One of the crumbliest of the many old chestnuts rotting away in Canadian art discourse is that all Canadian art is ultimately about the landscape that surrounds us.

This is of course true (that’s how antique ideas last) and also very much not true, especially in an era when the digital presence of art and artists has erased traditional aesthetic markers such as regionalism, wild vs. urban settings, and the very idea (always a fraught one, being built on colonialism) of ownership and self-marked territory.

Just in time to mark this pivotal stage in Canadian art’s fourth wave comes Lezli Rubin-Kunda’s At Home: Talks with Canadian Artists about Place and Practice (Goose Lane Editions) – a thick, generously illustrated book of conversations with Canadian artists whose works unpack, celebrate, and chronicle how we move through our chosen spaces.

In keeping with the book’s chatty tone, I asked three participants – Lezli Rubin-Kunda,  Sandra Rechico, and Susan Fiendel – to talk about their art.

Home, I learned from their responses, is where the mind is.

RM Vaughan: You share an interest in observing and then responding to your surroundings. How did this start, and how do you feel the art you have made has served that curiosity?

Sandra Rechico: I’d say that I have an interest in how all types of people observe and respond to their surroundings. In a way, it’s the quotidian that is of interest to me: racking where I had been in a day or a month, or asking people to make maps of where they had been that day.

Maps have always been fascinating to me, I used to draw them as a kid (I would make up foreign lands and treasure maps), but I expect plenty of kids do that.

I am still very attached to paper maps, whether they be city plans, atlases, nautical charts… at the same time I am very aware at the inaccuracies and politics inherent in maps.

Lezli Rubin-Kunda: My interest started when I was a very young child; I would claim that it is a sensitivity to one’s physical surroundings that one is simply born with, whether artist or not.

As I mention in the book, referring to the dam I made at side of the road and other childhood activities, those experiences that relate to my immediate surroundings and my physical interaction with them are the ones that stick in the memory.

Susan Fiendel: My practice began when I was a young girl.

However, it was the experience of my tiny son’s heart surgery which led me to consider the notion of “intensive care” in all of my future subject matter.

My private thought at the time was that if I am to make art, I truly want my work to be meaningful to others beyond my personal pleasure.

RMV: Any artwork that reflects back to the viewer an environment chosen by the artist is going to contain questions about perception, and the difference between what the artist sees and what might or might not be there. How do you negotiate these distinctions, if you do at all?

SR: My project “May Drawings” was made by tracing my movements through the city during the month of  May for 5 consecutive years.

The drawings ended up being another sort of city plan. The drawings don’t divulge the destinations, and routes that I frequented ended up being thick lines; repeated travel meant repeating the line.

It was interesting to me that the viewers who easily recognized the city as Toronto in the drawing were people that rode the subway.

They were accustomed to looking at overall plans, while many others couldn’t recognize the city.

It turned out they were people that used the maps on their phones so their view of a map was from a very different perspective. I am fine with both responses and anything in-between.

LRK: There is always a live immediate connection, so that I don’t lose touch with what I am doing or become distanced or estranged from it.

Although I begin my observations at a basic level of connection to the immediate “stuff’ around me, if I stay open, I feel that all my knowledge and understanding come into play.

On the negative side, the work can perhaps remain too simplistic, too limited to my own personal repertoire and horizons.

I value the dimensions of physical reality, the constant connection to the physical, human dimension of everyday life, but I am aware that I might be holding on to the known and the familiar.

RMV: Even though some of the artists in this book work with constructed environments and some with natural (a tricky word), all of them are based on the principle of the artist-as-observer in a very direct way. What are the benefits of this approach and what are the problems?

SR: I think you’re talking about the “dilettante observer of urban life” hat Baudelaire identified as the flâneur and that continues with the Situationists.

I still use some of those psycho-geographical strategies, like the dérive, the unplanned walk, in my practice, but at other times the destinations are very particular.

The practice of recording where I had been created a structure, a daily practice which I found comforting, a specific strategy.

RM Vaughan: The majority of the artists profiled in the book are female-identified, and I don’t think that is an accident. Male artists who work in similar fields often appear, to me, to take a kind of observer-as-definer/over-determining approach. Or am I just gender-reading here?

SR: Historically some male artists may have taken a more over-determining approach.

I do find it remarkable that we take notice when a book has a majority of female-identified artists, it means that it still exceptional, which is really disappointing.

LRK: If we distinguish between men/ women versus male/ female sensibilities (regardless of gender of artist) then yes, clearly the male sensibility has a more active, controlling (destructive) orientation to their environment.

The artists whose process most attracted me were those who slowly, modestly, but with dedication, pursued an interest, followed through on a personal experience or process, allowing their surroundings to speak to them, and not impose on them; to show us, not to instruct us.

SF: The issues of home, of intimate communications, can suggest a gendered approach (to art making). However, male or female, there are cultural expectations that we navigate as best we can.

Workplaces are quickly challenging the “artist at home” or studio expectation.

The world is our work space, while at the same time the idea of home may well drive our thinking.

Boundless

“Humans think flying must feel very free. And they’re right! It does.” These are the first lines of “Boundless,” the title piece in a new rousing collection of short stories by Jillian Tamaki, the award-winning cartoonist and illustrator behind This One Summer, Skim, and SuperMutant Magic Academy. When the avian narrator crashes into a spider web, Tamaki reveals the precarious nature of so-called freedom. It’s with this swift precision that Tamaki draws a parallel to the many characters inhabiting Boundless, each confined or trapped in their own way.

Boundless takes readers inside the lives of women who are grasping for control. There is Jenny who is governed by her own desire to fit in, and Helen who quite literally begins to shrink and disappear. Angela, a young novelist, is arguably the most memorable, as she is being devoured literally by bed bugs and figuratively by her numbingly normal relationship. Each compelling character is skillfully crafted through Tamaki’s unsentimental dialogue and bold illustrations.

Tamaki brings together humour and darkness in Boundless, resulting in an often playful and surreal collection rife with metaphor. Each story is vastly different in topic and tone, right down to Tamaki’s illustrations. From the fantastical drawings in the story “1. Jenny” to “Half Life,” which is reminiscent of a comic strip, each graphic story reveals a new, carefully created world.

Tamaki is earning a reputation as one of North America’s most dynamic illustrators, and Boundless is one more impressive title to add to her growing body of work. Observant and wise, but also perfectly peculiar, Boundless hints at the fragility of human life and the infinite ways the universe threatens to crush us.

Kristen was in high school. Mackenzie was 23. Jess made a pros and cons list. Each woman had an abortion. Without Apology: Writings on Abortion in Canada centres around a woman’s right to choose. In this five-part series, women share their personal stories, alongside a detailed history of the criminalization of abortion in Canada. Editor Shannon Stettner powerfully tends to the intimate—and sometimes political—conversation first ignited in the 1960s when cis men wrongly dominated and interrupted the abortion debate. The collection is at times grim, harrowing and passionate, but it ultimately solidifies the notion that a woman’s body is solely hers—point, blank, period.

With its third time at bat, Toronto Comics Anthology has come into its own. Toronto Comics Anthology Volume 3 features 30 comics from 46 writers and artists—each reflecting on Toronto in some way. Besides that, the genres run the gamut, from true tales, to superheroes, horror, and more. The anthology shows maturity by tackling a variety of topics in creative and elegant ways. In “A Work in Progress,” writer Gwen Howarth chronicles the history of Toronto Pride’s Trans March through her transition. In “The Dark,” co-authors Aaron Feldman and Josh Rosen tell the story of a woman who reveals her terminal illness to her girlfriend while dining in the dark. For those who prefer something a little lighthearted, let Ricky Lima and Kelvin Sue reveal the secret lives of Toronto landmarks in “Architecture.” Through its variety of diverse narratives, this volume stretches the bounds of what comics can be.

The Two Sisters
Written by E. Pauline Johnson, illustrated by Sandra Butt
Waterlea Books, $19.95

Poet and performer E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) died more than a century ago. But B.C.-based illustrator Sandra Butt revived one of Johnson’s iconic poems—“The Two Sisters”—in her picture book of the same name. This retelling of a First Nations’ legend takes readers back thousands of years to the story of two sisters who bravely seek peace at a time when “war songs broke the silences of the nights.” Supplemented by a reference section educating readers on the rich history of the Pacific Northwest peoples, The Two Sisters is a beautiful addition to both children and adults’ bookshelves.

The Nearly Girl by Lisa de Nikolits is many things, but predictable isn’t one of them. Broken into a few chapters, The Nearly Girl tells the story of an unusual family, including a daughter named Amelia, who inherited her father’s peculiarities and is confronted with a grim reality when she is forced to deal with her issues.

De Nikolits’ novel reads like a movie. It’s fast paced and full of colourful, loud characters, but Amelia is certainly the stand-out. Her fascination with the unusually beautiful fuels her need to prove that she, like her father, requires an unorthodox way of living to truly be happy.

The Nearly Girl is brimming with bright story lines and vivid themes. The story becomes a commentary on life through the artist’s mind and the impermanence of happiness.

Fashion is often mistaken as temporary, nothing but a wave of passing fads—but not in Bad Girls of Fashion: Style Rebels From Cleopatra to Lady Gaga by Jennifer Croll. In her vividly illustrated book, Croll takes us through fashion contextually. Readers get a chic inside look at artists, queens, musicians, and designers who didn’t just change fashion—they challenged it. From Marie Antoinette, who used fashion as a way to prove her influence, to Lady Gaga, who used her outfits as protest, Croll reminds readers: “fashion is anything but frivolous.”