The Lyceum Gallery

The Lyceum Gallery is excited to announce…

Julie Fader
Viscera
July 4-27, 2024
Join us for the opening next Thursday, July 4th from 6-9 pm.

Viscera.
Soft and internal.
A gut feeling.
Intuitive gestures to express myself, protect myself. Turning inward with eventual potential of turning my work outward.

Julie Fader is a Toronto-based multi-disciplinary artist. A painter, composer and musician.

Lyceum End of Year Ceremony

This year, we graduated three students from The Lyceum with their friends and family in attendance by the lake. The perfect day was captured by Christina Gapic. At the end of our long, beautiful journey together, I handed them each a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, telling them I could finally recommend the Salinger. Their huge smiles told me they totally got all the ways I meant that.

“That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye.”

With much love as you go.

Deep gratitude to Sam, Melody, Quincy, Martin, Riz, Victor and the community of students, parents and mentors.

Inklings
Lyceum Group Show
Opened on Thursday in the gallery…on until June 30th

Lyceum students were proud to share the visual art work they have done this term with a room full of friends, family and community supporters. They are blessed to have guidance from incredible artistic mentors Quincy Raby, Martin Reis, Sam Higgs and Marina Dempster who so willingly share their practice, expertise and care with these young artists.

On display now:
Karakuri paper developments with Sam Higgs
Life In a Ghanian Village book illustration with Sylvia Morrison, the ICan Club in Ghana, Holly Venable, Sam Higgs, Olive Choisy.
Sketch Republic portraiture with Sam Higgs
Black and White Photography by The King Kong Camera Club with Martin Reis
Radio Nowhere promotional portraits by Marina Dempster with Holly Venable

Photography by Marina Dempster

Inklings
Lyceum Group Show
The Lyceum Gallery
June 20-30, 2024
Karikuri, portraiture, book illustration work for by students of The Lyceum

Opens Thursday with signature mocktails!

Inklings: feelings you experience when something is about to happen. Join us in the gallery tomorrow to view the work of our emerging artists.

Tune in today for quirky insights and things you didn’t know you needed to know. It’s more fun than the news!

All content written and performed by Lyceum students:
This Day in History by Alistair Long
Weather… You Like it or Not by Spacey Stacy and Becky
Horrorscopes by Fictricia and the Divine Rock
Flavours of Madness with Albert Puddington
My Invention by I. Ventor
How Things are Made with Uncle Lester
Eyedeas with Peeping Tom
Strange Animal by Eloise
The Weird and Wondrous Quirks of History hosted by Jo Blanchard
Riddles with Ron

…and the final episode of In the Walls by Olive Choisy

The radio link is here:

https://s59.radiolize.com/radio/8000/radio.mp3



Photo by Marina Dempster

Tune in this Friday for the final broadcast of Radio Nowhere.
All content written and performed by Lyceum Students.
Link in bio

Creative Uncommon Camp
Details


Join is this summer as we take our studies into the garden, kitchen, studio and neighbourhood! c

Curriculum Studies
Young City Builders envisioning the future!

Our current studies are informed by explorations into sustainable city planning. For their final end of year project, students have been assigned an urban block bordered by Bloor St / Lansdowne Ave / Paton Road / Davenport Diamond Rail to create their ideal liveable community hub.

We are drawing on the UN’s 15 Minute City Model, Barcelona’s Superblocks and David Sim’s Soft City for some of our inspiration.

On Monday, we went on a site visit to the area. Students were asked to analyze the existing built environment and to take the pulse on the lived experience in there. Student insights, both practical and experiential, were marvellous. They immediately grasped the interstitial nature of a neighbourhood in transition and spoke in depth about how the conversion of the small-scale industrial area of a hundred years ago has become a transition point, noting the opportunities for artists and oddity to thrive.

We ended the week with a very special visit and guided tour by Josh at Peter McCann Architectural Models studio. We got to see the process by which design is rendered and realized in solid form. Our students totally dug the technology and processes involved. From old school band saws and drill presses to CNC laser cutters and resin casting, they had a unique opportunity to see an integrated working studio and learn about the conversation that is had when craftsmanship, technology and applied math give physical form and structure to design.

Architect Raymond Chow is guiding us in this project. His incredible generosity, talent, wisdom and enthusiasm is a rare and beautiful gift to the students here. Next week, we will begin to make that brave leap from concept to creation and we look forward to sharing it with you in the end of year student show, which will open in the gallery on June 20th.

Eureka moments in studio today! I stepped out to a lunch meeting and returned to a busy hive of activity. It was the sound of industry that really struck me when I walked in: snipping scissors, sharpening pencils, the hum of a sewing machine, clacking knitting needles, dishes in the kitchen and a quiet conference in the corner about the solution to a math problem they were given. It was a pure moment of Montessori at work. With only four weeks to go, I deeply appreciate how they have guided themselves to a place of knowing: knowing how to collaborate, how to confer and most importantly, how to do for themselves.

“THE GREATEST SIGN OF SUCCESS FOR A TEACHER..IS TO BE ABLE TO SAY, ‘THE CHILDREN ARE NOW WORKING AS IF I DID NOT EXIST.’” – MARIA MONTESSORI

Radio Nowhere!
Live to air Friday morning at 11 am!
Better news than the daily news. All content created by The Lyceum students.
Link in bio

City Planning for The Next Generation
With Raymond Chow, Architect

Today we launched our final major project for the year. Architect Raymond Chow came in to talk to us about city planning and building sensitive, human-scale architecture in liveable communities.

Lyceum students will given a tract of land just north of Bloor Street from the Davenport Diamond Greenway in the west to Lansdowne Avenue in the east up to Paton Avenue in the north to redevelop using a density/liveability mandate. They will employ a Barcelona Superblock formulation, and, working in teams, they will construct sections of a model that answers the mathematical, architectural and social challenges we throw at them. They have less than seven weeks to complete their plan which will be shown in the gallery in June. Along the way, they will study planning, zoning, scaled architectural drawings, practical math, community engagement, social planning and urban design. Their proposed community will call to values of The Soft City approach outlined by David Sim.

Raymond’s charge to them today summed it up: “Your job is to write the story for Toronto.” They were so inspired by the work he has done in the real world and are excited for his guidance in the theoretical project we are now embarking on.

What Did You Do at School Today?

Anatomy class! A former student of ours who has gone on to great things gave me a gift of a dissected sheep’s brain. I remember teaching that young man the parts and functions of the human brain and still have in my library the brain anatomy drawings he completed in intricate detail at the age of nine.

Julian’s remarkable gift of a sheep brain was a thoughtful reach back to The Lyceum that inspired the students here. At first, they were a bit queasy and hesitant (“Holly! You are picking it up with your bare hands!”) but eventually they all got involved and handled the specimen. We looked at the patterning, structures and connections while we marvelled at the awesome power of life and let our discussion drift from anatomy into philosophy and morality.

Thank you, Julian, for remembering and reaching back.

What Did You Do at School Today?

Photography with Martin Reis

Students reviewed their negs from the previous session on the lightboard in order to select a single print to be processed. Martin then walked them through the development process with a unique twist on a historic technique.

Printing-out papers were prevalent from the early days of photography through the middle of the last century. A negative was sandwiched between glass and a sheet of printing-out paper in an exposure frame, which was then placed in the sun. The light slowly changed the silver halide to metallic silver to produce the print. These papers are almost impossible to find now. Martin shared his rare personal collection of printing out paper and vintage glass negatives to show the students how to create exposure prints using sunlight.

Afterward, we went out to shoot a few rolls of colour film amongst the cherry blossoms in Trinity Bellwoods Park.

Martin Reis is a documentary photographer, performance and street artist as well as an environmental activist who generously shares his time and talent with The Lyceum students several times per term.

This summer! Join us for Creative Uncommon

Creative Uncommon is a summer camp like no other. A series of immersive, small group art and culinary experiences under the guidance of Lyceum Director Holly Venable and Chef/Artist Sam Higgs for students aged 9-13 years of age. Join us as we get out into the city in search of art and stories from different culinary traditions and spend some time in The Lyceum’s workshop and kitchen learning different techniques and skills. Holly and Sam combine their experience from an array of artistic disciplines including: culinary arts graphic narrative, sequential art and manga drawing fundamentals foraging gardening botanical studies ink making watercolour silkscreening cyanotype printing collage and assemblage creative writing felting film camera experiments Hours 9.30-3.30 (Aftercare available until 5 upon request) $395 per week includes all materials and lunch! Registration at The Orchard Lyceum website (link in bio) Session 1 July 10-14 Session 2 July 17-21 Session 3 July 24-28 Session 4 August 14-18 Session 5 August 21-25

This weekend in the gallery…

Samuel Choisy will be in the gallery today and tomorrow from 1-5 to talk about his unique approach to contemporary photographic light painting.

Framed and unframed archival prints are available.
Opening night photography by
Sidewalk sign by Sam’s daughters Olive and June.

Radio Nowhere

We go live at 11 am today!

The world’s first radio broadcast was made by Reginald Fessenden on Christmas Eve 1906 when he beamed a “Christmas concert” consisting of a Morse code call ‘CQ CQ CQ’ followed by Handel’s Largo. The broadcast was picked up by crews on the ships of the United Fruit Company out in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. What a magical connection it must have made!

Lyceum students have written and produced all the content on this morning’s program of Radio Nowhere and will (hopefully) go live to air at 11 am this morning. Click the link in our bio and tune in!

Opening tonight from 7-9!

APRIL 18-28, 2024
Papers + Trails
Samuel Choisy

Artist Statement
Je suis un artiste visuel et un éducateur franco-ontarien qui travaille principalement avec la photographie.

La découverte du médium photographique à l’école d’art m’a détourné de mon projet de devenir peintre et je cherche depuis à explorer mon attrait pour la peinture abstraite à travers ma pratique de la photographie.

Dans les images soumises des papiers découpé colorés ou peints sont mis en mouvement devant des fond eux-aussi peints et photographiés en pose longues. Parfois, le sujet reste immobile mais c’est mon corps qui se met en mouvement et le long temps de pose donne forme à ma dance sur l’image photographique.

Je suis à la poursuite l’émerveillement que la découverte du médium photographique a suscité en moi et c’est cette poursuite qui dicte la forme même de ma recherche : une arborescence dont les différents projets sont des interfaces entre ma sensibilité, ma communauté, mes intentions de départ et les spécificités du terrain.
. .

I am a Franco-Ontarian visual artist and educator who works primarily with photography.

The discovery of the photographic medium in art school diverted me from my plans to become a painter, and I have since sought to explore my attraction to abstract painting through my photographic practice.

In the images I submit, coloured or painted paper cut-outs are set in motion in front of painted backgrounds and photographed in long exposures. Sometimes the subject stays still and it’s my body that moves, and the long exposure time gives shape to my dance on the photographic image.

I’m in pursuit of the wonder that the discovery of the photographic medium has aroused in me, and it’s this pursuit that dictates the very form of my research: an arborescence whose various projects are interfaces between my sensibility, my community, my initial intentions and the specificities of the terrain.

We have been given this incredible opportunity by to illustrate a book written by students in the ICan Club in Kpedze Todze. We are have nearly finished visualizing the scenes and are ready to begin the storyboarding layouts and character development process. Thank you, Sylvia Morrison, for the trust and faith you hold in us to put pictures to your words. From a cold, rainy Toronto to the warm, expansive sunshine of Ghana…we send you love and a deep appreciation for your work.

End of Term Projects with Quincy Raby

Such amazing results! This term, Quincy set the kids up to plan, execute and present a term project that followed their interest. They got to try their hand at pattern drafting, sewing, knitting, vinyl cutting, diorama, candlemaking, appliqué, set scenery and assemblage. Yesterday, they presented their final projects, each of which was as unique and magnificent as they are.

Quincy’s humour, wisdom, multidisciplinary expertise and general mad skillset added much to our studio explorations this year. Her punk rock ethos, packaged with much care, is a great inspiration to these young people, whom she affectionately refers to as The Tiny Homies. I am grateful to Quincy for so many reasons and am happy to get upstaged every time she walks in the door. Thank you, sister.

This weekend!
ReSearch Publications at The Orchard Lyceum

Come on out and peruse a collection of rare books curated by
Take the moment to pause, be casebound, lose yourself between the covers and be transported into the world of old books.

Friday 5-9 pm
Saturday and Sunday 12-5 pm

“Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.” Virginia Woolf

Repost from
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Je serais très heureux de vous y retrouver, noter-le dans votre agenda!
I’ll be so happy to see you there, write it in your calendar!

Creative Uncommon

Join us this summer for Lyceum summer camp!

Holly and Sam guide students on adventures in visual and culinary arts. Register here

https://thelyceumgallery.com/workshops/

Creative Uncommon is a summer camp like no other. A series of immersive, small group art and culinary experiences under the guidance of Lyceum Director Holly Venable and Chef/Artist Sam Higgs for students aged 9-13 years of age. Join us as we get out into the city in search of art and stories from different culinary traditions and spend some time in The Lyceum’s workshop and kitchen learning different techniques and skills. Holly and Sam combine their experience from an array of artistic disciplines including: culinary arts, graphic and sequential art, drawing fundamentals, foraging, gardening and botany, ink making, watercolour, silkscreen, cyanotype, printing, collage and assemblage, creative writing, felting, film camera experiments. Hours 9.30-3.30 $395 per week includes all materials and lunch! Registration at The Orchard Lyceum website (link in bio) Session 1 July 10-14 Session 2 July 17-21 Session 3 July 24-28 Session 4 August 14-18 Session 5 August 21-25

The King Kong Nikon Kamera Klub
Analogue Photography with Martin Reis

Martin brought in his amazing collection of Nikon SLR film cameras yesterday. After a lesson on the construction of the cameras and the black and white chemical process, Martin shared some images from his Lyceum Gallery exhibition The White Album. Students were shown how to use the cameras and load them with film before being sent out to shoot a roll of 36 exposures in the local neighbourhood. So many things were learned, not just about the nature of analogue but about planning, composing and lighting a shot, the results of which you can’t see as you take it. We look forward to regrouping in a few weeks to review the scans and choose our favourite print for production.
Thank you, Martin, for sharing your knowledge: a perfect blend of technique, experimentation and artistic interpretation.

“For all created things there is needed not only a creator, but a piece of life, life itself, which is somehow withdrawn…and fixed in an intransient existence.” Otto Rank

White Album images by Martin Reis

We’re back! Every morning, I pull my chair up to the end of the table to listen. We start the day with a newsread before going on to our classes. A mustering, a check-in, a sharing circle that is part collegial conference and a bit therapy session. Some days, it is supportive, sometimes purely informative and some days (today was one of those days), it is impassioned. I think this time we spend together as a group of individuals operating in a collective is almost as important as the classes we move on to. Of course, those are important too and they are most certainly informed by what I learn from listening to the students.

This week we worked on coordinate angles, parabolas, George Orwell, a city planning project, op-ed writing, karakuri developments, kitchen assignments, bakery and musical composition. I am amazed by these young people and honoured to be a passenger on their journey. Each one is a unique and dynamic thinker. I feel we are in good hands.

“The child does not work in order to move or in order to become intelligent. He works to adapt to his environment. It is essential that he has many experiences in the environment if he is to do this.” Maria Montessori

Come see this amazing show before it finishes!

Erin Breau Barkley
Jamestown Road
The Lyceum Gallery
969 Queen Street West

The Backyard

A couple of model cars, a splash of water and a pot full of dirt made for an afternoon of play in gramma’s 1970’s backyard. The artist employed an intentional absence of figuration in this image to give the painting a sense of ambiguity, contemplation, and stillness. As if this could be anyone’s memory. Do you remember playing in your grandmother’s backyard?

Erin Breau-Barkley
Jamestown Road
The Lyceum Gallery

Erin will be in the gallery today from 1-5. Come in, see the work …and ask her why this is one of her favourite paintings in the show.

The Neighbours Swingset

This image of the artist’s grandmother’s backyard features a blue spruce sapling planted by her father when he was a boy starting over in a new home after losing his father suddenly in 1956. The blue spruce now towers over the home at 30 feet tall. As a child visiting her grandmother’s suburban Detroit home, Erin can remember gazing longingly at the neighbours swingset wishing she could hop the chain link fence to play there. This painting touches on the homogeneity and perceived simplicity of suburban life.

Erin Breau-Barkley
Jamestown Road
The Lyceum Gallery

Erin will be in the gallery tomorrow from 1-5. Come in, see the work … and maybe she will tell you a story.

Pine Hill Road

With a nearly monochromatic pallet, Erin places pops of colour in her painting ‘Pine Hill Road’, to hint at the life behind these mid-century walls. The suburban Detroit home in the 1950’s was owned by family friends Joy and Maurice who became a lifeline to the artist’s grandmother in her early widowhood. The image illustrates the vastness of suburban homes in the 1950’s, with sprawling lots and lush gardens, which stand in stark contrast to the way we live in modern society where ownership is a luxury and space is extravagant.

Open House tonight from 6-8 pm
The Lyceum
969 Queen Street West

What Did You Do at School Today?

Student Testimonial

“The Lyceum is a wonderful opportunity to extend the reach of knowledge that is innately engrained in every child. This knowledge is fostered here by teachers who dedicate their lives to their craft. Their students draw from the vast cauldron of intellect. The atmosphere in the school is one of cooperation and respect. As a student who will regrettably be graduating feom this incredible centre of learning, I will always look back on this as a time of great joy and friendship. This is a truly incredible and unique experience.”
Grade 8 Lyceum Student

Collaborators/Mentors
Holly Venable
Sam Higgs
Quincy Raby
Martin Reis
Rizwan Kassamally
Victor Xu

Lyceum Open House tomorrow!
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
6-8 pm

What Did You Do at School Today?
Student Testimonial

“Today I ventured into a part of my mind that I have not yet explored. With each passing moment, my scope is widened, my thoughts are expanded and forged into something new. Within these walls there exists a universe of perpetual wisdom. Each of my teachers equip themselves with an encyclopedia of tales, knowledge and understanding. My peers’ enthusiastic expressions are unmatched: each day we are moulded into problem solvers, respectable citizens and critical thinkers. Our community is a melange of dependable oddballs with peculiar perspectives. Everything we do utilizes our strengths and hears our perspectives. Our minds are persistent and willing.”
Grade 7 Student

Photography by Marina Dempster