Open Studio

The print vibes are strong 💪✨

Our studio is open to independent artists looking for shared printmaking equipment, plus a space to develop ideas, connect with fellow artists, experiment, and grow creatively.

We love seeing our artist members push boundaries and discover new ways to incorporate print into their practice.

Interested in joining us?

If you’re a printmaker ➡️ check out our Studio Access webpage: https://openstudio.ca/studio/

No print experience? No problem. Our classes (starting in August!) are a great place to begin, and private instruction is also available.

We also offer free studio tours throughout the year. Come say hello 401 Richmond at 401 Richmond St. West.

❌ Last chance to see Vera Frenkel’s ‘Big X Window’, a four-part stone lithograph from our archive, on loan to Koffler Arts for ‘As If by Chance...”, closing June 14.

The exhibition centres on Frenkel’s two-channel video and photographic installation exploring the loss of a beloved Toronto arts centre and the community it fostered. Read more: https://www.kofflerarts.org/whatson/exhibitions/exhibition/as-if-by-chance-vera-frenkel

‘Big X Window’ was commissioned by the Art Bank in 1976 and printed on BFK Rives, a specialty printmaking paper manufactured at the Arches paper mill, one of the oldest in France. Each of the four panels measures 29 x 42 inches, and together they form a striking 5 x 7 foot window.

The print suite is also available for purchase in support of both organizations. Thank you to Vera Frenkel for her continued generosity.

Images:
1) Big X Window installed
2) Vera Frenkel signing the first quadrant of the stone lithograph suite with master printer Otis Tamasauskas at Open Studio, 1976.
3) Vera Frenkel at the opening reception

✨Join us for an opening reception this Friday, May 29, 6-8pm! We have multiple exhibitions opening. Suite 104, at 401 Richmond Street West.

MAIN GALLERY
Sylvat Aziz
Defiant Memory

In ‘Defiant Memory’, Sylvat Aziz uses printmaking and other media to explore how illegitimate power erodes cultural memory, identity, and tradition. Through layered visual storytelling, the work foregrounds the resilience and shared humanity that persist in the face of oppression and displacement.

PROJECT SPACE
Refraction: Translations of Japanese Landscape
Fumiko Goto, Fuki Hamada, and Yoshie Uchida

Three Japanese printmakers, Fumiko Goto, Fuki Hamada, and Yoshie Uchida, each bring a distinct visual language to ‘Refraction: Translations of Japanese Landscape’. From Goto’s meditative forest stillness to Hamada’s perception-bending flora and Uchida’s colour-driven elemental fragments, the exhibition asks how urban life in Japan shapes an artist’s relationship with the natural world. Curated by Derek Michael Besant, RCA, and supported by Open Studio, it is an intimate and poetic journey through landscape as translation.

PROOFS & PROCESS VITRINES
Jenn Law and Mohammad Tabesh

The Proofs & Process vitrines present new work by Jenn Law and Mohammad Tabesh, focusing on the often-unseen stages of printmaking, from testing and revision to material and colour decisions. The display frames process as a visible part of making, with works shown as they develop over time.

Jenn Law is a Toronto-based artist and writer who uses letterpress printing to inscribe poetic language into plants. In her ivy-based works, the plant gradually alters and erases printed text, turning the work into a changing collaboration between language and living material.

Mohammad Tabesh is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist working across print, sculpture, and writing. His project ‘The Book of Roaring Memories’ transforms oral histories from the Iranian diaspora into colour-based prints, shaped by systems of translation, memory, and his red-green colour blindness.

📸 Images in order of artists presented