My friend Peter Murdoch was the Vice President of C.E.P Media union. The local headquarters were in a two story rectangular building on Queen East, just around the street from my apartment. It was 2000 and I had just moved to town. Peter suggested I have a show of my paintings in their upstairs boardroom as it was only used once a month, and I did. The show went well and was kind of easy, so we thought we could organize shows for other artists there every month. Peter was on board and so was the union as long as we called it Art at the Union. I love not making a choice about names. I knew so little about Toronto or about the Toronto art scene, but assumed there were lots of new, shy artists lingering in their basements and poked around for them, and some more established artists came around too. The openings were a mix of artists, musicians, people from the block, and union folks. There was almost no money involved as we didn’t have to pay rent. I took 25% of any sales, if there were sales, to cover expenses. We had lectures,
music and art shows from professionals to amatuers. We had shows for two years.

2002 December/Hollow Images; Prints and Drawing by Ryan Price

2002 August – September/TWIN DOGS II; a bad ideas multiples show: Becky Bayer, Sterling Ferguson, Ho Tam, Elizabeth Fearon, Freida Abtan, Chris Kennedy, Ryan Kamstra, Sherwin Tjia, MishaGlouberman, Matt Crookshank, Mar P. and Bunn, Erin O’hara, Susan Fothergill

2002 February – March/LO; Painting, Installation, Photography: Giuliana Racco, Joseph Paul Bergel, Jennifer Febbraro

2001 October/Eddie’s Peach; Paintings by Laurie Petrou with performance by violinist Dr. Eugene Draw

2001 June/BLOODLINES; Family, Medicine & Madness: Lecture and Exhibition of Archival Medical Illustrations by James FitzGerald

2001 June/ALL MY CHILDREN; Drawing show: Grace Lee, Randall Dowhan, Marc Connery, Lisa Smolkin, Milosh Rodic

2001 January/Great Rocks I Have Known; the found art of Frank Helliwell

2000 December/TWIN DOGS; a multiples show: Jean Marshall, Nops Fannin, Dana Holst, Alex Mackay Smith, Emily Hamill, Mark Connery, Tony Hamilton, Tasha Alls, Sarah Robayo Sheridan, Marc piccinato, Ryan Price, Peter Harris, Milosh Rodic

2000 April/Bound; New Drawings by Dana Holst