Orchard Lyceum

This summer! Join Holly and Sam for small group, immersive art experiences in the gallery and explore the City for culinary and artistic inspiration.

Details here:

https://orchardlyceum.ca/creative-uncommon-camp/

A Calendar by students of The Lyceum

Building Queen West is a tribute to the entrepreneurial and community spirit of the Queen West community. Each of the businesses featured here were chosen by our students because of the way they connect with the idea of “where we are”. This is an important theme at the moment, given the challenges and barriers these growing people face in forging community right now. This work folds into their ongoing study of the geo-cultural history of Queen Street West. For the calendar project, they researched the location at the archives, illustrated the business and interviewed the proprietors.

A portion of the proceeds of this calendar will go to the Parkdale Food Bank, who provide barrier-free food that respects choice and dignity for all. Now more than ever, food banks are sites of short-term assistance and advocacy. Escalating food bank use, destabilization of employment and the rapid disappearance of supported housing pose a frightening view the future.

We greatly appreciate your help in supporting their services by purchasing a calendar. Get yours (and maybe one for a friend) for $20 at thelyceumgallery.com.

Support your local:

• Silver Snail 809 Queen W — Get your pulp and paper fix.
• Type Books 839 Queen W — Your local independent bookstore, way more droog than Amazon.
• Terroni 720 Queen W —  There are no substitutions for quality.
• Oyster Boy 872 Queen St W — Shucking only the pearls in the oysters.
• La Palette 492 Queen St W — Service with panache, for twenty years!
• Hooky’s 893 Queen W — Get hooked!
• Fresh 1 Market 614 Queen St W Vicky — Supplies the Lyceum’s food progamme with fresh produce every day.
• Edulis  169 Niagara Street — Creating inspired food that meditates on the details.
• Garrison’s Barber Shop 254 Niagara Street — Get your locks chopped in fine style!
• The Spice Trader 877 Queen St — Heady, exotic, aromatic delights to tantalise your palette.
• Nadege Patisserie Ltd. 780 Queen St W — A fourth-generation pastry chef from Lyon, Nadege ensures each creation is a work of art.

The Lyceum students are immersed in art all the time. The gallery the school shares space with welcomes the community in and provides our students with ample opportunity to witness the power art has to speak to people.

The various threads of their curriculum are sewn together in collaboration with an array of artists from varying disciplines. This unique opportunity grows their appreciation and mastery of a variety of mediums but most importantly, it encourages them to notice and to think critically. Below you can read their reflections on Christina Gapic’s show Quiet Overture. Also included is a reflection by Gapic’s son, James, a first-year student at The Lyceum.

Christina Gapic’s work is available for aquisition in our shop.

 

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Moments Tended

by Violet

Moments Tended by Christina Gapic is a piece that seems to embody the beauty and wonder we see in the world during childhood. The magic that is there in everything: each butterfly, sun shower, and dandelion. As I grow up, I can feel myself starting to lose my awareness of these sorts of things. This photograph seems to radiate peace and happiness. A sort of calming feeling that makes me think of summer.

In a bright field
The sun shines
She smiles, happy
Holds the glow of the gold flowers

They turn to shining white
And float away
Like a hundred little parachutes

 

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Held

by Paloma

I’m crouched in a field. Colour is not available to my eyes, only light. It gleams and shimmers as it hits my face. Luminous bubbles float above me. Spirits, droplets, radiating.

The fields, plants, flowers and weeds block the light. Only darkness if left. It glooms, it restricts, it relaxes my eyes. The light pokes through the cracks of the plants; darkness, outlined by light.

I look up and the sun highlights my face once more. I can see the shadow of my eyelashes on my cheek. The bubbles pop and the only bubble I see now is the sun, gleaming from underneath a cloud.

 

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Only Love

by Julian

There was a golden field of wheat and rye,
Blazing,
With painted fire,
In the light of a midsummer sun
With fall,
Came the harvest,
No more wheat,
No more golden fields.
Just weeds and daisies and love.

 

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To See the World

by Mia

Weeds
From yellow to white,
A delicate flower,
Unnoticed,
Unappreciated

Close your eyes,
Make a wish,
And blow the seeds into the air

From yellow to white,
Their beauty so impermanent,
Fleeting,
Already they are changing,
Vanishing ghosts in the wind

 

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Bliss Destiny

by James

Waving hair flying everywhere in the sky
In my eyes blond hair everywhere
ooooh what’s over there?

Queen Street West, a hub for small business and the arts in Toronto, is a storied street. This collection of photographic studies by Lyceum students detail the ways in which locations in our immediate environment have changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. All around us, the new normal speaks to the spirit of Queen Street West: its responsiveness, ingenuity and its ability to flex and adapt with the times. Through grit and determination, this vibrant community has stuck together through the pandemic but as we face another lockdown, there is need for us to stay together: to buy local, support each other and lend a hand to those in need.

All proceeds from the sale of  this  calendar will go to the Parkdale Food Bank. Calendars cost $30 each and are available for purchase in our online shop. If you live in the Queen West neighbourhood, we will personally deliver your calendar. Otherwise, we can ship it for free. At the checkout, please selet “pickup at The Lyceum Gallery”.

The Queen’s Voice is a working title for the radio station that is in its nascent stages. Each year, The Lyceum students are charged with creating a business for their Praxis Project. The year-long project requires them to develop, manage, promote and create inventory for a start-up business. This year, they have chosen to make a radio station. The station will start small, with a series of podcasts on various topics including debates, recipes from the kitchen, a neighbourhood tree census, great inventions throughout time and of course, window-side chats with visiting artists.

Last Thursday, the students interviewed Quincy Raby, whose show Thank You For Destroying My Life, is currently hanging in the gallery. She answered questions about why she chose such a morose title for such bright and colourful paintings, why the mouth is the most expressive feature on the human face, which of her paintings have a glow in the dark surprise, what she meal she would serve on the ceramics and why she staged the after effects of a doomed new year’s eve party in the window. She encouraged students to work through the difficult times with the understanding that hardship clears the way for new growth.

“You never grow out of rainbows. Focus on the good.” Quincy Raby

 

A word about Lyceum Gallery visits

Quincy Raby will be in the gallery Thursdays and Fridays from 4-8 and Saturdays from 12-4 until her show closes October 31st. We are allowing six visitors to the gallery at a time during these periods or you can book a private visit outside these times using the scheduler on our website.

We also undertand that you may not be comfortable viewing artwork in person at this time so for that we have a solution! Online viewing rooms for current exhibitions are coming up next but for now you can see all the work on our acquisitions page.