Brampton-only newsfeed on Facebook launched

Want to know the latest news from across Brampton, through Facebook, but don't want to "Like" all the different pages?

Facebook has just launched an Interests feature, allowing people to create curated lists. Nick Moreau has created "Brampton", which aggregates pages on organizations like VAB, the Brampton Excelsiors, and the Brampton Board of Trade, businesses like Shoppers World Brampton, Brampton Battalion, and Chapters Brampton, and Brampton celebs like Tyler Seguin and Russell Peters. Also included are news outlets The Brampton Guardian, SNAP Brampton, and FlowerCityMoms.

Not only are all the updates gathered together in one place, you can Like, Comment, or Share directly from the list.

For one click access to what's happening in town, subscribe to the Brampton list on Facebook.

VAB on Remic TV: 30 minute interview with Keith

VAB President Keith Moreau was just interviewed on Remic TV, an online talk show. This episode was hosted by actress Jasmine Bowen, and discusses the history of Visual Arts Brampton in the first episode, and Keith's art in the second episode.

Former student Alex Rodway blogs his art

Former Visual Arts Brampton teen member Alex Rodway is now blogging his new works, on a fairly regular basis. Most of the works so far were created for his courses in Sheridan College's Illustration program, while others were done for a publishing company.

Alex was a student of Visual Arts Brampton's teen classes for a few years later last decade, easily earning golds, having progressed greatly from his first early year in the classes, back in 2000. About a year ago, he shared a show at the Rose Theatre Brampton's art gallery.

Mail art call for "wagpost: Open Topic"

Fabio Sassi
"Connected in a Global Village"
View other previous entries

Visual Arts Brampton is rebooting its mail art project, with Wagpost: Open Topic, a call for display at Fridge Front Gallery.

• All works/repros should be 4 x 6 inches (10 × 15 cm).
• Any subject, any medium, etc. No hatred, nudity or overly religious themes, as we're set up in a mall, but pretty much anything else is fair game.
• Works must be received by April 22, 2011. All others will be kept on file for future shows.

Send to:

wagpost c/o VAB
1 Bartley Bull Parkway, Suite 10
Brampton ON
L6W 3T7 Canada

Selected works will be shown on the Wagpost Facebook page, and through @wagpost on Twitter.

World Art Gallery, our dedicated mail art exhibit space, closed in 2010 to make way for Artway Invitational Gallery.

Bridge Aube's art featured with PHC Christmas

Visit Peel Heritage Complex's Facebook fan page.

The late Bridget Aube, previously a member of Visual Arts Brampton and the still life session's long-time convener, was featured in Peel Heritage Complex's 12 Days of Christmas photo series.

The work is part of the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Peel, currently under renovation until fall 2011. It represents the first day of Christmas, "a partridge in a pear tree".

The 12 Days is rather tongue-in-cheek with some of the less literal entries, like French hens and swans-a-swimming.

Dominos

It appears 1.5 million people watched this before us, but it's worth a view. Mona Lisa, made of dominos. (And if you're thinking, "wow, Mona Lisa's overused", take a look at some of the hundreds of parodies and adaptations in this rapid fire slideshow.) This domino fellow's also done his cat, a 3D dice, you can even request your own portrait. Neat.

New site like a Facebook for the Brampton arts community

Creative Brampton is a new online community for artists, musicians, dancers, actors... living in or based in Brampton. According to their promotional email:

A place where folks can meet, share ideas, show off their work, create a blog, chat, post their thoughts, support other artists, publicize events and so much more. With a click of your mouse you’re connected to other like-minded folks in Brampton.

Free to join, CreativeBrampton.com is a great opportunity to network and promote your work, or your events for FREE. Whether you’re a writer, sculptor, performing artist, musician, entertainer, dancer, manage a club, host events, or even are just a supporter of the arts, join us and see what’s going on! We'd love to know what you're up to as well.

Visual Arts Brampton has a profile on the site, that we're gradually going to flesh out with more information and pictures.

Conrad now on our Zazzle store

The newest artist on Visual Arts Brampton's quickly growing Zazzle store is Conrad Mieschke. Check out his artwork on various products, ranging from shirts and hats, to mugs and greeting cards, even US stamps.

Zazzle is a print-on-demand store, and they ship the products within 24 hours of you ordering them. Visual Arts Brampton's store on Zazzle was created in late 2007, but only now be kicked into high-gear, thanks to modifications from the site which make it easier to upload works for sale.

Bridget Doughty's works now online

Works by the late-Bridget Doughty are now being put online, in a project by Big Folio Gallery. Works are sorted by subject matter.

The site will initially only feature currently unsold works, available for purchase at the gallery, but will eventually expand to previous works and her eight paintings in the collection of the Art Gallery of Peel.

Visit the quickly growing site, to explore her artwork.

New Trillium grant for VAB

We can officially announce today that Visual Arts Brampton has received a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

In their words, our grant is: "$10,000 over one year to support the delivery of new media and video-on-demand workshops for children and adults in the community by purchasing new computer equipment and helping to obtain instructors."

To break that down:
- we're getting new laptops which will allow us to restart our digital art training in the youth classes, and start workshops for adults,
- we'll be interviewing members about their art, using a digital video camera, and making those video segments on our website,
- taping segments about the studio, its programming, events, and exhibits, all of which will be available on our website,

Most importantly, we will be making a series of high definition video art instructional "vodcasts", which will be available where ever, whenever, to whomever. At least one 3 to 7 minute episode will be released each week for at least a year.

These workshops can be watched online as high quality full-screen streaming video, or subscribed to and downloaded through RSS feeds or iTunes, so that they can be watched offline on your computer, portable media player, burned to a DVD to watch on your TV, whatever.

Anyway, this is just a "soft announce", we won't be making too much of a deal about this project, until we have more to show for it.


More about Trillium and their grants

We are in the Halton-Peel "catchment area"; these 27 grants for our area total of $2,630,800. Across the province this year, Trillium's annual budget is $110 million, and will be further increased to $120 million by 2009-2010. [See Halton-Peel press release]

Ontario Minister of Culture Aileen Carroll noted to Trillium in a press release that “Our government is committed to fostering healthy and vibrant communities, right across Ontario. These Ontario Trillium Foundation grants will help build a stronger province by fuelling local economies and improving the quality of life of Ontarians.