The Secret Fire Escape

My Hero Gallery has another show coming up this Friday. Sarah Byrnes and Michelle Williams run this new gallery. These lovely ladies always impress me in a way that warms my heart ( I swear the best piece at the Christmas show was the GIANT gingerbread house). The vernissage is from 6-11 on Friday January 19th at 3655 St Laurent suite #206. Lil Pip performs at 8pm.

The Secret Fire Escape is Curated by Justin B, Williams, this is what he has to say about it.

The Secret Fire Escape Exhibition:

Escapism through art is hardly a new topic, but its more relevant
today than ever. This exhibition is about using art as a tool to
escape the toll that modern life takes on our minds. It’s also about
making drawings as a positive contrast to the shitty culture zone that
is sucking our souls away.

This art show is a response to the formulaic and mundane
consumer-culture information overload that assaults us during everyday
life. Television and Internet makes it possible for this information
to reach our homes as well, making it almost inescapable.

Many people find living amongst this barrage of information to be very
stressful. Modern life is a hard thing to swallow with environmental
and human destruction, war, and other injustice as a result of greedy
capitalist governments. Consumer culture leaves many people feeling
empty and lost.

People can combat this loss of soul and feeling by creating things
like art. People can share and get together and play music or make
art, and it increases their quality of life for those who are making
it and those who are experiencing it. Art is one of the only
non-destructive human traits and it comes naturally to us as children.
Children create art instinctively but as they get older the
responsibilities given to us by society ruin this desire to create.
People stop using their imaginations and instead of creating their own
ideas and worlds, they accept the world that is given to them.

Drawing is more popular now more than ever for young artists today
because it’s a cheap, non-pretentious way of making art (as opposed to
pseudo-intellectual conceptual art for snobby audiences) that people
can relate to.

This art show will be show-casing artists from around the world who
create their own unique worlds through art-making. This show isn’t an
angsty anti-society rant against capitalist society, it’s a show about
celebrating one of the best things given to humanity: the imagination.
Justin B. Williams
Curator/participating artist
January 8, 2007

The Secret Fire Escape features work by:
Devon Varmega (lives and works in Washington, USA)
Dylan Martorell (lives and works in Melbourne, Australia)
Gaelle Maas (lives and works in France)
Huskmitnavn (lives and works in Denmark)
Justin B. Williams (lives and works in Chicago, Illinois)
Kevin Hooyman (lives and works in Brookyln, New York)
Körner Union (lives and works in Switzerland)
Kyle Mock (lives and works in San Francisco)
Maya Hayuk (lives and works in Brookyln, New York)
Sakura Maku (lives and works New England, USA)