Buddy Read | Kasia Sosnowski and Grace WirzbA | APRIL 2022

This artwork is like a sandwich. The bread on either side is made up of artists Kasia Sosnowski and Grace Wirzba. Let's call the fruit of their work here (drawing, reading and technology) the filling. Buddy Read was initiated as a way to connect the two artists and close friends separated by time and space. Taking a page from the podcast Books Unbound wherein hosts Ariel Bissett and Raeleen Lemay share what they are reading, Wirzba and Sosnowski have chosen excerpts from texts by Jack Halberstam, Kenneth B. Kidd, Derritt Mason and Louise Rennison to read aloud together. Throughout the video work, the artists create a collaborative visual score to accompany their spoken words using online drawing tools, highlighting their mutual interest in play, humour, and intuitive practice.  

Kasia Sosnowski (she/her) is from Southern Alberta. She attended the University of Lethbridge and received a double BFA in Art History/Museum Studies and Art Studio. She has worked at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, The Banff Centre and The Allied Arts Council of Lethbridge while maintaining her art practice and exhibiting her work in galleries across Alberta, Canada and overseas. She is an interdisciplinary artist who works in ceramics, drawing, video, and performance. Her work explores fragility, recovery/care, humour, and absurdity. Kasia lives and works in Tkaronto/Toronto where she is an MFA candidate at York University.

Grace Wirzba is an interdisciplinary artist originally from rural Manitoba, currently based in Lethbridge, Alberta. Her material focus falls on soft sculpture, textiles, and printmaking. She completed her BFA at the University of Lethbridge in 2018. Wirzba has participated in residencies at Medalta’s Shaw International Centre for Contemporary Ceramics and CASA Lethbridge. Wirzba has upcoming shows with TREX Southeast, the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and CASA Lethbridge in 2022. Her work regularly centres on themes of the home, gender and community histories.

This project is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts

SPAM (Special Presentation Art Mail) is an email-based art series where artists work collaboratively to create a digital artwork. Through the link below, viewers can sign up to partake in the project by volunteering to receive upcoming interactive Number 3 Gallery emails.

For the most part, the only art we encounter these days arrives via digital means. You may receive emails announcing exhibitions—both online and in person (often by appointment)—and documentation of process work on your feed in lieu of studio visits or art crawls. When we consider how this changes our perception and relationship to artworks we might also reflect on how many folks have been exclusively viewing artwork this way long before our current infectious disease concerns. This said, online art can just as easily connect us as it can be ignored entirely. If we start to question whether the work we see is losing something to these platforms we might also note how art and technology are almost irreducibly connected—be it the tools we use of the visual influence it can catalyze. 

This is not a new dynamic; mail artists have long used postal technology as a way to share snippets of their progress or work, which often intentionally took the place of formal in-person exhibitions. Not unlike our current email subscriptions, mail art (an inherently collaborative medium) would enclose participatory or interactive project and publication opportunities. Given that technology is presently the lifeline to connectivity for many of us, what better time to reconnect with the spirit of the early mail and e-mail artists who used their choice method of distribution as a transfer of aesthetic information to surmount geographical and cultural boundaries. 

To view the project please contact number3gallery@gmail.com