moimoi

2005
Vitrine (vit’ren) n. A glass showcase for art objects

Every year 1000’s of artifacts are de-accessioned from museums and art galleries. What becomes of them? In an attempt to provide for this inevitability, the Manchester Letherium competition called for the design of a museum for de-accessioned artifacts. Vitrine, side-stepping the museum requirement, proposed to design only the museum gift shop — a glass building where de-accessioned artifacts are displayed, reproduced and/or transformed (insects as key chains, shrunken heads as T-shirts designs etc.) and put out for sale as collectables.

By conflating the visitor experience — the consumption of the artifact as event and the need to take away some memento of having done so, Vitrine fulfills the expectation of continued storage, by de-accessioning, yet again, the artifact or its likeness into the homes of the visitor who chose to mark their visit with a purchase.

Vitrine was awarded the Henry Withcombe Prize for Design and Innovation, and was exhibited as part of the Letherium exhibition at the Cornerhouse gallery in Manchester, UK in 2005.

Collaborators: Steffanie Adams, Sarah Bonsall, Kim Heppler, Angela Iarocci, Claire Ironside, Darlene Montgomery, Robert Shortt

More about the Manchester Letherium project

2005

Tumbleweed was created for Calgary’s annual Artcity Peep Show competition. Conceived as a rolling viewing device, Tumbleweed, takes its inspiration from the plant of the same name — a hardy, immigrant transient plant, long associated with the early west and possessing many of the same attributes as the people who lived there. Like the plant scattering its seeds, Tumbleweed dispenses art and ideas with every turn affording the viewer the opportunity to roll across hundreds of back-lit vignettes each featuring the work of an Alberta artist. Tumbleweed received an honorable mention and was exhibited as part of the Artcity Peep Show exhibition in Calgary, AB.

Credits: Steffanie Adams, Kim Heppler, Angela Iarocci, Claire Ironside, Darlene Montgomery, Robert Shortt

2005

Constructed out of remnant laminated racing sailcloth, the Take-Out Tote is a study in structure on a small scale production combining folds and material to create a bag with backbone. Part origami, part noodle container, each bag is cut as one piece, scored, folded, minimally stitched and fitted with sailing hardware. The Take-Out Tote has been sold in several Toronto stores and galleries.

Claire Ironside

2005

Recalling similar devices produced and distributed by public service agencies to promote social change (think of the imperial/metric converters doled out by the millions in 1970s) the Winter Wonder Wheel provides shorthand access to info about how to dress appropriately for winter weather in all of Canada’s major cities. It achieves this by answering two fundamental questions all Canadians grapple with — what to WEAR in the winter and depending on WHERE you live what you should wear if you are to thrive in the Canadian winter. As a data rich visual object the Winter Wonder Wheel cheerfully combines fun and fact in a compelling and informative way leaving no room for staying indoors during the cold winter months.

The Winter Wonder Wheel was featured in the Design for the Cold exhibition at the Design Exchange (DX) in Toronto, ON, 2005.

Collaborators: Steffanie Adams, Kim Heppler, Angela Iarocci, Claire Ironside

2006

The Lucky White Squirrels limited edition print set was originally produced as two 4’x 8’ panels for a squirrel themed art exhibition held at a Toronto gallery located across from Trinity Bellwoods Park where a resident population of white squirrels live. Working with various forms of diagrams: the punnet square, a tree network and pictograms, this idiosyncratic infographic artwork explains why seeing a white or albino squirrel is lucky. The first print, a tree network diagram, illustrates the mix of genes it takes to create albino progeny from a pair of squirrels each carrying the recessive gene for albinism. The second, in real numbers, illustrates squirrel for squirrel the 1:20,000 odds that this would occur.

The Lucky White Squirrels print set was featured in the COUPE International Design and Image Annual in October 2007.

In 2009, the White Squirrel Coffee Shop opened across from Trinity Bellwoods Park integrating the white squirrel symbol design with their identity. 

You can purchase the Lucky White Squirrels prints in person at the White Squirrel Coffee Shop in Toronto, ON. At the coffee shop we also sell Lucky White Squirrel buttons with fifty percent of the proceeds donated to the Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation.

Collaborators: Angela Iarocci, Claire Ironside

White Squirrel Coffee Shop

Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation

2006

Made of scrap paper from a local print shop and expired paint chips, Nota Bene notepads combine art, environment and utility in one neat package. Designed initially as a craft experiment, the two types, a key ring and a pocket version, have since become staples at several Toronto store/galleries. All materials were sourced and recovered in the downtown area which proves that one person’s blue box material is another’s DIY fodder and all within a 100 mile radius.

Nota Bene are no longer in stock but we would like to thank MADE, Type Books, Kid Icarus, C1 Artspace, Magic Pony and Paul Petro Multiples + Small Works for their support.

Collaborators: Angela Iarocci, Claire Ironside

2007

This portrait, represented as a chart, expresses 93 different ethnic origins as declared by Canadians in the 2001 census by Statistics Canada. Census data provides a storehouse of information that can be translated into a full-bodied cultural reading of our national identity, one that reflects our true colours. As such, every Canadian who identified their origin participated in the construction of the artwork. The result is a multi-coloured, multi-cultural visualization that is both intimate and panoramic allowing for a micro and macro reading of what it is to be Canadian. Commissioned and exhibited by Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, ON as part of its visual art program from May-July 2007.

Collaborators: Angela Iarocci, Claire Ironside

2007-2010

Inspired by grade school science experiments and drawing on the concept of Leo Marx’s “machine in the garden”, Pomme de parterre evinces the garden as a cultivated storehouse of energy and unearthed potential by reframing the ornamental structure of the parterre as an off-grid power plant or agricultural motherboard. Comprised of sixteen heirloom potato plots, a root cellar and a 1,000 strong potato battery, enough energy is created to visually and aurally register the garden’s latent power in light and sound – the combined effect, a sonic and visual celebration of the humble spud as a storehouse of nutritional and technological energy.

The project was commissioned and exhibited by the Jardins de Métis, International Garden Festival, Grand Métis, QC over four years. It was recently published in Experimenting Landscapes: Testing the Limits of the Garden, ed. Emily Waugh and Métis International Garden Festival. Birkhäuser : Basel, 2016.

Collaborators: Angela Iarocci, Claire Ironside, David K. Ross with artist Peter Flemming

More info:
Pomme de parterre

International Garden Festival, Jardins de Métis

2007-2009

This two-part project, comprised of separate craft and release phases, transforms textile fish into real fish. The heart of the crafting phase centered on 25 Toronto based schools each building a regionally specific school of textile fish and researching and sharing information about their species on the FishNet project web site. The release phase occured when Harbourfront Centre, acting (metaphorically) as a fish hatchery, sponsored the 'release' of the crafted textile fish, an activity which ultimately underwrote fish habitat restoration and restocking programs in the Great Lakes.

FishNet was presented to the public in a variety of forms including a project web site, classroom activities, a public exhibition, and as an invitation to other schools within the Great Lakes bio-region to undertake similar projects. At its completion, the project combined and coalesced the creative talents of approximately 2,000 people: students, educators, artists and designers for the purposes of exploring and engaging in the multiple themes of sustainability, collaboration and activism.

FishNet identifies absence or neglect as the creative basis for a subtle form of protest art—one that provokes an engaging solution while strengthening the ties that bind us as a community living within the Great Lakes bioregion and beyond.

FishNet received grants from Harbourfront Centre's Fresh Ground new works and the Ontario Arts Council, Arts Education program. Additional financial support was provided by the Toronto District School Board and Inner City Angels. The project was exhibited in the York Quay Gallery, Harbourfront Centre from May 2 to June 22, 2008. It was awarded an Ontario Association of Art Galleries Art Education Award in 2009.

Collaborators: Angela Iarocci, Claire Ironside with Andrew Hladkyj and others

FishNet: The Great Lakes Craft and Release Project

Fresh Ground new works, Harbourfront Centre

2008

The average honey bee visits approximately 2 million flowers to create one .45 kg (1lb) of honey and flies a combined distance of 530,000 km to make 1 kg of beeswax.

The Beeline exhibition celebrated the honey bee's industriousness through a hive-like installation comprised of beeswax candles embodying the number of flower trips required to make the wax and wall murals inspired by bee vision and the flowers typically visited to make honey. Local honey made by the Toronto Beekeepers Association was sold with fifty percent of the proceeds going to Foodshare. Beeline was at the MADE Cooler from August 21st to October 4th, 2008.

Two product lines were developed as a result of the Beeline installation:

Candles

These 100% pure beeswax, handmade candles embody the number of flower trips it typically takes for the bees to create the amount of wax in the candle. The Beelights are economically packaged as a set of six with a colourful paper wrapper featuring one of the wallpaper patterns. A similar design is used for the information tag for the large candles which have the number of flower trips molded directly in the wax.

Wallpapers

The various patterns represent flowers typically pollinated by honey bees to make honey. One set of patterns are based on an approximation of ultraviolet colours as seen by bees. The second set shows the flower colours as humans see them and the last set of patterns are various mixes of all the flowers.

Collaborators: Angela Iarocci, Claire Ironside

2008

Part Rorschach test, part Inukshuk, this iconic diptych meets inkblot asks the viewer to draw upon their geographic knowledge of Canada to identify which provinces and territories are being used to create these deconstructed map collages.

Materials and processes include birch veneer hard canvas, red ink, masking tape and laser cutting.

Claire Ironside

2008

Two laser cut flat pack acrylic pieces designed to interlock and be hung from either end to form two distinct ornaments depending on the time of year. Suspended one way it’s a Christmas tree ornament and from the other an all-season decorative cascade.

Materials and processes include light transmitting acrylic, fishing line and laser cutting.

Claire Ironside

2009

Originally created for an exhibition to raise awareness and support for bee related research and inspired by the honeycomb’s elegant and efficiently constructed nature, this print depicts the three types of cells found in a beehive: gold foil stamping for honey filled, embossing for a capped larvae filled and de-bossing for a newly evacuated cell.

Collaborators: Angela Iarocci and Claire Ironside

2009

The Snowcover series of hand knitted textiles examines how the precise nature of numerical data can be transformed using unexpected materials and techniques into a primarily tactile experience. There is a direct translation of the snow from an ephemeral, mutable substance into a surface providing warmth and comfort. Ultimately, the pieces serve as abstract geographical and temporal portraits of a particular aspect of the Canadian winter.

The Snowcover blanket represents climate data as a pure wool, hand knitted textile. Snow cover data from Environment Canada spanning from 1977 to 2007 during the months of October to April for thirteen major Canadian cities is converted to binary code and knitted into strips. Each snow cover value for a particular day is translated as 1s and 0s in an 8-bit binary digit, 1=knit, 0=purl.The strips are joined in geographic order from West to East to create the blanket.

The width of each strip is calculated based on an even division of 8 stitches. The wider the strip, the more snow cover for a particular city over the 30 year period.  Yellowknife has the most snow on the ground compared to Vancouver with the least. If one city has less rows, the remaining height is filled in with garter stitch.

Cities included (West to East): Vancouver, Whitehorse, Regina, Yellowknife, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Iqualuit, Montreal, Fredericton, Halifax, Charlottetown, St. John’s.

Snowcover was originally commissioned for the Radiant Dark: Elegant Corruptions exhibition curated by MADE design in Toronto, ON in February 2009. It was also part of the juried exhibition, Hard Twist/New Twist, at the Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, ON in the same year. 

It was produced by four hand-knitters with 100% unbleached wool yarn supplied by Shelridge Farm in Durham, Ontario. Additional contributions were in the development of a computer program to gather and convert the decimal data to binary code.

Project acknowledgements: Dianne Moore, Lisa Conway, Bernice Iarocci and Rahul Kappor for their assistance in creating the blanket.

Angela Iarocci

2009

This project consists of two outdoor furniture installations and a printed field guide, commissioned as part of the Leona Drive Project based in the Willowdale neighbourhood of Toronto, ON. Our site consisted of connected backyards across six abandoned residential lots dating from the late 1940s. The houses are to be demolished to make way for a new residential development.

The suburban backyard, more than any other designed space with its mix of utility, recreation and nature, exemplifies the inherent contradictions within the suburban idyll — a space which exists in all ways between the polarities of city and country and of work and leisure. These dichotomies are clearly evident in the Leona Drive Project site and provide fertile ground for an inquiry into the emergence of the suburban ideal.

Drawing on the spirit of the early modernist period generally and the suburban ideal more specifically, our project, Tree Bench & Leaf Pile seeks to signify moments where the wild and cultivated landscape interact to expose the cultural themes at work in the suburban landscape such as seasonal rhythms, cultivation, accommodation/attraction, comfort and benefit.

Tree Bench
A circular decorative wooden bench wrapped round a beautiful specimen crabapple tree at 21 Leona Drive conjures reflection and appreciation of nature afforded by the shade, aesthetic virtue and comfort provided by trees at the beginning and height of each growing season.

Leaf Pile
A picnic table, fire circle and tree bench all rolled into one, this installation focuses on the ‘pile’ as an ephemeral landscape feature which signifies the ending of the season, the onset of dormancy and the necessary utility of “maintaining” nature as a landscape ideal. 

Field Guide
This colourful, folded pocket-sized pamphlet celebrates the flora and fauna identified on the Leona Drive Project site, highlighting the diversity and richness of the suburban landscape.

Project acknowledgements: Lucas Brancalion, Peter Fleming, Lindsay Stead, Christina Bubo, Carol Sellers, Toronto Field Naturalists, Tim and Jack Owen, Doris and Robert Ironside, Peter Rogers and Josephine Iarocci.

 Collaborators: Jeremy G. Cox, Angela Iarocci, Claire Ironside

 Leona Drive Project 

Published in: “Tree Bench and Leaf Pile”, in The Leona Drive Project. ed. Steven Logan, Janine Marchessault, Michael Prokopow. Public Books : Toronto, 2011, p.68-71.

2010

ShipShape: Fold, Pack and Stack: An Artwork Inspired by the FedEx Shipping Tube

FedEx is a successful global shipping enterprise concerned with shipping a package from A to B in the most expedient, efficient and as flexible a manner as possible. Central to this success are some elemental activities encountered in early childhood such as folding stacking, and packing. Drawing on these playful acts and using packaging software that designs folded volumes based on stated parameters, ShipShape consists of a series of totem-like interior stacks and corner fill pieces designed to fit together to completely fill the interior space of a FedEx shipping tube. Packed, ShipShape consists of 8 three-dimensional stacks/fill combinations, unpacked these same pieces can be stacked, arranged and joined together in any number of configurations.

Claire Ironside

2010 - present

This series of digitally printed textiles investigates how climate data spanning selected time frames can be visualized into patterns applied to everyday textile items that serve a particular purpose such as window coverings and blankets (see Snowcover).

The Sky Condition: Toronto, 2000-2009 window covering visualizes climate data collected from the Canadian Urban Forecast that is issued daily by Environment Canada. The forecast provides basic climate information for major Canadian cities including sky condition, hi/low temperatures and incidences of precipitation. The term "sky condition" describes the average fraction of the sky covered by cloud, measured in eighths and designated by the unit okta.

Using a data set for Toronto, ON from 2000 to 2009, the sky condition descriptors have been converted into colours ranging from sky blue to dark grey. At one end of the colour scale, sky blue represents clear or sunny and at the opposite end dark grey is overcast which also can indicate heavy precipitation of rain or snow. In between these two extremes are gradations of blue and grey representing variations in sky colour depending on the amount of cloud cover.

Following the same process as Sky Condition, subsequent window coverings visualizing data for Rainfall, Bright Sunshine and Wind Speed were also created for a private residence in Toronto, ON from 2010 - 2015. 

The patterns are generated using coding and are digitally printed on semi-transparent nylon fabric.

Sky Condition was also featured in the following exhibitions:

2011
MADE at Home, Toronto, ON, Canadian design group exhibition 

2010
Hard Twist: CHROMA!, Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, ON, juried textile exhibition

Angela Iarocci

2016

Inspired by the fair and inclusive process for democratic innovation and citizen engagement developed by MASS LBP, the installation represents 988 participants from 26 reference panels and four citizen lotteries created since 2007 to address a variety of public issues.

The participants are represented by a random pattern of dots, colour coded according to categories of issues that the panels and lotteries have worked on. Within the pattern, open areas provide a clear view into the office space of MASS LBP to focus on the people who are responsible for bringing a wide range of Canadians together for the public good. 

En Masse was commissioned for the 2016 Toronto Offsite Design Festival in Toronto, ON and selected as one of the top 100 picks of the event. 

Collaborators: Angela Iarocci and Claire Ironside

Special thanks to Shaun Moore at MADE

Toronto Offsite Design Festival

MASS LBP

2017

A study in urban perspectives installation (work in progress).

Kim Heppler 

2016

A step-by-step document designed to assist homeowners and builders to better retrofit aging homes.

Collaborators: Steffanie Adams, Dr. P.C. Timusk and the George Brown College Research Department.