Instructor: Andrew Williamson
Friday July 5th a 6pm
Cost to participate: $20 for members, $30 for non-members
A teenager in rural Northern Ontario in the mid-90s had scant few outlets and inroads to culture outside of their surroundings. Being passed a copy of someone’s photocopied cut-and-paste ‘zine full of clippings from unknown magazines, quotations, amateur poetry , and weirdo artwork was like being shown a doorway that led to another world. It was like the mix tape full of bands you’d never heard of, given to you by your cooler, older friend – or your sister’s boyfriend, or the coffee shop owner, or whoever was your small-town culture enabler. Reading someone’s self-published work can be intimate, enlightening, and ultimately empowering; it shows that you don’t have to have a slick gloss cover, high-profile interview, or even proper spellign to be able to make a real, physical copy of your art, ideas, and obsessions and disseminate it to everyone you know – of at least those who really get you, y’know?
This discussion and workshop aims to connect a generation that might not know the joys of having fingers sticky with glue and smudged with photocopy toner to a creative outlet and medium that, while inexpensive and often ephemeral, can be an intensely satisfying alternative to online media.
Originally from Manitoulin Island, Andrew has lived in North Bay for the past eight years. An honors graduate of Humber College’s Multimedia Design and Production Technologies program, Andrew has been engaged with digital photography, film, and graphic design and has performed live video-mixing projection displays for local art events as well as for Canadian artists such as The Sadies and writer Rebecca Rosenblum. Andrew has recently started an independent digital printing studio, producing archival-grade giclee photographic prints and reproductions of original art as well as scanning and restoring antique photos, film negatives, and slides.