About

Too Cool For School is a project that has two components. The first is the art and science fair on May 8, 2010 in Harbourfront Centre’s Brigantine Room, Toronto, Canada. The second is an exhibition of select projects curated from the fair, to be held in the fall of 2010 in Harbourfront Centre’s York Quay Galleries.

Too Cool For School is part of Fresh Ground new works, Harbourfront Centre’s national commissioning program. A key component of Harbourfront Centre’s mandate is to champion the creation of new artistic works, providing a platform for innovation, creation and excellence. Recognizing that some of the most creative and fascinating work being produced across the country today is the result of artists working in different ways and through non-traditional collaborations, Harbourfront Centre launched Fresh Ground new works in 2004.

Too Cool For School is an interdisciplinary project in which people from all walks of life come together in a convergence of art and science. The goal is to celebrate creative work that doesn’t fit into conventional categories, bringing people together to share ideas and inspiration and foster dialogue across disciplines. Too Cool For School was conceived by project leader Sally McKay.

Too Cool For School Collaborators

Sally McKay

Sally is a Toronto artist, curator, art writer and scholar with a long-standing interest in the connections between art and science. From 1997-2003, Sally McKay and Catherine Osborne co-owned and edited Toronto’s Lola magazine. Lola‘s mandate was to reinvigorate the city’s visual arts scene by creating an open forum for writers, artists and the general public to comment and critique exhibitions and art events within the city. She is the inventor of Too Cool for School. Sally McKay is currently studying neuroaesthetics, a combination of art and brain science, in pursuit of her PhD in Art History and Visual Culture at York University.

Magda Wojtyra

Magda is an artist and designer flitting between digital and handcrafted, functional and just plain silly and always richly colourful creations. Right after architecture at the University of Waterloo, she founded RNA Connective, a think tank of architects, engineers, artists and frequent guests who explored the zeitgeist of culture and technology in weekly salons and various projects, including articles for Domus Magazine about communication, society, and information visualization. Magda’s art includes photography, digital art, stuffed “animals” and silk quilts, leather jewellery and painting. She presented her digital art process in a panel at the ROM Museum’s Intitute for Contemporary Culture, and designed digital projection backdrops for the jazz opera Quebecite. Under the name RNA Studio she designs websites and visual identities for mostly educational and non-profit clients, including a handful of zany biochemistry research labs at the University of Toronto. She is the designer of the Too Cool for School website. From 2005 to 2009 Magda travelled full time, working with clients remotely from various beaches and jungles, noting signs that the future had indeed arrived, the past continues cherished, and the now is the place to be. The Land of Happy Sleepy evolves, a project with love Marc Ngui. These days the laptop sits right beside the sewing machine in a Toronto studio, a handy setup for the Happy Sleepy Art and Toys Shop. Magda’s most recent obsessions are hand embroidery, pearlescent and opaque guache, custom WordPress themes, and PHP databases.

Marc Ngui

Marc studied architecture at the University of Waterloo after which he pursued a practice of DIY publishing under the imprint Bumblenut Pictures. (A heroic variety of drawing styles on his website, and check the Land of Happy Sleepy for peeks into his sketchbook.) Marc divides his energy between the inkwell and the digital drawing tablet, and has produced numerous zines, minicomics, posters, animations, paintings, and diagrams. Projects for group exhibitions include Meme Swarm (Gene Swarm, 2007) , Thousand Plateaus (Quantal Strife, 2006-08), and Totem Pill, a “totem pole” Flash animation interpretation of Timothy Leary’s Eight Circuit Model of Human Consciousness (Sequential Desire, 2008). Marc has worked in and around Toronto’s maker and art community as cartoonist, art teacher (AGO), video journalist (Zed TV), and event organiser (Canzine, Gladstone Hotel). He has most recently illustrated Watch this Space (Kids Can Press, 2010), a children’s book about public space and urbanism, and is currently working on a new graphic novel called Cat Nap. Recent work includes Rotate Thought Objects: I’m Ready for My Chip, an oversized book-painting, and the drawings for Too Cool for School seen throughout this website.

Von Bark

Von Bark is a Toronto-based artist and writer. Exhibitions include Thicket 1: The Voyage, a collaborative installation with Sally McKay for Harbourfont Centre in Toronto (2006), three short video works exhibited in the group show M-K, at Dawson Creek Art Gallery, BC; North Peace Gallery, Fort St. John, BC; and Northern Lights College in Fort Nelson, BC (2007) and the sound piece, Variations on Two Themes by Arvo Pärt, a composition created in collaboration with Marlene Creates for the Harbour Symphony, Sound Symposium XIV, St. John’s NL (2008). Von Bark is the editor of ovvlvverk online.

Sarah Cale

Sarah Cale is a visual artist who lives and works in Toronto. Her work explores an intersection of painting and collage. She earned a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2003 and an MFA from the University of Guelph in 2005. Most recently she was shortlisted for the 2009 RBC painting competition. Sarah is a sessional instructor at the University of Guelph.

Too Cool For School & Science Fair Jury Members

Sean Gryb

Sean Gryb is a PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo and studies theoretical physics at the Perimeter Institute. His research involves trying to see if the fundamental mechanism behind gravity is to smooth out the “shape” of the universe. He believes strongly in science communication and has participated in dozens of student and teacher talks, workshops and videos as well as public events.

Hooley McLaughlin, Ph.D.

Hooley McLaughlin is the Director of Visitor Experience, Ontario Science Centre. Coming from a background in bio-medical research, Dr. McLaughlin joined the Ontario Science Centre in 1987 as Staff Biologist. He has participated in a number of management and project leadership roles. His exhibition interests have included topics ranging from investigations into bias and prejudice; sport; psychology; nanotechnology and materials science; space exploration; the nature of time; and the bringing together of art and science. Working with colleagues and the public, both at home and around the world, he continues to enjoy trying to make the difficult seem easy.

Crystal Mowry

Crystal Mowry is an artist and curator currently based in Cambridge, Ontario. She is currently the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (as of where she has recently curated solo exhibition projects featuring Janice Kerbel (UK), Kelly Richardson (UK), Adriana Kuiper (Sackville, NB), and Seth (Guelph, ON). Her own artwork examines wonder, scale, and knowledge in speculative –and sometimes fictitious– versions of tourist-destination landscapes.This spring her work will be featured in Natural History, a group exhibition at Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (U of T). Crystal’s independent curatorial projects include /The Terrarium Project,/ an interdisciplinary collaboration with filmmaker Gail Singer, designer / historians David Ross and Rebecca Duclos, artist / curator Andrew T. Hunter, and artist Denton Fredrickson co-curated with Panya Clark Espinal. /The Terrarium Project/ was one of the recipients of the Harbourfront Centre’s inaugural Fresh Grounds Commissions.

Art and Science Links