I take my hat off to the Textile Museum of Canada’s cool new project, TXTILEcity. Besides giving Torontonians a legit reason to walk down the street stuck to their smartphones, this interactive project uses Google map technology, and video and audio clips to relay the social, cultural, economic and artistic history behind Toronto’s textile and […] More »

Whenever I think about the pursuit of fame (the pre-Kardashian era), my mind automatically tracks back to reruns of the 1980s TV show Fame, and Debbie Allen warning Leroy et al about the price of pursuing your creative dreams. “Fame costs and right here’s where you start paying – in sweat,” Allen warns her students, […] More »

If you enjoy seeing authors paraded around like show ponies, visit Book Expo America, the annual publishing tradeshow taking place this week at the Javits Center in New York City. Just as celebrity memoirs and how-to books dominate bestsellers lists, the longest lineups I saw at the show were not for big-name authors (and they’re […] More »

This weekend, if you’ve got an itch to see some Canadian contemporary art, the best place to be is south of the border. Two hundred years after the war of 1812, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA, is hosting Oh, Canada, one of the largest survey exhibitions of Canadian contemporary art […] More »

While waiting for a bus on Lansdowne Avenue, a gritty strip in Toronto’s west end, I was struck by an image on a billboard (no small feat considering how often my nose is in the position of downward-facing iPhone). The photo was of a shirtless young man, his body curled up in what appeared to […] More »