Loop Blog

Hey 

Here is a copy of a little interview thing I did with Sandra Smirle for the Loop Blog, when I look at these photos, I am shocked to see how neat the studio looks...I really have to work on that, anyhoo, have a peak: 

a visit with Eric Farache

How do you navigate the art world?

Alas, that is very hard nut to crack for myself at least. Loop has afforded me the opportunity to raise my own profile but to be honest, I don't know where I put my decoder ring to really get a lock on the art world. Like many other artists, I have tried group shows, facebook pages, Saatchi Art profiles etc., I am not sure how that helps really. 

Last year, I was in the The Artist Project, and that seemed to introduce my work to a entirely different group of people, frankly I am always trying to figure that out. 

 

What themes seem to reoccur in your work?

Sexuality and fantasy have always been a theme in my work for the past 10 plus years. This sexuality can take on many forms, there was a sexual ambiguity to my older GIJoe toy photographic work. My more recent watercolours ( like in my Loop show Life Lessons and Quixtopia explored sexuality of boys as they become men and confront the ideas of fantasy vs. reality.

I am fascinated about the facades we project, whether our sexuality is, in essence, a truer more naked version of our personality or another kind of mask we wear. Our personality/psyches are so complex, I try to figure out what causes people to act the way they do and sometimes, I try to discuss that on watercolour paper.   

What is your biggest challenge to creating art?

  
At this moment, the biggest challenge for me is carving out the time for art, I have a 2 kids under 4, there is not a lot of time left for artistic practice or what Woody Allen summed up as the desire to  "forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. And then see if I can get them mass-produced in plastic."
So I tend to work in fits and bursts, the challenge is continuity and to maintain interest in ideas from one break to the next. I seem to work in a naturally split way, between painting and photography and now comics, the challenge can also be to stick with one thing till it is completed before moving on. 

What are you currently reading, listening to or eating that is fueling your inspiration these days?

I have this graphic novel I started years ago that I have committed to myself ( and now you dear reader) of finishing, so I keep looking at different graphic novels and various old comic books to contrast what I am doing. I had really racked up some library fines when I noticed this massive book, called the "someday funnies' at Riverdale Library. It is a collection of comics about the 1960s that were complied in the 1970s but the editor could not get it off the ground for another 30 years, it was just terrific story telling often in very small space. The pace of my novel is fast and so is the speaking voice, it is in a kind of first person so I noticed some of Dylan's personal story telling seems to stick in my mind when I am working.

I am also very influenced by coffee to be honest, I have about 3 americanos or macchiatos a day. I am far too easily found at Jet Fuel or Rooster Coffee House, I need to work on that. 

Do you have a day job - does it influence your practice?

It allows me the luxury of paying for some things so that is an influence! I have worked in commercial photography for almost 15 years now (...egad)  I work often as a photographic assistant, which basically means running computers, taking care of lighting ( or more often then naught, getting in the way...) I started working with photography after including a photographic component in my final of my MFA, it got me intrigued and I kept at it. Digital started soon after and by 2004, I was already pretty sick of the technical pursuit. So, my photographic work with the Holga non digital 'toy camera' is in essence a reaction to my day job, wanting to do something different, less precise and more fun. 

Thanks Eric for your studio peek!

To know more about Eric's work visit

www.ericfarache.com

vagabondchic.blogspot.com/

http://www.loopgallery.ca/loop/E._Farache.html

You can also check out the Loop Blog here: 

http://www.loopgallery.ca/loop/E._Farache.html

and catch more of the updates of all the other members of Loop and what they are up to.

Thanks again to Sandra Smirle

Upon Seeing My Painting Again

We went to a friend's house for a great dinner a few weeks back, this piece is theirs now, from my 2011 Loop gallery show, Life Lessons.  Looking at these characters again, I was struck how the central character reminded me of one of my mom's strange Moroccan wives tales. 

The story is about, on the surface, about a woman who can't stay home, even naked because she is a busy body. But on another level, I think the story was about female sexual curiosity. 

Amazing how you paint something, and with time another layer of meaning comes through, even to the artist. 

Peace in the Valley 2013

Swing City

This is a piece from my Loop Show, Quixtopia, yes I made up a word for my show. I was thinking about the castles we build in the sky (utopias) that are utterly unattainable. To be clear I DO NOT mean  the way the Star Wars gang were seeking a safe haven in Bespin cloud city. More the way a white haired psychic in Calcutta said to me, " you make all these castles in the clouds, and, (imagine sounds of the traffic dying down at this point) when you come back to reality, you have no more energy to put these plans in action...."

heavy man, heavy.

Swing City, watercolour on cotton paper, 22x30, 2013. 

This piece was very influenced by original Spiderman cartoon.

Hey! a great review in NOW magazine for my current Loop show. You can read it, NOW Thanks to everyone who has supported me with getting this show ready, and opening on time. Thanks for the support from my Sarah and our baby sitting Grandma/Meme team and the copious amounts of Coffee from Jet Fuel and Rooster.

Loop General Meeting

Stoic figure with Binoculars.

A quick sketch after my Loop show

Social Media

So I have this show coming up, here are some really lo fi shots from my sketchbook.

These images are continuing on a theme of entering adulthood and fantasy.

Hey, I said Lo Fi.

Anyways, after much trouble, I was able to set up a facebook page so that I could invite people to this opening. I know, a monkey can do that, but for some reason it took me awhile and Scott's explanation to actually get it done.

I was reminded of a video that dear Jan had sent me, she worked in online advertising. This 3 minute video is the bomb, please have a look.

Upcoming Exhibition at Loop

So as the deadline to the new show approaches, there was a mention of it in Toronto Life this week. It has a grotesque photo of some sandwich meat...I eat beef and it looks gross to me.

Anyways, the pressure is mounting so I hope you can make it to the show, I think its going to be great, my exhibition partner Larry Eisenstein were talking about it, we are really excited to see how the work will play off each other, it is so much better if there is a type of inter play between the work rather than a room where two shows are happening at the same time.

If your eyes cannot read that or you do not want to click the picture, here is what it says:

Eric Farache
This photographer is best known for his take on the urgencies of city life, but his sketchbooks are testimony to febrile imagination. Life Lessons, a show of watercolour and ink paintings, approaches the torments and joys of boyhood with verve and nerve.

That is me, people, Verve.

Our show runs from April 30th to May 22, 2011. Please come, there will, as always, be cheese*. Our opening/vernissage is still being determined.




*this offer is only good for the opening, please do not show up on a Wednesday at 4pm and demand cheese, it is childish and demeans us both.

Toronto International Art Fair

Hey, have not made a post in a long time, and guess what this one is about art, more specifically, my art, again.


Loop Gallery will be there, the wit, the banter, the 29 of us, a seething mass of artsy types looking for cheese and wine, hide your pinot grigio- the 11th annual Toronto Art Fair is in town!!!

Yes, art officanados of every stripe will be there with every look from a Jon Waters to a Jason Schwartzman, and that is just the dudes. You will see lady hipsters that run from Jean Harlow to Cruellla DeVille. And then there will be the people to whom you will only wonder, uomo ou donnna?

For Serious.

The art monkey will be there, but due to the time allotments of Loop, my work will only be displayed Thursday night and Friday afternoon.

Please come by, I will be there thursday to Saturday, lots of art to see- wear comfortable shoes.

Here is a link to TIAF

Terrific Saturday

The show opened at Loop Gallery and we had a large number of visitors, children and the odd hobo who strolled in. If you missed the opening, fear not, the show runs till August 8th, you have 3 weeks to catch show, please do.



This is one of the pictures you'll see at the gallery. I shot this in the desert of Morocco last year. I was on this insane desert tour of the salt route which was also known as 4x4 almost falling off the side of a mountain for 6 hours a day.

Anyways, we came into this part of the desert just after a brief rain shower and the sun had all but set. You could just see this amazing vista of forever and the odd dune. It was beautiful and more than a little haunting.

Show about to open at Loop Gallery!!!

I have been so busy I almost forgot to mention that my show at Loop Gallery is opening tomorrow and will run for about 3 weeks, so please come and see the work. This will be the first time I formally show my Dream Series photos taken with a Holga camera and these prints look awesome, large images.


The title of the show is Manifest Dream, a Freudian term to describe how we see our dreams, perhaps not any hidden meanings but what they look like on the surface. This is problematic: an interpretation of the dream creates a series of biases, there is no one answer or "truth". I argue that we can never know what lies below the surface and even as the artist, i create the image but its meanings shift, depending on the viewer.

The show runs from July 17th (our opening is from 2-5pm) and runs to August 8th. We will have a discussion on the 7th. Cheese is only available on the 17th of July, no discussion so please come out.

Loop Gallery

Just a small plug here for Loop gallery, an artist collective on Queen west. I have recently been accepted to become a member so expect to see the flag of the International Art monkey fly over the gallery n the next 18 months or so, very excited over here.

Go to the Gallery's site, find out more- they are moving soon, check it out for those who care to know more about Loop Gallery click here

For those who care to know more about Lupins click here