a century of work by photographers like Michel Kameni (Cameroon), Malick Sidibé (Mali), and Paul Kodjo (Côte d’Ivoire). December 2, 2022–June 11, 2023
Over at Open Studio’s Main Gallery, Cultivating Connection features work by Alyssa Alikpala, Jenn Law, Noelle Wharton-Ayer. The artists work with various flora as subjects, materials, and even collaborators in this ongoing (growing, as the case may be) exhibition. March 3–April 15
Down the hall from Open Studio, A Space Main Gallery is presenting Disruption, a group show of four artists (Magdolene Dykstra, Heidi McKenzie, Natalia Arbelaez, Habiba El-Sayed) subverting the canon and building “a new foundation of multiplicity.” March 11–April 22
Taglialatella Gallery is presenting the third solo show at the gallery by Ben Johnston. With bright canvases and twisting sculptures, Word Play explores text’s physicality and legibility and the boundaries between those qualities). March 23–April 10
Continuing with text thematically but extending its line of flight, In Parts by Tazeen Qayyum at the red head gallery uses the motion of cockroaches to develop a syllabary in beguiling and intricate diagrams that engage with the violence that occurs when language fails. March 29–April 22
If language so often fails to bring us together, how do we build a world? Using the quilt as a material metaphor, curator, Leila Timmins, brings together a host of textile artists (Alice Olsen Williams, Alicia Barbeiri, Colleen Heslin, Hangama Amiri, Jagdeep Raina, Jeremy Laing, Joyce Wieland , Judith Tinkl, Moraa Stump, Preston Pavlis) for Piecework, as part of the Images Festival. April 1–September 3
Another textile exhibition that explores the mending quality of the medium, Un/Common Threads at Workman Arts Offsite “presents a constellation of works by Mad and neurodivergent artists that troubles the dichotomy of mental health and mental wellness.” Featuring Brandon Wullf, Khadija Aziz, Paulina Wiszowata, Kingi Carpenter, Catherine Heard, Apanaki Temitayo, Estée Klar and Adam Wolfond and curated by Kat Singer. April 4–27
S. Maria Brandt’s solo show at Cedar Ridge Gallery, Installation 50% explores a vexing statistic: half of the food discarded in Canadian households could be eaten. Brandt explores this in a series of large scale photographs and epoxy resin objects. April 1–20
Cody Fry: Symphonic
Symphonic pop maestro Cody Fry – behind viral hit song “I Hear A Symphony” – is set to release a compilation of his best symphonic tracks including “Eleanor Rigby”, “Photograph” and more. Symphonic is out now via Decca Records US.