new blog site

The Red Wagon Collective is currently building a new blog site. 
http://gatheringspace.wordpress.com/This site will serve as an archive.
Thanks for your interest.

does everyone dream of a cabin in the woods?

 we can't go to the cottage so Tisa made the cottage come to us!

Today

Today we will have peaches and corn for snack and homemade cupcakes for the birthday girl among us. Thinking about anonymity and how to represent ourselves without triggering stereotypes and the reduction of our identities to preconceived notions of
homelessness and precarious lives...

We created the tele-cozy to withstand the elements. Our worries about fabric weighted with water were solved with velcro. We found a solution to how the panels in the wind could act as sails.  But we did not account for fire. Fire used the structure as its source of fuel releasing heat and light until nothing remained but ashes. 

The corner of Dundas West and Pacific is less bright and our hearts ache at the absence of  this quirky, laughing installation.

http://telephoneboothgallery.ca/blog/?p=2120

Life happened to the telephone in the booth we adorned. The phone was functioning when we started and now it looks like it exploded off its mount. The Art of Conversation indeed.


There is no more boring conversation than the one where everybody agrees.
                                       -Michel De Montaigne (1553-92)

Now ready for viewing Pacific at the corner of Dundas West.


"In most places, late liberal power does not exercise itself through the spectacular display of drawn and quartered bodies...Neo-liberalism works by colonizing the field of value - reducing all social values to one market value -exhausting alternative social projects by denying them sustenance."
-Elizabeth Povinelli (Economies of Abandonment)

the art of conversation

flowers on the corner of pacific and dundas west.... maybe we'll find more.... just a small piece of what we have done all glorious day!

We are installing our Tel-Talk project today: the Art of Conversation.
Many thanks to Lucia at Cool Hand of a Girl for her ongoing support!

Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time. Our office buldings are empty one-half of the time. It's time we gave this some thought.

 –Buckminster Fuller – I seem to be a verb (1970)

the booth....

Monday Art Group brewing new experiments 

We will be working with Tel-Talk, an intervention project taking place at a telephone booth near you. On June 13th, 2012 we will be decorating a phone booth in the Junction to coincide with the opening of the Tel-Talk exhibit at the Telephone Booth Gallery. Poetry readings are planned alongside the intervention.

The MAG chose a name last night for our installation which is quickly albeit laboriously taking shape:
The Art of Conversation

More details coming soon!

New Research Project

We have started work on a new research project called Women's Stories: Aging, Disability and Homelessness. The Red Wagon Collective has received a small grant to do arts based research in the form of a photo-voice project. We will be working with women from Evangeline and Mainstay Housing to discuss issues of precarious housing. Is a house four walls and a roof, or is it somewhere to live? How does precarious housing affect bodies? How does it impact the aging process? How does aging impact how home is understood? How do bodies fit within the shelter system as they age? What challenges are faced?

We will be involved in a group dialogical and creative process of discussion and production of photographs. We will hopefully end up with a suite of images with text that we can put to use in discussion with housing providers, politicians, community people, and health care practitioners - and anyone else whose interested.

We put out a call to our neighbours for donations of digital camera's (that work) and have received four so far. Thanks Junction folks!

A quilt we all made for a new mother - 

enough

good morning gentle reader. we are thinking about the idea of enough. when we need to say ENOUGH (yes - shout it out), when we need to say it's not enough... How much icing do you want on that cookie? How many cookies do you want? Why is someone else doling things out.... How do they know how hungry I am and what nourishes me... it becomes too arduous. Be thankful for the cookie that has not quite enough icing, and for the coat that does not quite fit...
We say enough.
Last night we sat on the floor surrounded with scraps of crochet and knitting, wilding it all into a surprise for the community.... part of saying enough.... watch out...

Poetry Reading at the Toronto Free Gallery

Last Tuesday some of us 'ladies' went down to the Toronto Free Gallery to hear some poems. It was a benefit for the committee that is organizing the commemoration and demonstration for the missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Yes it was very moving and emotional, and also great to hear such strong words. Faith Nolan sang and that did lift us up.

Also, we saw Carol Conde and Karl Beveridge photo exhibit. They tackled the issues of Mexican migrant workers in Ontario, land development, the toxification of water, the economic crash. Inspiring work. We want to make pictures too.

Amazing paintings by M.

We miss here when she's gone.

The Monday Art Group continues to gather and make art. We have more projects brewing, big and small. For now poetry, knitting, drawing, beading, drinking tea and quietly exploring.

We think about food and under nourishment. So we had a feast, it was the holidays after all, but vegetables were on request! And homemade calzones.

Why have all the cooking utensils been thrown away?

Our Banner Project finally complete and installed on the Heinztman street wall of Evangeline (as well as inside).

Febuary 2011.

The Quilt Project installed at the Capitalism and Culture in the Junction exhibit.