I am an artist with various interests at the moment my primary focus has been caricature as well as character design.
I also write and illustrate my own comic strip Sunny and Gloom which will soon be getting a visual overhaul.
Stay tuned to www.cliffcature.blogspot.com> for more details.
The community of the World Artist Network is formed by a diverse network of emerging and established artists, art appreciators, curators, students, teachers, galleries, collectors and more. WAN Blog is the perfect space to share your thoughts on exhibits you have visited, artists you admire, new techniques or media you are experimenting with, openings, news... anything and everything that brings the art world together.
(Wednesday, 12 November 2008) Written by WAN D Jour
JAMES BRADSHAW
Globe and Mail Update
November 12, 2008 at 3:58 AM EST
Emerging from the debris of decades of squabbles and hundreds of pages of legal documents, Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario unveils its revamped and redesigned home this week in a state of happy detente with neighbourhood residents who once voiced fierce opposition to its transformational plans.
The tensions and spats between homeowners of the Grange area date back to expansion projects completed in 1974, 1977 and 1993, which were opposed and altered by a small but tenacious group determined to protect the area's residential quality from the seemingly ever-expanding structure in their midst.
But as they contemplated weeks of costly legal hearings at the Ontario Municipal Board over the most recent construction, the two sides chose then CITY-TV reporter (now city councillor) Adam Vaughan, a neighbourhood resident, as a go-between for meetings. The result was a settlement that allowed for the construction of the AGO as it now exists and the blooming of a co-operative spirit that had been lacking for decades.
Many residents were less than thrilled with the first two stages of the 1970s expansion by Canadian architect John C. Parkin, completed in 1974 and 1977. In 1987, the gallery began discussing “the next stage of the construction,” putting the residents' backs up again, according to Ceta Ramkhalawansingh, one of the residents who has led the charge for years.
But the residents eventually settled the matter at an OMB hearing involving lawyers from the AGO and the City of Toronto, paving the way for the Stage III Barton Myers/KPMB Architects expansion to begin in 1989, completed in 1993.
Included in the OMB decision, dated May 29, 1989, is a paragraph that reads: “As to the zoning bylaw and the proposed amendment thereto the intent is to ‘cap' the expansion of the gallery as set out in that bylaw,” something residents saw as the crucial victory.
“The reason we settled in 1989 is because we thought we were getting a cap on the expansion,” Ramkhalawansingh said.
When the AGO revealed its building plans for Transformation AGO in late 2002, it rekindled the residual anger from the earlier projects, with Ramkhalawansingh charging that the gallery's explanation boiled down to a “that was then, this is now” dismissal of residents' concerns.
Vaughan said tensions were exacerbated by a lack of communication. Olivia Chow, then councillor of the ward and now an MP, sat on the AGO's board of trustees but often sent a city employee to meetings in her stead, Vaughan said.
“When the board started contemplating changes, [Chow] didn't bring the residents up to speed as the changes were coming through, so the opportunity to have input came after the announcement, as opposed to being part of the announcement. So the gulf widened because they felt like they were ambushed on it,” Vaughan said.
Eighteen months after the launch, the AGO engaged neighbours in a consultation process, but the participants were unable to see eye to eye. After city council approved the project in October, 2004, the gallery's lawyers sought approval from the OMB. Seven residents spent $250 each to prepare appeals.
Bev Carret, the AGO's manager of government and community relations, who added the community portfolio only in January of 2004, said the consultations provided a quick lesson on the state of affairs.
“It became obvious we didn't know a lot of our neighbours. Although we were in the neighbourhood, we hadn't made a lot of effort in the past number of years to be involved in neighbourhood activities and concerns,” she said.
Faced with weeks of costly OMB hearings, the residents approached Vaughan, who knew architect Frank Gehry and lead gallery lawyer Steve Diamond, and asked him to facilitate discussions about a settlement. He presented Diamond with list of 14 demands from the residents and returned with a list of nine concessions from the AGO that the residents ultimately accepted, averting the OMB battle.
“A really strong statement about community engagement was made by the AGO, which was responded to by an opening of the door to expansion,” both for the AGO and other neighbourhood projects to come, Vaughan said.
The settlement terms included a promise that the AGO will “consult with its neighbours in regard to any further expansion”; not erect any billboards or advertising facing Grange Park; direct all buses to load and unload on Dundas Street, avoiding Beverley and McCaul streets; provide the city with $40,000 to spend on recreational programs in Grange Park; rezone a parking lot as parkland; and provide 20 fully subsidized placements for youth in March Break and summer-camp programs.
Combined with other battles won in the 1989 settlement – agreements not to build to the edge of various property lines and not to locate any entrances or exits on the decidedly residential Beverley Street – the Grange residents have had a noticeable impact on the AGO as it now stands. “Right now, we have a very good relationship with the gallery, very positive, forward-looking,” Ramkhalawansingh said, though she also identified several hypothetical scenarios in the future that could cause “a brawl.”
Carret agrees that the AGO is at last breaking out of the “ivory-tower syndrome” that had some people feeling that an art gallery wasn't a place for them. But she also acknowledged that no bond is unbreakable.
“Like any relationship, it's something you have to continue working on. You just can't lay back on your heels and say, ‘Oh, we've done all this good stuff, everybody's happy now.' You have to keep connected to the neighbourhood,” she said.
The AGO is now working with the city and the Grange Park Advisory Committee, a residents' initiative that is now a formal subcommittee of the AGO board of trustees, on a long-term plan to revitalize the park, which is owned by the gallery but maintained by the city since 1911. - source globeandmail.com
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The community of the World Artist Network is formed by a diverse network of emerging and established artists, art appreciators, curators, students, teachers, galleries, collectors and more. WAN Blog is the perfect space to share your thoughts on exhibits you have visited, artists you admire, new techniques or media you are experimenting with, openings, news... anything and everything that brings the art world together.