Hello friends,

 

How about that eclipse?! May it bring some fabulous new energy into this week. I'm buzzing away in anticipation of two upcoming art happenings – Artist Project here in Toronto, and Plural in Montréal. It will be my first time at Plural and I can’t wait to check out the scene. Several of my favourite Toronto galleries will be there including Patel Brown, Franz Kaka, and Susan Hobbs Gallery; I’m also looking forward to taking in the booths for locals like Pangée and Galerie C.O.A.

 

This won’t be my first time attending Artist Project, but it’s my first year leading an Art Walk at the fair – join me from 12:30-1:30pm on Friday, April 12 to enjoy the amazing work and engage with participating creatives. There will be an ASL interpreter coming along for the tour, too. Tours are free with your admission, which can be purchased here (take advantage of pre-show ticket prices until midnight EST tonight!). 

 

One person I was very pleased to meet at last year’s Artist Project is ceramicist Jonah Strub, and below you’ll hear more about his practice and the whimsical world he's building. 

When I first happened upon Jonah Strub's exuberant work at Artist Project 2023, I was struck by how lively his pleasingly tactile pieces are. The winks to camp and kitsch – two of my favourite classifications – add visual flavours that mix to create an experience of unbridled glee. 

 

Strub, who first embarked on his artistic journey as a painter, is resolutely interested in infusing queer joy into the ceramic art canon. He's inspired by Jewish pop culture icons like nanny Fran Fine as well as drag queens – even “embodying” one in the form of Loxanne Creamcheese, a moustached mademoiselle he lovingly renders to reflect his inner drag persona. Strub's work exudes a nostalgia-tinged humour and decadent cartoonishness that I truly adore.

 

I was so jazzed to have the chance to hear more about Strub's influences and approach, as well as his foray into teaching. He runs classes at Clay With Me, should you be interested – the next one, which focuses on making amphoras, begins April 28.

 

 

I was always a good student throughout my school years, and that led me to believe that I should go on to do something academic even though I loved art. I went to the University of Guelph to study psychology, and I took a couple of art classes as electives. As I got to my fourth year in the program, I was very focused on being successful in my studies. I finished my thesis and had the opportunity to present it at a conference, but I came to realize that I really didn’t care that much about it. On the other hand, when my paintings were shown in an exhibition, I was so excited about that.

 

I decided to do another year at Guelph and hone in on my art practice. That's when I went full-on with painting and started exploring my interest in drag and camp and kitsch. I was almost exclusively painting, but the whole year, my professors kept saying, “Jonah, you should really do three-dimensional stuff.” I was like, no, you're wrong. Then I had the chance to take part in an exchange program in Germany, and the campus of the school had an open ceramics studio. I started using it and as soon as I did, I knew this is exactly what I want to do and from there, I’ve been able to explore making my own little universe. I find ceramics to be the perfect way to transcribe my ideas.

 

 

I had a bad habit in undergrad where I didn't want any feedback. If anybody said anything to me that was constructively critical, I would respond with a “no”. And then I would do it, and I’d realize, oh….

 

 

It’s interesting to see the different ways that people express their creativity and how they think through ideas. Being creative has always been intuitive and natural to me – having an immense number of ideas, and precise ways of realizing them. Through teaching, I can see that it’s not a universal thing, and I’ve come to really value that part of me as a result.

 

I always tell people if they get frustrated when they’re starting off in the ceramics studio that they’re not going to be incredible at it immediately. “Just play with the clay”, I say. If something doesn’t work, you can just squish it up and try again. 

 

In class, I’m often watching people making something for the first time and they’re not necessarily efficient or thorough. Now when I help a student problem-solve, I’m faster and more detail-oriented; but I have also tried new techniques that I never would have thought to if I hadn’t observed these pain points in my classes. It has made me even better technically.

 

Crochet has long been a creative outlet for me – one that has allowed me to think in different ways and be more forgiving of myself and more experimental, because it wasn’t wrapped up in my career at all.

 

I did a group show at Toutoune Gallery with the ceramic artist Karen Thürler in 2022, and she had made a piece with a plush fur body and a ceramic face and hands. It blew my mind. Incorporating this kind of soft element into my own work has made my interest in toys become more realized – now I’m actually able to make toys!

 

 

The character of Edna Turnblad in Hairspray was my first time seeing a drag queen as a kid and I was like, this is everything I have ever wanted to see! My biggest inspiration is musical theater, and the aesthetics of camp and of kitsch – over-the-top garishness, hyper-femininity, and hyper-maximalism. And I’ve found throughout my examination of these themes that my interest in these specific visuals and ideas is in part due to the representation of the archetypal Jewish woman in popular culture. She’s louder than life! Camp and kitsch are also very Jewish kinds of languages; Susan Sontag says in Notes on “Camp” that “Jews and homosexuals” are the best at epitomising camp. And musical theater is a very Jewish medium. But I never really thought about any of this until I started exploring these themes for my work. 

 

 

 

I mostly manifest that side of myself through my artwork. I'm not a makeup artist, I don't know how to do hair, and I don't really know how to sew. So, I find visual art to be my outlet for performance, for costume, for self-expression.

 

My main goal in revealing this side of me is that I feel like there's so much art about queer people out there that is either really sexual, or really sad. To me, the gay experience is so much more than sex and homophobia. There's so much more to my gayness than that. I really want to show that through my art, and the response has been very validating. People feel themselves represented in a way that they haven't seen themselves represented before. It's amazing that my self-expression can help other people feel seen.

 

There’s so much to celebrate, to teach people – to bring them in – and allow conversations to start. I hope that through seeing my work, people feel more comfortable coming up to me to talk about drag culture or Jewish humour, for example. And that they leave with a positive image in their head about what people like me are like.

 

Last year’s fair was my first time being a part of something of that scale, and being a part of something where so many people who don't necessarily interact with the art world otherwise have access to seeing my work.

 

It was kind of a social studies experiment too, because I got to see who was most impacted by my work, which was really cool. I found it was queer teenagers, middle-aged Jewish women, and gay men in their thirties. Someone even cried while looking at my pieces because he was just so overwhelmed by the joy.

 

I finished a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity two weeks before last year’s fair, so I didn’t have much time to get ready for it. This year I’ve had much more time to create, and I’m feeling optimistic. And it’ll also be exciting to see people recognize my work and come back to visit me again.

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