Open Studio x Lake Effect Projects: DAY TRIPPER

DAY TRIPPER is a public art exhibition and collaboration between Open Studio and Lake Effect Projects as part of their ongoing Ferry Terminal Billboard Project, on the occasion of Open Studio’s 50th anniversary in 2020. Taking place across two exhibitions – the first featuring Nix Burox and Lorna Livey, and the second with Philippe Blanchard and Shogo Okada – DAY TRIPPER highlights the island as a place of escapism and a point of departure not just in terms of physical travel, but in headspace and mindset. Contrasting with the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal’s brutalist, grey surroundings, the exhibitions feature digital translations of analogue artworks which use colour and composition to transformative effect. Bright, poppy, abstract, psychedelic, the artworks in DAY TRIPPER sing of summer: soft shapes, layers of colour and hazy horizon lines, temporarily taking the viewer elsewhere.

Each participating artist in DAY TRIPPER employs strategies intrinsic to print: processes of layering, colour separation and multiples, but they also connect with animation and the idea of ‘frames’, featuring bold graphics, optical vibrations and experimentation with sequencing.

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August 2021 – April 2022: Philippe Blanchard & Shogo Okada

Philippe Blanchard is a Toronto-based artist, animator and teacher. His diverse creative background has informed an interdisciplinary practice combining animation, installation, light shows, drawing, painting and printmaking. He is currently Associate Professor at OCAD University. Access the artist’s website here and view his latest exhibition Interference Patterns, September 10 – October 23, 2021, in Open Studio’s Project Spacehere.

Shogo Okada is a Toronto/Montreal-based artist from Osaka, Japan. He explores the worlds of visual art, music & animation, reinterpreting existing materials through the technique of sampling. He draws upon influences from collage and Hip-Hop, using an intuitive, DIY approach to create imagery that remixes the world around him.

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November 2020 – July 2021: Nix Burox & Lorna Livey

Nix Burox is a non-binary trans artist currently working in Toronto. Interested in process-oriented art, their work references archiving practices and takes the form of modular interactive art objects such as sets of cards, artist books, and installations. Using autobiography as a tool to discuss issues of identity and mental health, Burox is interested in queer and small press initiatives and was a founding member of the Concordia Queer Print Club. They received their BFA in Print Media from Concordia University in 2018 and are now an active member at Open Studio. They have participated in a number of exhibitions and residencies, including a collaborative residency at Gravity Press Experimental Print Shop in Massachusetts and most recently the 2018-19 Don Phillips Scholarship at Open Studio.

Lorna Livey is a graduate of York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts. Her works on paper utilizing printmaking and mixed media have been exhibited in solo and group shows across Canada, including the Burnaby Art Gallery, Whitby’s Station Gallery and the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John. Her work is included in many corporate and public collections. Well-known as a teacher and Master Printmaker, Livey has worked with Open Studio, Inner City Angels, community arts groups and individual artists. She has also written and illustrated four travel memoirs.

Lorna Livey’s Glow Series started in 2006, marks a transition from figurative imagery to atmospheric abstraction inspired by views from airplane windows on journeys all over the world. The lines she adds to the blended rolls create tension in the work, a push and pull between the solid and the nebulous. The art is a focus for meditation, spirituality and timelessness.

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In partnership with Lake Effect Projects