Art Nest Stories are Gifts
Artists on Their Processes
Dear Friend of TOAF,
This is a special one.
Each Art Nest artist shares a piece of the process that shaped what you’ll see at the Fair.
The depth of thinking, emotion, and knowledge in each project has been deeply touching and these stories are gifts. We hope you cherish them.
anahita & TOAF Team
PS — Don’t miss the chance to hear Peggy Baker, Max Dean, Naomi Dodds, Micah Lexier and Ed Pien in conversation with curator Rui Pimenta, Friday, July 10 at 6:00 PM, for the Art Nest Art Talk.
Peggy Baker
Storyline (with laughter, tears and beauty)
I am a choreographer shaped by a life in dance, often working solo. In both watching and making dance, it is the presence of the dancer, as much as the situation of dance itself, that grips me.
Storyline (with laughter, tears and beauty) was created for the extraordinary veteran dancer Julia Sasso. Together we wondered whether it might be possible to capture something of what a dancer carries in their body after half a century of creation and performance. Activating a group of soft sculptures by Janine Miedzik and moving through John Gzowski’s intimate sound archive, Julia accesses a physical sensibility honed over a lifetime in dance.
Peggy’s Mesostic Drawing based on process notes
Max Dean
Passing On
Passing On brings together more than fifty years of work by my late wife, Martha Fleury, from early childhood to her passing in 2023. Though deeply private, she left behind an extraordinary body of over 1,400 paintings, drawings, and journals — far more expansive than what she ever shared publicly.
This project is about passing her work on. Through the Martha Fleury Public Trust, visitors to the Art Nest exhibition are invited to become custodians of a work, taking responsibility for its care and living with it over time. Alongside this, I have created an installation combining Martha’s artworks, furniture, and personal effects into a series of intimate tableaus, part portrait, part collaboration. I want her work to be seen, lived with, and carried forward in many hands.
In the words of Martha’s Friends and Family
Martha — The Artist: Kathleen Vaughan
“Rendering always with respect and care, Martha made ephemeral subjects perpetually present, perpetually beautiful. They remain perpetually loved for so long as they and we are here, even now that Martha herself is – much too soon – stardust.”
Martha — The Teacher: Tybie Trossman
“Martha was a vibrant presence in the schools. Her boundless energy and excitement about what her students produced was magical. She made art come alive. Her students are one part of her amazing legacy.”
Martha — The Person: Ann Dwornik
“She had a childlike sense of wonder, delighting in the world around her. She saw things with different eyes than most, and when you were with her, you could sometimes glimpse the magical world she saw. What a gift her friendship was.”
Naomi Dodds
Oneself Through Another
Resembling a geological form split in two, Oneself Through Another is a sculpture that explores reflection as both a perceptual and psychological reality; one that shifts from outward production toward introspection shaped by the accumulation of time and memory.
Formed from stainless steel and divided across temporal states, a bruised exterior holds deep time and past labour, set against a mirrored interior that asserts the immediacy of the present. Influenced by Paul Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another, this sculpture presents identity, and its connection to the aging process, as relational: something born through discourse, place, and prior iterations of the self. The dual forms propose continuity through transformation, where earlier selves are not discarded but carried forward.
Naomi on Paul Ricoeur as an inspiration
The process began by splitting a granite boulder, from there each half is fabricated in relation to the other, reflecting Paul Ricoeur’s idea that “The selfhood of oneself implies otherness to such an intimate degree that one cannot be thought of without the other.”
Micah Lexier
One Day
The following text appears on 23,980 custom-made aluminum coins: “I Micah Lexier, have minted one coin for every day I have lived up until July 10, 2026. From that day forward I will give the coins away, one coin per person, until all the coins are gone or I am dead.”
On Friday, July 10, 2026, which is the opening of the 65th edition of the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, I will be at the Fair handing out coins to anyone who would like one. I will do this for the duration of the three-day Fair or until all the coins have been given away. If all the coins have not been given away by the end of the Fair, then I will extend the project outside of this original context and will offer the coins to people I encounter in my daily life. Once all the coins have been given away, the project will be completed. If I die before all the coins are given away, then a pile of the remaining coins will constitute my final artwork.
Micah on the process of fabricating his coins
I’ve made several artworks over the years utilizing custom-minted coins. Each time, the coin is fabricated to fulfil the specific needs of that particular artwork. In the case of One Day, I needed the coins to be large, as I had so much information to convey. I also needed the coins to be lightweight, as I would be carrying them around with me. So I settled on aluminum, as it is one of the lightest metals.
This was my first time making an aluminum coin and one thing I didn’t anticipate was that it’s a relatively soft material that marks easily. When the coins arrived from the fabricator they had tiny blemishes, dents and scratches, due to the manufacturing process. At first I was disappointed, as I was expecting a perfect object. But then I realized these marks actually worked with the idea behind the project—each coin represents a day, and each day is unique, and each day is not perfect. In fact, the blemishes might have made the artwork even stronger. In the words of the great Leonard Cohen, “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Ed Pien
Mirror Mirror
Mirror, Mirror is an immersive installation featuring twelve antique vanities, each adorned with mirrors and inscribed with contemplative texts about time. As viewers pass by or sit before these mirrors, their reflections are disrupted and complicated by text, prompting introspection and a heightened awareness of time’s persistent presence and relentless flow.
Drawing on the tradition of vanitas, the vanity —a site for the daily ritual of self-presentation— is reimagined here as a space for reflection in the form of introspection. Marked by age and use, the mirrors carry traces of past lives, confronting viewers with their own fleeting existence. Through layered reflections and text, Mirror, Mirror invites viewers to consider memory, impermanence, and the ever-shifting, unstable nature of the self across time.
Quotes you’ll find reflected in Ed’s mirrors
“Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
Les miroirs feraient bien de réfléchir un peu plus avant de renvoyer les images.”
— Jean Cocteau
“Time is a gift. Enjoy your age, and honour your story. It is a privilege, it is an honour. Live it fully.”
— Anonymous
“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”
— Haruki Murakami
Art Nest Talk
