THE ART DAY PROJECT (AND WE'RE 25!) PART 1
You'll have excuse us for the radio silence - It's been a whirlwind here at Creative Matters and we're just starting to catch our breath! They say that 50 is fabulous but what about 25? We've just nicely entered our 25th year at CMI and we have to admit, it feels pretty great. Rewind a few months to November 26 2013 to our amazingly fantastic exhibition and gala, The Art Day Project, launched at Toronto's own, Textile Museum of Canada (TMC). Our team (see below!) worked on the event for an ENTIRE YEAR, designing, plotting, preparing, choosing the perfect outfits and finally the day arrived and we couldn't be more thrilled with how it turned out.
The four-day event began with a lecture by our fearless leader Carol Sebert, entitled Responsible Rugmaking: The Fair Trade/Quality Connection. The theme of our event was centred around celebrating and demystifying the art of rug design and fair trade weaving and Carol spoke to that alongside Reto Aschwanden (who flew from SWITZERLAND), the Commercial Director for Label-Step, the incredible fair trade carpet production organization that we work with to ensure fair, safe and healthy conditions for all of the weavers who make our rugs.
Apres the lecture we ran some Art Day workshops, not unlike our own marathon art sessions, created to inspire and generate fresh new marks, patterns and designs. The namesake of our exhibition and gala event, Art Day, involves rolling up your sleeves and throwing your inhibition to the wind. Through a series of exercises that vary in length, we use different drawing and mark-making materials on an assortment of surfaces that, in turn, get refined, combined and enhanced into the beautiful hand-made custom and retail rugs that we produce each year. We were also lucky enough to capture the process of one of our Art Days on film (check it out here) and the final cut arrived just in time to premiere the night of our gala event.
This event also marked the North American launch of our latest line of handwoven rugs, The XXV Collection. It was noted by Carol, amidst the planning process "I think what our designers have captured in this exquisite collection is so Gatsby-esque. The silver and golden hues and simple yet intricate patterning is a perfect reflection of how delighted we feel as a team to be celebrating 25 years of creating luxurious fair trade floor-coverings for interior designs, architects and clients”. (We had to quote that…it gave us a little chill :) And how true; as a team we couldn't be more excited to be part of this tremendous milestone and this fantastic company. We're so grateful and moved by all of our family, friends colleagues who came to support us and our Art Day Project.
If you thought this little recap was exciting, stay tuned for part 2 of this post!