THE PITCH

Artist and Little Italy resident Jeff Blackburn has a show opening this week at Of a Kind, College Street’s craftiest new record store. Blackburn, 28, draws people and dinosaurs and likes to make up little stories for each universe he creates. Here, the up-and-comer gives us four reasons to check out “Open Season,” his new show.

1. “It’s playful, but it’s also about getting out there and hunting ambitions,” says Blackburn. “Usually my shows include paintings and drawings, but Open Season is my first exhibit solely of paintings. It’s something I’ve been gravitating towards and the new work marks a real leap with my art.”

2. “I work with a very monochromatic palette, lots of sea-foam green backgrounds with black and white imagery,” says Blackburn, who draws inspiration from fine art, street art and Calvin & Hobbes. “I like to see how far I can push each medium, and the threedimensional pieces in Open Season are bold, stark and, you know, not abstract in any way.” 3. “If anyone enjoyed the dinosaur exhibit at the ROM, this is a great way to check out local talent that’s more or less looking at some of the same things,”

Blackburn says.

4. “I was proud to see a record shop open up in my neighbourhood and it’s exciting for local artwork to be exhibited in independentlyowned local

stores,” Blackburn says. “Toronto is saturated with artists and as the city gets bigger and more commercial, it’s important for lovers of culture to stick together. There’s no getting rid of us that way.”

❚ Open Season, July 6-Aug. 6, Of a Kind, 1037 College St. For information, see ofakind.ca. Ben Kaplan, National Post