Issue 8

folio contributors
JEREMY KEYZER studies urban systems, art history,
and GIS. His Tap OK to confirm you are 17 or older portrait
is inspired by the representation of identity and the
relationship between sexuality and space. He loves trains,
gardening, and cities. His approach to art making is
temperamental.
JULIETTE COOK turns to biology, nature and geometry
to inspire her work. Juliette is constantly looking to her
surroundings, whether it be other art, the environment
at large or microscopic body tissues and plants cells.
Through her work, she hopes to enlarge these microscopic
interactions into imaginary landscapes, free from depth
and space. Her focus is to capture the unspoiled beauty
of nature, holding elements in a states of suspension.
Her work is full of juxtapositions: intuitive yet planned,
free yet controlled, open to interpretation yet holding a
story. When not producing art as a coping mechanism
for the stresses of day to day life, Juliette is a student in
International Development and Economics.
CAROLYN BAILEY is an honors cultural studies student.
Her art, which she describes as geometric rorschach
nightmares, is inspired by symmetry, movement and
chaos. She used lead on Mylar plastic sheet to construct
Tesselllation #3.
HANNAH TOLKIN’s ethereal photographs showcase
those happiest and heartfelt moments which she feels
cannot be accurately put into words. Her inspirations are
drawn from the locations, urban environments, people
and landscapes which surround her. Hannah often waits
extended periods of time to develop her film as she finds
joy in rediscovering the memories which her film captures.
SARAH BOO lives in dream spaces that are much too
familiar. A second year engineering student, Sarah is
inspired by “anxiety and shit”. Her artwork is an aesthetic
exploration of the invisible points of intensity in between
her frequent sleep paralysis episodes. In her eyes, her work
is “tinny.”
CARLYN HOPKINS finds the process of art-making
therapeutic, tactile and relational. Born into a family of
artists, drawing has always come naturally to her and
brings her to a place of serenity. She loves to doodle in
idle moments and is interested in medical illustration, an
art form that allows her to merge her passions for science
and fine arts. She calls her hair pieces Lecture Study 1 and 2,
“wonderfully repetitive!”
JOSEPH HENRY and GRACE BROOKS work together
to produce spiteful, caring, vulnerable, attached, and also
‘hard’ work: “vulnerable like a gall, like a gall with a big
bug in it.” Featured in this issue are just four pages from
Let X=X, a work Joseph and Grace ideally see in portable
document format or printed in a zine. You can view the
complete work here: bit.ly/Y7sgyG. Advertisements,
ambivalence, missionaries, Outlook Web, people who
like salads with quinoa in them and probably have dogs,
caps lock, people who would never have dogs or salads
with quinoa, and the feeling of being minimally rebellious
are all critical influences of their work. Joseph, a joint
honors student in art history and German studies, sees his
artistic inclinations and life as a McGill student existing in
opposition, the McGill Daily comments section being a
crucial site for inspiration. Grace, a student of physiology
and physics, turns to art making as an alternative to her
disappointment from consumption of other media,
without which she wouldn’t know how to exist.
TAMARA AUGUSTEN fills up mini Moleskines and the
edges of notebooks with doodles. Currently in her final
semester of East Asian studies and economics, Tamara’s
mass drawing sprees often occur without purpose as
forms of distraction or to avoid filling in grad school
applications. Her work is inspired by cityscapes, organisms
inhabiting them, and relationship dynamics.
SARAH COOK describes her geometric paint-on-paper
pieces as “the kind of thing you can make in a couple
of minutes while watching a movie”. She maintains that
McGill has helped bring out the artist in her, because
as a “reluctant” fourth-year international development
student, most of her pieces are the fruition of dull lectures.
CATHERINE POLCZ views art making as a housekeeping
necessity. After her undergraduate degree, her creative
mind had a lot of catching up to do. Now pursuing a
Masters degree in plant science, she paints early in the
morning or late at night while listening to podcasts and
is inspired art and fiction induced mini-revelations. Her
work addresses the mysterious ability of portraiture as a
means of communication. “We look at people all the time,
so what is it to look at an impression of a person?”
THOMAS PRINGLE makes malnourished and parasitic
artwork. He is inspired by difference, machines,
perception, organs, animals, ticks, mayflies, jellyfish,
country rats and city rats. After time at film school and
a 35mm film project gone wrong, Thomas now focuses
on “minor quotidian photography.” His photography is
an ongoing experiment in learning the qualities of light.
Thomas is a Masters student in cultural studies.