County artists share ‘Chaos Theory’ in Toronto

The County’s Chrissy Poitras and Becky Lane are among 44 artists invited to “Come Up To My Room”  in Toronto.
This weekend’s annual alternative design event is hosted by the Gladstone Hotel and curated by Jeremy Vandermeij and Deborah Wang.
Artists and designers are invited “to show what goes on inside their heads” as they come together in dialogue and collaboration.  The four-day exhibition features 11 rooms and 14 public space installations, design talks and curatorial tours.
The curators select participating designers and artists based on their past work and experience.  The artists and designers are given the freedom to rock out – creating new, site specific installations that are the ultimate artistic, inventive and/or spatial expression. The final results are art and design mash-ups that challenge our pre-conditioned notions of both disciplines.
Poitras and Lane will be creating a public space piece entitled ‘Chaos Theory’ in which the two will collaborate to “discuss the junction between happenstance and expectation through that quintessential symbol of order: the clock.” Lane is the principal designer for the design studio, I Beast You. She has a degree in interior design from Ryerson University. Becky explores themes of nostalgia and remembrance by recreating objects from her past, and incorporating the discarded objects from other people’s pasts into her own stories.
Poitras is an abstract painter and printmaker with a degree in fine art from Queens University. She is the Executive Director of Spark Box, a print studio and residency. Her work is an investigation of the accidental marks found in her surroundings, the purpose of which is not to create a unified composition, but to allow the viewer to follow trains of thought.

This year, CUTMR is part of the first Toronto International Design Festival celebrating local and international design. Between Jan. 27-30, a variety of venues around the city will host contemporary design events, including exhibits, symposiums, lectures, and fairs.
Come Up To My Room is open to the public on Saturday, January 28. Event details can be found at www.comeuptomyroom.com. A website chronicling their project can be viewed at www.chaostheory2011.tumblr.com.