Dave Trautrimas is adorable. This becomes obvious almost immediately after he enters the small café diner where we are scheduled to meet in Toronto. The 29 year old artist, originally from Belleville, has got the flattered, eager to please manner of someone who’s never been interviewed before (he admits as much). It’s sweet, but it [...]

When I tell David Pirrie his work reminds me a little of M.C. Escher, he seems surprised. “Escher!?” he exclaims “All I remember of his work is endless stairs.”
That’s fair. And to be honest, while there is something vaguely Escher-esque about Pirrie’s work, I was mostly talking out of my ass. The two artists have [...]

To get to Diyan Achjadi’s studio, you have to climb a lot of stairs—all the way up to the top floor of a nondescript building in Gastown. Next comes a long, skinny hallway. Its sides are adorned in exposed two-by-fours and draped sheets of industrial plastic—it feels like a construction site.

While reading Colson Whitehead’s latest book, Apex Hides The Hurt, I couldn’t seem to get one phrase out of my mind. That phrase was “Some folk’ll never lose a toe. Then again, some folk’ll.” You know, from The Simpsons. That’s about as much of the plot of this somewhat bizarre novel as I’m going to [...]

In the creative world, artists tend to be pigeonholed. Everyone’s supposed to have a thing, perhaps because a single focus is easier to market, but beyond that, the general public just seems unwilling to accept a lot of crossover action. We’re okay, for example, with singer/dancers, painter/drawers, and other such obvious pairings, but try [...]

Regardless of if they love it or hate it, a lot of people have something to say about Nicholas Di Genova’s art. His incredibly detailed, sometimes monstrous creatures are alternately fawned over and slammed. The Toronto-based artist doesn’t take the bad stuff to heart, though. He just keeps plugging along. At the moment, he’s hard [...]

Obviously, photography is an art form. As is graffiti. So what’s photography of graffiti?
Vancouver-based artist Nicole Sanches has been posting photos of discovered street art from Seattle and Vancouver on Flickr since August 2005. This month, I spoke to her about appropriation, documentation, and yes, her own art as well. Is she stealing? She says [...]

Hugh Phukovsky is all over the place. He’s a local comedian whose work has been called everything from “insanely talented” and “absurdly funny” to “painfully humourless” and “deliberately asinine.” Before last month, I’d never heard of him, but Phukovsky has been pushing comedic boundaries since 1996, and with a bunch of new projects on the [...]

Pro photographer, designer, skateboarding aficionado and art golden boy Bob Kronbauer made a splash in 2004 when his first book of photos, Beach Glass hit the market and a lot of people decided he was the next big thing. Suddenly, Bob K was everywhere. But he’s not the sort of guy who likes to [...]