Painting and pop culture continue to collide in JOHN ABRAMS’ ongoing projects, on view in 2004 at Media(tion) at Doncaster Museum, South Yorkshire, UK, Cry at Loop Gallery, Toronto, Screen Grab at Boltax Gallery, Shelter Island, NY and Doctor Strangelove, at Toronto Alternative Art Fair International/The Drake Hotel and in 2005 in a touring exhibition. Abrams’ paintings are held in many prestigious collections, including The National Gallery of Canada, University of Toronto, Art Gallery of Windsor, O’Hare Airport, Chicago, and Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto and more.

COLLEEN BARAN is an artist who has exhibited and been privately collected nationally and internationally. So far, in 2005, she is exhibiting jewellery, drawing, and photography in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Chicago, all over Norway, and on Postpicasso.com.

TAMARA FAITH BERGER lives in Toronto.

ROSE BIANCHINI lands herself in many fascinating endeavours. Most recently, she is working as a freelance reporter for CBC radio and is diligently working on a graphic novel, called Amygdala, that is due to be launched in May 2005.

KATE BINGAMAN like to take photos of the things she buys, and make work about places where people buy things. She thinks about debt. A lot. She lives in Mississippi, where she is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Mississippi State University.

MATTHEW BLACKETT is the human behind the comic m@b, the creative director of Spacing, and a freelance graphic artist. He eats too much out of styrofoam.

ALLEN BOOTH is a composer, singer, TV writer, web-guy and playright. Check him out online.

MICHAEL BROWN is a painter who thrives in big city environments. From outhouses in Eastport, Newfoundland, to cube vans in downtown Toronto, this artist is always looking to inject art into the community. During the week, he designs and paints murals with youth artists at Harbourfront Community Centre.

SUZETTE CHAN can be found in Edmonton, Alberta, and at http://www.suzettechan.com.

SAMANTHA CLEAVER will graduate with her MPA from the University of Delaware in May 2005. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming online in Gonzo Beats and The Spillway Review. This is her first print publication.

KATHY CRABBE, alias “k. crab,� is a Kingston, Ontario, artist born in 1965 who presently lives in Southern California. She began drawing with her left hand when her right-handed work no longer kept her amused. Both left and right-handed work can be viewed online

JAMES CULLETON is a painter, a designer, and a musician. He is a prairie enthusiast, currently living in Montreal.

BRIAN JOSEPH DAVIS is an artist and writer and has spent the last year with a video camera, hanging out with everyone from Michael Jackson fans to celebrity-look-a-likes, to televangelists. Coach House Books will be publishing Portable Altamont, his first collection of prose this fall. See the sad results that come from equal obsessions with the works of Steve-O and Richard Prince online.

MIA DONOVAN is an artist living and working in Montreal. She received a B.F.A in Art History and Studio Arts from Concordia University in 2002, and has received grants from both the du Maurier Arts Council, and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec. Her work has appeared in many group shows in Montreal and publications. She’s had three major solo shows, her first was in Toronto as part of the 2002 Contact Photography Festival, her second was at Montreal’s Gallery 306 in 2003, and her third, Stripped, ended March 19 at Montreal’s Observatoire 4.

CARLA GARNET was the director of Garnet Press Gallery (1984-97). She continues to work as an independent curator actively supporting contemporary art, culture and artists through initiatives like: Pool, an exhibition presenting multi-media works by 20 artists elucidating the fluid and tenuous relationship between humanity and nature on view at Harbourfront Centre, 2001, Ho Tam – Lessons, at Gallery TPW, Toronto, The National Gallery of Canada Ottawa 2001-02, and Looking for Dick, multi-media works by 16 artists informed by Philip K Dick’s CIA double-cross world on view at Open Studio June/July 2002. Garnet is currently pursuing an MFA at York Unviersity.

Due to an epic miscalculation of her own alcohol tolerance, Ms. HOLLAY GHADERY has been forced into a life of creative prostitution, and now lives and works as a writer in Kingston, Ontario.

Something is about to hatch in the department above CAMILLA GIBB’s shoulders but she’s not quite yet sure what it is. Please have a look at the most recent hatch, Sweetness in the Belly, forthcoming from Doubleday in March. Visit www.camillagibb.ca (because .COM belongs to some guy in Germany who won’t give it back).

Born in 1969, Canadian artist ISABELLE HAYEUR lives and works in Montreal. Since the late 1990s, she has been known for large-format digital montages and video production, while she also produced several public art installations and Net Art works. Both appealing and alarming, her works denounce the no-man's-lands that modern and contemporary civilizations allow to emerge. Her digital images invite us to observe the “landscape� dimension of the world with a foreign sentiment that places us on the lookout for modern and contemporary industrial developments.

JESSE HIRSH will be right back after these important commercial messages. Stay right where you are, and do not change the channel.

PAUL HONG has seen the following wild mammals in public parks: rabbits, deers, foxes, squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, snakes, frogs, and a panda.

ROBERT LABOSSIERE lives and works in Toronto.

RICHARD MARKS is an Architectural Designer in London, England. Discarded
printer, Bishopsgate, London, 25.09.03, is one of several photographs that explore the unconventional use of urban space. The series formed part of his final student project, “Seven Townhouses in Antwerp,� for which he was awarded a Commendation in the RIBA President’s Medals.

CHANDRA MAYOR is a Winnipeg writer. Her award-winning first book is August Witch: Poems (Cyclops Press, 2002), and her second book is a novel, Cherry (conundrum press, 2004). She is the recipient of the 2004 John Hirsch award for most promising writer.

SALLY MCKAY is obsessing on abstractions.

LAURA NANNI is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist who admits to spending time in shopping malls. She is currently developing “Don’t Talk To Strangers,� a series of performances investigating uncomfortable silence. Reach her at laurananni@hotmail.com.

BILLEH NICKERSON is the editor of Event magazine. His most recent collection is entitled Let Me Kiss it Better: Elixirs for the Not So Straight and Narrow (Arsenal Pulp). He lives in Vancouver.

EMILY POHL-WEARY is so busy scheming.

ROBERT PRIEST’s latest book is How to Swallow a Pig (ECW), He writes and
performs Dr. Poetry on CBC’s Wordbeat. He writes for NOW. There’s lots of videos of him doing his poems at www.poempainter.com. He is the second-best poet in Canada.

LORNE ROBERTS thinks that The End is nigh, but he still finds joy in the everyday. He is the Visual Arts Critic for the Winnipeg Free Press, works with at-risk youth, and helps to run A Label for Artists Gallery, a three-year-old space in downtown Winnipeg that showcases emerging and mid-career artists.

LISA RUNDLE doesn't get out much -- she is a freelance writer and editor in Toronto.

SABRINA RUSSO is a Toronto-based artist who is currently studying at the
Ontario College of Art and Design. She enjoys taking pictures as well as
cutting and pasting. She is scared of malls. She can be reached at
sabrina66@hotmail.com.

Fiction writer, poet, and playwright J. J. STEINFELD lives in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. He has published a novel and nine short story collections, the previous three collections by Gaspereau Press: Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (1999), Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown (2000), and Would You Hide Me? (2003). His stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals, and over thirty of his one-act and full-length plays have been performed in various forms, ranging from staged readings to full production

ANN STERZINGER: Chassis manufactured 1975, Wisconsin, U.S. Paint job still pending.

VON BARK has been preoccupied with the question of the intrinsic value of art for quite a while. Most of the art he has attempted to produce has been virtually unmarketable.

MYNA WALLIN is co-publisher, along with David Clink, of believe your own press. She’s been published in Existere, Eye Weekly, Stuart Ross’s scathing anthology, My Lump in the Bed; Love Poems for George W. Bush, Surface & Symbol, and Taddle Creek, among others. She can spell just about anything.

ROBERT WESTON lives in Vancouver. His writing has appeared in Wreck, Chameleon Magazine for Children and Film Monthly. He is currently an editor for Fugue 2005 and he is co-executive editor of PRISM international.

ZOE WHITTALL is always rejected from Can-Lit type things but continues to rage rage for the hardworking diesel femme poets to have the best seats at the bar. You can read more about her at www.trashready.com, her performance art group. She’s also accepting offers for dates by girlish boys and boyish girls at brazenbmx@hotmail.com.

DAWN YOW is busy missing Ontario with an agoraphobic kitty and a sometimes-dinosaur boy. One day, she’ll figure out how evolutionary psychology and life behind a lens can successfully be combined. One day...