^{Top Shelf Distillers}

^{Bottle Art Series 2017}

^{Press Release}

In the spirit of Andy Warhol & Keith Haring, who’s artwork famously adorned the labels of a certain infamous brand, Perth Ontario’s own

TOP SHELF DISTILLERS is proud to present a new and innovative project that encourages the visibility of homegrown artistic talent.

With a focus on both youthful and veteran perspectives, THE TOP SHELF DISTILLERS BOTTLE SERIES is daringly seeking past the printed label, and thinking much bigger.

This summer we are commissioning 12 local artists to present us with their own unique vision & style using a 6 foot, self-standing wooden bottle cut-out as their canvas.

Bottles designed and cut by CNC OTTAWA. (Baltic Birch Ply)   CNCOttawa.ca

These 12 unique creations will be installed in various locations and events throughout the summer. The first bottle installation was painted at the GLOWFAIR festival media launch on FRIDAY MAY 19^th, painted live by Robbie Lariviere. Bottles will be painted and displayed throughout the summer & fall, in the various BIAs & Festivals listed below. More dates will be added in an additional press release.

These custom pieces were/will be designed specifically for the following past events:

– WESTFEST June 2^nd – June 4^th  http://www.westfest.ca

(Twitter: @westfestinfo | Instagram @westfestinfo)

Guest Artist: Robbie Lariviere  /  See video:  https://vimeo.com/228230199

– GLOWFAIR June 16^th – 18^th  http://www.glowfairfestival.ca

(Twitter: @glowfair | Instagram: @glowfairfestival)

Guest Artists: Dems & Dolls

See video: https://vimeo.com/228229884

– TD OTTAWA JAZZ FESTIVAL June 22^nd – July 2^nd    hhttp://ottawajazzfestival.com/

(Twitter: @ottawaJazz | Instagram: @ottawajazz)

Guest Artists: Juan Carlos Noria & Sarah Schorlemer  / Dominik Sokolowski

See video: https://vimeo.com/228227691

&  https://vimeo.com/228225797

– CANADA DAY July 1^st   http://www.ottawa2017.ca 

(Twitter: @2017ottawa | Instagram: @ottawa_2017)

– SKY LOUNGE July 7^th – 22^nd

http://www.ottawa2017.ca/events/signature-events/sky-lounge/

See video: https://vimeo.com/228231242

– ARBORETUM August 18^th – 19th

https://www.arboretumfestival.com

Guest Artist: Elliot Fockyer

– CAPITAL PRIDE August 21^st – 27th

http://www.ottawacapitalpride.ca

Guest Artist: Ehren English

– HOUSE OF PAINT August 24th – 27th

http://houseofpaint.ca

Guest Artist: Mique Michelle (live painting) & Komi Olaf (finished artwork)

– ANIMATION FESTIVAL   September 20th – 24th.

https://www.animationfestival.ca

See more:

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Top Shelf Distillers Bottle Art Series – Juan Carlos & Sarah Schorlemer – The Ottawa Jazz Festival:

We flew in former Ottawa resident and extraordinary artist Juan Carlos Noria from Spain to join Sarah-Jane Schorlemer for some more live art action.
This dream team painted bottles six and seven in our summer artist series live at the Ottawa Jazz Festival as Feist closed out the final day in the pouring rain. Nothing short of epic…
We had a phenomenal time serving cocktails at The Ottawa Jazz Festival. Many thanks to all the festival-goers, staff and volunteers that make this 37 year strong festival so special.

Featured Artists to be announced.

At Top Shelf Distillers we have a legacy to uphold. A legacy of distilling, pride and history in Perth, Ontario. We take pride in our products and hand-crafted experiences while striving to be a distillery that adheres to the highest possible standards, that’s what you deserve. From our distillery to our beverages, your experience is paramount.

We’ve Bottled a Legacy.

Follow us for future updates:

Website: www.topshelfdistillers.com

Blog: http://topshelfdistillers.com/the-bulletins/

Twitter: @tsdistillers / @topshelfvodka

Instagram: @tsdistillers / @topshelfvodka / @topshelfgin

#tsdistillers #yourtopshelf #madewithcraft

Read More:

Top Shelf in The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/05/travel/what-to-do-36-hours-in-ottawa-canada.html?_r=0

‘Perth, Dry No More’ via Ottawa Magazine

http://ottawamagazine.com/eating-and-drinking/wine-and-spirits/perth-dry-no-more-for-its-200th-anniversary-distilling-returns-to-historic-town/

‘Ontario’s Coolest Distillery’ via The Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance

https://ontarioculinary.com/ontarios-coolest-distillery-top-shelf-distillers-in-perth/

Bottoms Up,

Guy Berube, Curator

Top Shelf Distillers

14 Warren Crescent | Perth, ON.

 

ARTIST BIOS/STATEMENTS:

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WHITNEY LEWIS-SMITHWhitney Lewis-Smith is a Canadian photo-based artist. Her work uses a combination of historic and modern photographic processes as a means to speak on contemporary topics, most recently discussing consumerism, commodity accessibility, and globalization’s impact on the environment. By referencing dutch golden era floral tableaus, Whitney highlights the evolution of humanity’s relationship with the planet. A painting from the 17th century displaying various flora and fauna that could never have existed together has now become a reality to almost anyone at the tap of a button. Her seemingly living moving scenes are made predominantly using insects, animals, and plants that have died, but this only becomes apparent upon close inspection. The result is a subtle tension, engaging the viewer’s fascinations and fears. Lewis-Smith challenges viewers’ distance from the ecological; her pieces evoke childlike curiosity while simultaneously directing us to consider the profound environmental changes we are giving rise to.

Lewis-Smith works predominantly in Canada. She attended the Studio Arts program at Concordia University where her focus was in painting and drawing. She completed her photographic education at the School of Photographic Arts: Ottawa and has shown in galleries in Canada and abroad. In 2014, Lewis-Smith was awarded a one-month production residency at the Arquetopia Foundation for the Arts in Mexico. Her work sits in prominent private collections in Canada, the United States, England, Spain, Mexico, and Chile, as well as in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery of New Brunswick and the Ottawa City’s Public Art collections of 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Most recently Whitney’s work was purchased by Justin and Sophie Trudeau as part of their personal collection.

She is represented by Galerie St-Laurent+Hill in Ottawa, Canada, and Subject Gallery NYC in New York.

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DAN BULLER / DSTRBO (HVW8)

Dan Buller’s work is often characterized by highly resolved portrait studies. He is renowned for his editorial work in Montreal, including an 8 year stint as Hour Magazine’s political cartoonist. Forming one-third of Heavyweight Art Installation with Gene Pendon and Tyler Gibney, he has toured and exhibited internationally in venues in Japan, England, Holland, Brussels, Germany, Italy, Canada, USA, Puerto Rico. The HVW8 Art installation first debut was painting live at the 1999 Montreal Jazz Festival. Following that the collective has been featured in Juxtapoz magazine, and have created live art across the world, participating in festivals such as the Coachella Festival in Indio, California, the Winter Music Conference in Miami, CMJ Festival in New York City, and the Candela Music and Arts Festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Currently an active member of En Masse, a Montreal-based mural collective, He continues to paint large-scale public pieces at home and abroad.

~

NATHALIE GRICE

Nathalie Grice is an Ottawa-based artist whose sculptural works explore the lines between the natural and the artificial as a means to question prevalent contemporary cultural and social trends.

Having received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Ontario College of Art and a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Ottawa, Grice currently works as an Instructor at the Ottawa School of Art where she teaches classes in painting and sculpture. An active member of the outreach program at Operation Come Home, for two years Grice was one of 6 recipients to receive a grant from the City of Ottawa/Crime Prevention to complete mural projects with homeless youth.

Grice’s works have been exhibited in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and San Francisco and have been featured in the arts publication Art & Science Journal. Grice is currently pursuing funding opportunities to return to the Arctic and carry out research for her next project.

~

ARIANE BEAUCHAMP

Ottawa-based artist Ariane Beauchamp’s medium of choice has typically been ink and watercolour. The themes of her work, being nature, death and decay lend themselvesperfectly to the unpredictable nature of the materials she uses. “The ink tells me what is going to become of the piece. It will move, fall and dry in a way you won’t expect or plan for. Like in nature, I let it tell me what it’s going to be.”

The imagery used in my work is heavily influenced by my upbringing in Northern Ontario, on the shores of Lake Nipissing as well as a recent purchase of untapped land in Pakenham, Ontario. The purchase of a completely virgin plot of land has been more than inspirational, it’s been a revelation. My partner and I are currently building a small cabin there. Staying in the wild, being self-sufficient and blocking out the modern world has been very inspiring.

~

KALKIDAN ASSEFA aka drippin soul 

(b. 1982, Ethiopia) Visual Artist and certified Artist-Educator specializing in small and large scale portraiture, figurative, and iconographic paintings, canvases, murals, and illustration in acrylics and assorted mixed media. Based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

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PETER SHMELZER:

“I see visual art as a method of measuring and reflecting the world and our place in it. Like the written or spoken word, it is a system for elucidating that which evades our immediate understanding. There is a contemporary compulsion to impose trends and to forecast even the most ephemeral and unpredictable of things through the endless collection of data. Though this has yielded great social/scientific/economic fruit, it may be ill-suited to deal with the absurdity of human interaction. Images that work entirely outside the world of reason may be better-suited to telling the story of how we act and interact.

~

CLARA KIM

Clara was born in South Korea, and took inspiration from both Canadian and Korean cultures . Her new style of painting aims to renovate the beauty of traditional Korean paintings with a fresh modern feel. She utilises the concept ‘the beauty of white space’ to show elegance and modesty in her work.

In traditional Korean art, white space acts as a blank canvas to the people, giving them opportunity for imagination, yet the simplicity of the background draws attention to the highlight of the piece.

Clara’s signature thick-texture technique captures an essence of modernism while leaving simple backgrounds such as clouds, the air, or the beauty that is the plain white space, a recurring theme in various Korean and East Asian artworks.

Clara’s Modern Korean Art displays luxury in simplicity, passion hidden in calmness, and beauty within sorrow.

She calls her new style “Modern Korean painting”.

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DOM LAPORTE: 

“I am a painter and mixed media artist from Ottawa, Ontario. My focus has been portraiture, whether abstract, interpretive or realism for the past 10+ years and I’ve yet to walk off that path. After graduating from Canterbury High school, a specialized art school in Ottawa, I lived in Montreal for a year while enrolled in Concordia Universities Fine Art program, majoring in Drawing and Painting. Realizing at the time I needed further technical training and conceptual theory, I decided to leave Concordia and later was accepted to the Illustration program at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario where I graduated with honors in 2015”.

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MIQUE MICHELLE: 

A Franco-Ontarian from Field, Dominique’s nomadic journeys allowed her to exercise her graffiti from northern Ontario to France. Through her travels and studies at the Ottawa School of Art, she has evolved as a mixed media artist and an active facilitator of the arts in Ottawa. Her work can be seen in galleries, public buildings and in outdoor venues. Dominique remains a strong advocate for abolishing negative perceptions of graffiti .

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EHREN ENGLISH:

“Ehren English is a queer artist living in Ottawa, Canada. He has done everything from fine arts to user interface design, and is currently working in animation. He mostly works digitally these days. Dinosaurs, tattoos, video games, and nature are his biggest inspirations”.

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JUAN CARLOS NORIA:

“A confluence of cultures and contradictions Juan Carlos Noria is a fresh proponent of the visual art scene in Ottawa,Canada. Born in Caracas, Venezuela he carries his Latin American sensibility on his sleeve. As a teen growing up in Canada, he became an accomplished figure skater. Grace and lines were an obsession. So, too were his ideas of subversion. He fell out of skating after hitting the rigid class structure of the sport, finding comfort (and discomfort) in visual art, on the streets with a paint can, postering, skateboarding, fleeing police. A strange opportunity then came. A world tour with Disney on ice. It heightened his sense of absurdity, humor and anger, sharpened his visual and social awareness.

True to his subversive nature, he undercuts his own personality allowing himself to explore two other personas and visual styles. He has been influenced by his contemporaries Mark Marsters, Pat Thompson and Dave Cooper. Yet, he is himself-singular Juan. He is without pretense, full of concern for others, quick to laugh and quicker to paint something ripe”.

~

DEMS & DOLL:

Ottawa Artist DollFace AKA Sarah Doll and
her partner DEMS have works that can be seen at Falldown, Maxwells, Wontonmama, Wicked Wandas, KINKI, Oh SO Good, Veteran Tattoo, and other locations in the city. She currently has murals running at Flamingo niteclub on Elgin st, Oh SO good Desserts on York st, and Lunenburg pub in the market, and Hooch on Rideau st.
She has been in the art scene for a few years now and is an active member. She was featured in Guerilla Magazine, InStyle, The Citizen, and Envy magazine-highlighting her talents as an artist and overall trendsetter. DOLL also did a recent appearance on CTV morning demonstrating her art skills.

~

SARAH SCHORLEMER:

“Born and raised in the city of Ottawa.
Sarah is an evolving art student creating images. Previously trained in classical and modern dance.

Through the years ideas came easily to her through movement. As time passed her need to develop and transform her art into something more tangible, and it came easily with the use of photography and painting, it is the most efficient mediums to express herself”.

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DOMINIK SOKOLOWSKI:

“Mon travail se construit avec une rigueur et une détermination qui nécessitent une implication attentive du spectateur. L’idée du hasard se transmue par celle d’un calcul particulier. Toutes mes oeuvres apparaîtront ainsi comme une organisation et une structuration personnelles du monde.

La construction plastique de mes tableaux est très rigoureuse. Elle prend forme par étapes successives, par couches superposées, par répétition de plans, de couleurs, par l’utilisation d’empâtements, de brossage et d’essuyage. Les superpositions de plans ou de formes finissent par tisser ensemble une structure donnant à la fois l’impression d’une masse rigide ou d’une construction systématique que l’on pourrait presque démonter et remonter visuellement à notre gré. Et pourtant il y a très peu de hasard dans ma façon de mettre en images ces couleurs, cette « peinture » .

Une particularité de mon travail est certainement la répétition que l’on trouve à la fois dans chacune des oeuvres ainsi que dans l’ensemble de mon travail. Mon évolution est caractérisée par l’obsession de la continuité: chaque oeuvre appelant la suivante dans une série découlant d’un même grand tableau, géniteur de tous les autres. Serait-ce l’obsession de peindre tout court?

Fondamentalement ma démarche s’inscrit dans l’élaboration d’une nouvelle architecture picturale qui, tout en étant formelle s’exprime avec rigueur et sensualité”.

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Derrick Smiley