Mabel’s bakery finds a new home on Queen West

Mabel’s Bakery at 323 Roncesvalles Avenue has been an oasis of great baked goods and specialty foods for about four years now. About six weeks ago, owner Lorraine Hawley opened a second Mabel’s–at 1156 Queen street West. It will be …

Design we love: Lotte lamps at INabstracto

We dropped in to INabstracto a few days ago to chat with owner Kate Eisen, and it was only when we were leaving that we noticed the delicious still-life she had made from grouping five Lotte lamps together on a …

Design we love: Julie Jenkinson of Verso

Designer Julie Jenkinson has just opened her own small and charming design shop at the rear of Kate Eisen’s INabstracto. The place is wittily called Verso (as in “what is on the other side of the page?”). We spoke …

Design we love: Kate Eisen of INabstracto

Kate Eisen’s store, INabstracto: Mid Century Modern Furniture & Design, is as much a design museum and gallery as it is a retail outlet for historically significant design objects. We talked to her a few days ago about what INabstracto …

Art we love: Peak Gallery owner Zack Pospieszynski

We consider Zack Pospieszynski–owner-director of Peak Gallery–to be a man of discriminating taste and lucid opinions, and so we dropped by the gallery the other day to ask him about his current likes and dislikes in contemporary art. The …

Design we love: chandelier feathers

At Symbolist, an intriguing and always mysterious second-hand store at 1080 Queen Street West, there is a big basket filled with these charming metal feathers. They cost a mere $3.00 each, and while they once apparently graced a chandelier …

Art we love: ceramics by Robert Archambeau

We’ve not always been big fans of ceramics–a lot of it seems artsy and sentimental– but we’ll always make an exception for the exquisite stoneware pieces of veteran ceramics artist Robert Archambeau. Archambeau, who won the Governor General’s Award in …

Art we love: the happy zones by Jose Ciria

For his third exhibition at the Christopher Cutts Gallery–Window Dreamer–New York based Spanish painter Jose Ciria has produced a suite of vast, chromatically explosive paintings which, while they may indeed invoke what the gallery calls the “sanguinity and terra …

Design we love: Industrial Storm’s cracked coffee table

This lean, noble table–Industrial Storm‘s Cracked Coffee Table–is visually powerful enough to be regarded as both furniture and sculpture. Described by Industrial Storm’s Hanson Tan as “Asian inspired with a contemporary sensibility,” the table features a top …

Woolfitt’s: staffed by artists, for artists

Ben Woolfitt has been a painter for forty years and, for the same amount of time, has run his famous art supply store on Queen Street West. We talked to him recently about both his art and his business.

Woolfitt’s …

Art we love: Tidal Waves and Sea Bathers by Y.M. Whelan

By the time you read this, Y.M. Whelan’s sparkling exhibition at the Fran Hill Show Room–called Book of Dreams: New Paintings–will probably be officially over, but gallerist Fran …