World of Threads Festival, Toronto

Michele and I were delighted to be able to attend the World of Threads Festival in Oakville and Toronto last week. Three years in the making, with 195 artists and 21 venues, it was well worth a visit. We found it to be superbly well-organized, quite a feat considering the scale of the event.

While searching out the different venues, we came across one huge industrial building, 401 Richmond Street West, repurposed for art galleries and creative start-ups. We found the Gladstone Hotel, which houses art display spaces, studios and thirty-some hotel rooms, each decorated by a different artist. We stumbled upon the very interesting Distillery District, featuring Victorian-era red brick buildings which have been renovated to house cafés, galleries and studios. We also found ourselves in a super fabric warehouse on Spadina, King Street Fabrics. And we finished off our trip with a visit to the excellent Freda Kalo / Diego Rivera show at the AGO.

Distillery District, Toronto

I have written three posts to my blog about some of the fascinating art we saw, all of it fibre-based. Michele and I are thinking about submitting work to the Festival at our next opportunity.