OUTSIDE THE BOX 5.0

WantedDesign and Toronto Design Offsite Festival will partner to present the fifth edition of Outside the Box. Collaborating with local correspondents from 6 Canadian and 6 US cities to bring specific creative visions through a selection of objects to fit in banker’s boxes. This edition’s theme is DISCOVERY. For us, discovery is the essence of this project, where we can find something new within each box. Discovery inspires, invites play and travel, and exposes us to new ideas, inspirations, and experiences.
Cities include: Asheville (North Carolina), Detroit, Edmonton, Halifax, Los Angeles, Medicine Hat (Alberta), Montreal, New York, Portland, San Francisco Bay Area, Toronto, and Vancouver.

The exhibition will be on view in Toronto during the Toronto Design Offsite Festival January 16-22 at the Gladstone Hotel Art Hut (1181 Queen Street West).
Reception on Saturday, January 21, 5-8pm. No rsvp needed.

The boxes will then travel to New York City during NYCxDESIGN where they’ll be on view at WantedDesign Brooklyn at Industry City (220 36^th Street in Sunset Park) May 17-23.

ASHEVILLE

Find respite on the trails of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Sample local grub on handcrafted platters.
Break boundaries with the latest music technology.
The works selected for ‘Outside the Box’ are as much a reflection of Asheville’s burgeoning designer-maker culture as they are tools to discover the natural beauty, heritage, and innovation of the city.
Correspondent: Marilyn Zapf

East Fork Pottery’s dinnerware

Detroit

Detroit is home to a thriving creative community that is actively producing work rooted in discovery. As it rebuilds its infrastructure, creatives are rediscovering a city that has an incredibly deep history in designing, fabricating, and artistically shaping Detroit.

Correspondent: Alex Rosenhaus & Drew Arrison

Edmonton

This is a small sampling of the most unique secret finds from the forested city of Edmonton. A city of self-made creators, hidden away from the world in the frozen north, our craft is selfish. We make things for us first. Once our craft has passed the litmus test of our peers, we send it out into the world to be discovered.
Correspondent: Vivian HT

Collage of pieces from Edmonton-based designers

Halifax

Great design resists categorization, leaning over the boundaries between design, craft, and fine art. This micro-exhibition celebrates the work of jewellers in Halifax who do just that — expanding the field of jewellery to include tools, treasures, and wearable sculpture.

These kinetic objects have hidden features, from a locket that displays an image in 3D, to a gold ring that will turn the wearer’s finger green. Encouraging play through the use of moving parts and unconventional materials, these objects close the gap between jewellery and fine art.
Correspondent: Amanda Shore

Jolee Smith’s Rites of Passage

Shelbey Dodds | shelbeydodds.com
Heather Rathbun | heatherrathbun.com
Jolee Smith | jolee-smith.com
Anne-Sophie Vallée | annesophievallee.tumblr.com

Los Angeles

Discover nature through the works of Los Angeles-area designers who work in glass, ceramic, and wood. These women have hand-created functional yet decorative items for the home.
Correspondent: Erin Brown

ebbie Bean’s Stained Glass Pyramid

Medicine Hat

‘Home’ Medalta International Artists in Residence.
Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada.
Set against the dramatic cliffs of the South Saskatchewan River in Medicine Hat, Alberta, the 150 acre Historic Clay District was once home to some of Canada’s most important clay factories, providing Canada with over 75% of its ceramics.

After the industry declined many of these factories sat abandoned for decades. Through the work of dedicated creatives and grass root community effort, the old factories are being refurbished into dynamic cultural hubs. The unique Medalta Potteries site now provides the setting for a living, working museum, contemporary gallery, vibrant education centre, and the Medalta International Artists in Residence Program.
Artists come from all over the world to work in Medalta’s studios, bringing their unique experiences, techniques and ideas to the Historic Clay District.
This box highlights several of the artists who have decided to make Medicine Hat their home after completing their residency, and the cultural impact this influx of artists with international careers has brought to the community of Medicine Hat.
Correspondent: Jenna Stanton

Medicine Hat’s Medalta’s studios

Montreal

Montreal is one of the few North American cities whose face still shows traces of the 16th and 18th centuries. The island metropolis is heiress to both French and English traditions, but it is her multicultural population that truly shaped her identity.

Montreal’s laid back lifestyle allows for artists, makers, and creators to spend time honing their skills. It is a city where one can take the time needed to carve and nourish new ideas. In this box, the designers are uncovering new aspect of their beloved material: wood, concrete and fur, bringing them to light with their own interpretations in a timeless touch.
Correspondent: Lysanne Latulippe

Catrie’s Ellipse #2 Necklace

New York

New York is a city with so many facets and so many ways to experiment. You either love it or hate it.
It mostly depends on the circumstances through which you discover it.
We took this theme of discovery and applied it to tools of our every day life that provide us with special experiences. The tools that provide a sense of joy, fear, anxiety, excitement, pleasure, peacefulness, or all of that together.
The five New York boroughs are hubs for creative design studios and makers, designing, innovating and producing original objects that transform the lives of everyone.

Correspondent: WantedDesign

Other x Fort Standard

Fort Standard | fortstandard.com
Othr | othr.com
Juniper | juniper-design.com

Chen Chen and Kai Williams | chen-williams.com
Joya Studio | joyastudio.com
Souda | soudasouda.com
Cofield | studiocofield.com

Areaware | areaware.com
Moses Nadel | mosesnadel.com

San Francisco Bay Area

San Francisco is a multi-layered city that celebrates its inhabitants differences and diverse backgrounds. Our designers chose to explore unique materials and ways of creating objects through the use of varied craftsmanship and technology. There is a dichotomy at play in this city that is an undercurrent in design, the push and pull of our natural surroundings and our engagement with technology. As designers we have embraced these opposing influences to create work that is as multifaceted as our habitat.
Correspondent: Melanie Abrantes

Materials and Process Leather goods

Toronto

In a bustling hub of commerce and creativity, Toronto designers are both thoughtful and artistic in their approach. Toronto’s box includes a collection of imaginative and inspired tabletop objects representing the ingenuity found in our community. Each featured work has been designed using simple materials that are discovered in a new and contemplative way, from a dish created from bent sheet brass to a great lake cast in aluminum.
Correspondent: Shelter Bay

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Vancouver

Vancouver is part land, part sea, and part sky. Positioned between rugged coast and towering mountains, the city’s skylines are varied and vast; as is the community of designers and makers. Utilizing a wide variety of materials and techniques, Vancouver creatives excel in design and construction. Leveraging the impact of living largely outdoors, designers in this community are often influenced by trees, tides, and all things by nature. Coastlines and mountain ranges are at the fingertips of Vancouverites, and can be witnessed in the work by these Vancouver-based designers.
Correspondent: Kate Duncan

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More information about Toronto Design Offsite Festival
This program is co-presented by TO DO and WantedDesign

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