Category: The Portofolio

  • Projecto Italia: The Night

    [youtube_video id=“iOKAhDG9HUg” height=“480” width=“960”]

     

    So the night came! Wednes­day the 26th, it was a nice bright day and I had the chance to throw a recep­tion dis­play­ing my pho­tog­ra­phy. It was a won­der­ful time to show pho­tos from my lat­est col­lec­tion and to have a bit fun while at it. The cur­rent col­lec­tion, Pro­jec­to Italia focus­es on the his­tor­i­cal and every­day life of Italy, as its cit­i­zen weave in and out of mon­u­ments every­day which have last­ed, stand­ing tall for cen­turies, bear­ing wit­ness to the end­less cycle of soci­eties come and go with­in Italy.

    How­ev­er, you can’t stay still, hence I am work­ing on my new exhib­it, Pro­jec­to Toron­to!

    Nev­er­the­less, it was a great rea­son to get togeth­er, toast, sell a few pieces of art and make a lot of new friends, not to men­tion chat with a few old faces I had not seen in a while.

    Project Italia: A Photography Reception

    Mario Munoz was our live enter­tain­ment and wowed the crowd with his clas­si­cal gui­tar. His music res­onat­ed well, not only with the ener­gy of the event but also acousti­cal­ly. The man knows his strings. Expect to see him again in one of my future events and thank you, Reg­gie and Emi­lie for the help with the pho­tog­ra­phy and earnest video. I have always been real­ly bad at keep­ing records of things like this for myself due to some sil­ly notion of mod­esty, which can at times such as this, be noth­ing but detri­men­tal.

    Being able to share my work is a plea­sure and I am very thank­ful to all of you who came out to sup­port and shared a drink with me.

  • Projecto Italia: A Photography Reception (Preparation)

    MOA_3672-1

    I was excit­ed! Every time I have a chance to dis­play my work pub­licly is some­thing not to take light­ly. First, because it is a plea­sure to share an evening of pho­tog­ra­phy when it comes to the recep­tion night. Sec­ond, it is a lot of work to do behind the scenes and last­ly, as an event orga­niz­er, I push myself to make sure every­one has an amaz­ing, enjoy­able evening. That last part is prob­a­bly the one res­onat­ing the most as these days an artist/photographer/event manager/marketer has to wear a few more hats than just one and do each of them well in order to guar­an­tee a pos­si­ble out­come.

    I set myself to find a venue which I thought had a great cool fac­tor, good ser­vice and showed itself to be a great can­vas to dis­play my work. Even­tu­al­ly I picked Insom­nia Cafe as it has a very attrac­tive aes­thet­ic and I have always known for them to be very sup­port­ive of local artist.

    After we had reach an agree­ment and a date set for the recep­tion, then, and only then, is when the real work begins. As part of the con­tract, they would be host­ing a num­ber of my works for dis­play for the month of July. A quick cab ride there and I was ready to move to the next steps. Which was mar­ket­ing and enter­tain­ment. I want­ed to add an ele­ment of music to for it and began look­ing for pos­si­ble acts. Orig­i­nal­ly I thought about using an amaz­ing vio­lin quar­tet called Devah Quar­tet I had used in my last Hal­loween Grandi­ver­si­ty par­ty. How­ev­er I sus­pect­ed there might be scal­a­bil­i­ty issues plus I want­ed to go with some­thing a lit­tle more sub­dued to bet­ter mix with the venue. I remem­ber hear­ing this Latin Jazz gui­tarist through my adven­tures with the Indie Cof­fee Pass­port ear­li­er in the year and I set upon myself to find him. In the mean time I began mar­ket­ing through social media and using my own mail­ing lists.

    Through some social media sleuthing and ask­ing around, I was able to eas­i­ly find Mario Munoz and after some phone tag­ging,  we were able to work out for him to per­form some of his orig­i­nal work dur­ing the recep­tion! After a few calls to Insom­nia Lounge regard­ing the logis­tics of some live gui­tar.  We were off to the races!

  • Projecto Italia: A Photography Reception

    Projecto Italia: A Photography Reception

    One of the most inter­est­ing, reward­ing things an artist can ever do is to dis­play his or her work. Of course, noth­ing but I mean noth­ing will ever take away from the cheer act of cre­at­ing. It is after all the very dri­ve of cre­at­ing what makes us do what we do.

    Venezia Rose

    How­ev­er being able to share the fruits of our labour with oth­ers, with the world can and should be an enjoy­able, hum­bling and edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence. This is the very rea­son why I want­ed to have anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so… and to serve as an excuse to meet friends, fam­i­ly and new faces alike. Who am I to say ‘no’ to a wel­com­ing excuse for a toast?

    Pro­jec­to Italia is a pho­tog­ra­phy col­lec­tion dri­ven by a love of Ital­ian archi­tec­ture, its his­to­ry and unique panora­mas. A mod­ern coun­try still strong­ly root­ed in an old world cra­dle that are it’s build­ings, towns, mon­u­ments and val­ues. I was inspired to go there, as it hap­pens some­times in life, by the dreams of some­one else. After hear­ing her sto­ries and being swept by her pas­sion­ate enthu­si­asm, I felt com­pelled to trav­el 7000 kilo­me­tres and attempt to cap­ture some of those very moments through my lens­es. It was a great expe­ri­ence.

    Insomnia-Interior

    From the sym­me­try of the spi­ral stairs of the Vat­i­can, immense tombs in Flo­rence or the nos­tal­gic canals of Venice, please join me at Insom­nia Lounge for Pro­jec­to Italia: A Pho­tog­ra­phy Recep­tion. Select pieces from Project Italia will be on dis­play at the front lounge on Wednes­day, 7:30pm, July 24th, 2013.

    Hope to see you there!

  • Dear TTC: Bus Stops. You Are Doing It Wrong

    Dear TTC: Bus Stops. You Are Doing It Wrong

    MOBILE EYE: Our Toron­to Tran­sit Com­mis­sion At Work!!

    Tak­en on Sun­day, May 5th. Bay and King Street. A bus, while try­ing to make a very wrong turn end­ed up get­ting stuck and hold­ing up traf­fic. We nev­er found the mys­te­ri­ous rea­son for the attempt. Only that it blocked traf­fic in both direc­tions for about 10 min­utes.