Featured artists include:

Ben Guttin is a Mexican artist living and working in New York. His work has been shown at the Multiforo del ICBC, Tijuana, Baja California, among other galleries and institutions in Mexico and California. Since coming to New York and finishing his studies at NYU in the School of Continuing Education, Guttin's sculptural, installation, performance and video work has been included in a number of group shows in downtown Manhattan. Most recently he awarded 300 gold dusted medals to the visitors of the "You Can Have It All" exhibition in Spring 2007. His photographic work has been featured in Art Forum. Guttin also regularly offers his expertise as a moldmaker to other artists , and is a full time assistant for artist Anne Chu.

Drawing from a larger sculptural endeavor based on the phenomenon and natural design of crystal quartz formations that I am currently engaged in, the piece presented is a drawn representation of that which I am aiming to realize sculpturally. Already a part of my artistic practice, in sending out preliminary sketches and drawings to other artists and friends I am sharing the shapes and forms that I am in pursuit of at the time. The opportunity to involve many others in this excitement and compulsion or need to disseminate my images and concept presents itself in the INFINITE EXCHANGE GALLERY show. The recipient of the drawing is asked to first present their own representation of a crystalline formation, and send theirs back to me in the self addressed stamped envelope present at the gallery.

Jessica James Lansdon was born in Tucson Arizona in 1980. She experienced a privileged middle class upbringing spending her childhood riding horses and sailing in Mexico. Her mother works in public health; her father is a sculptor and a builder of fake rock. Jessica makes paintings, video, and sculpture out of a surfeit of discarded material goods and ideas. She is interested in the
environmental and emotional perils of consumerism, the appeal of knick-knacks, new age philosophies, planned obsolescence, imperialism, and world's fairs.

Lets Trade Pictures (of words).In literature and advertising written words are emphasised (and
de-emphasised) through the careful choice of fonts, sizing, and arrangement. Typographers use boldened fancy letters to give weight to titles and signage. Sometimes words get so heavy they are
transformed into objects; objects which occupy space in our lives.

I am asking participants to make drawings of words to be put together in a poster. On the paper is a question to be answered using the participants best hand drawn letters, bubble letters, fancy script,
block letters, whatever. These pictures are traded for a drawings I've made of flashy advertising type words. It is my hope to trade up for more genuine, specific kinds of words. The hand of the
participants are put to work creating authenticity from the commercial.

Robin Lambert was born somewhere along the sunshine coast of beautiful British Columbia and refers to his childhood as ‘concise.’ Growing up on the sweeping prairie plains, he was educated in all manner of outdoor art and craft. Before beginning his art school education he wanted to work as a bull wrestler and beekeeper. Art school led naturally to symmetry, juggling and a brief affair with the colour pink. When not creating works of fictional art, Robin enjoys thinking of alternate names for his friend's children and dreams of one day returning to the freedom afforded him as a youth. And of course, he mails the occasional letter.

Sincerely Yours
Most everyone enjoys the anachronistic event of receiving something in the mail. A letter in the post. A handwritten missive. An unexpected postcard. Unfortunately, this small bit of joy is increasingly rare these days. Sincerely Yours is my small attempt to revive a sense of postal anticipation as I write letters, postcards and other notes on behalf the participants. In exchange for this service, all that will be required is the promise of a future good deed.

Wednesday Lupypciw is a hyper-involved member of her local arts and activist communities, and a proud mother of two cats. She is also a pretty fun lady with an undergraduate degree in textiles that likes rap music.

I am a Calgary-based artist who works improvisationally with yarn, camcorders, people, and whatever else is around to create video, performance, textile, and relational projects. The democratic acts of technique and pattern sharing that I observe in craft guilds and circles are reinterpreted into all of my projects. For the Infinite Exchange Gallery, I will be making on-the-spot customized craft patterns for individuals in exchange for their personal information. The patterns can be used as functional literature for a project, or as non-functioning aesthetic objects depending on the recipient’s preference.

Concerned with social and material inclusiveness, I view my practice as a way to commemorate and enrich my relationships in local art/activist communities and economies. I operate according to the principles of queer politics and obsess over the resurgent DIY movement, so the aesthetic of my output is firmly planted within contemporary, radical craft contexts. Most of my activities are ephemeral or serial-based, because I want to be able to react to my environment in the most immediate way possible.

Travis Meinolf
"I experiment with alternative modes of production and distribution of goods, mainly cloth. Through my body of work I demonstrate an unalienated, non-coercive anarchist model, and initiate situations which question and critique the current capitalist structure, and the relationship of the artisan and the artist.
My interests combine a physical, repetitive, meditative materials-oriented process with a presentation that attempts to initiate active situations, rather than passive contemplation.

I like to weave, and make statements in the first person. As a Graduate Student at California College of the Arts, straddling the Textiles and Social Practice programs, I am forming a vocabulary which includes interactive installations, sculptural art objects, and direct craft interventions. I am
interested in inspiring individuals to enact a world-wide craft revolution, because idle hands are the devil's playground. Also fair, non-coercive exchange of goods in communities of local makers would be ideal."

Barbara Meneley began her working life at fifteen as a truck stop waitress in Fish Creek, Alberta. Since then, she has done a lot of things.

She is a dedicated member of many artist collectives and collaborations, and likes to do things alone too. A visual artist employing a range of creative media, Barbara is currently completing her MFA in Intermedia at the University of Regina.

The Line Up Utility Kit
It's said we spend many years of our lives in line ups; it’s a certain number of years, I can’t remember how many. It’s more time than we spend doing other things: perhaps reading, laughing, or fucking. And we wait these years in line, standing one behind another, rolling our eyes and avoiding each other’s gaze.

What would happen if line ups became fun, a good way to talk to strangers, if for no other reason than why not? To this end I have developed the Line Up Utility Kit, a collection of ways to relax and perhaps get to know your neighbour in line. Light and portable, the kit contains a selection of toys, games, and suggestions for breaking the ice. Each item is individually wrapped and categorized, and for extra personal enjoyment no two kits are the same.

The Line Up Utility Kit is an artist service commodity for modern times.

Ashley Neese and Gary Wiseman.
Ashley Neese has been creating projects in various media since she was a little girl. She has always had a strong desire to connect with the world. At time this desire has caused her to do things most people wouldn’t do just to connect with those around her or those just out of reach.

She received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 2003 and MFA from CCA in 2005. Since graduate school she has shown projects in the Bay Area, New York City and Atlanta with exhibitions this fall in Toronto and Brooklyn. Recently she has created an online store for her artist books and zines and has been working on a project, it’s all for you, a library open to the public to show books her friends created.

"My projects focus on truth, relationships, memory, giving and love. I explore these themes using media that is widely accessible such as writing, photography, performance, and video. The ultimate goal is to form connection with the viewer or participant. I achieve this by sharing my experience in an honest way, giving room for the viewer/participant to do the same."

Gary Wiseman was conceived by 14-year-old children and raised by wolves in the hinterlands of Portland, Oregon. He escaped to Australia. He got lost. He returned to Portland where he now lives. In 2006 he simultaneously created Tea Project and formed Kitchen Sink PDX. Ephemeral Temple Ltd, a collaborative group to which he is party, recently received a grant to make Jellyfish Temple: How To Build Something From Nothing, part of a revolutionary plan to meet the increasing demand for high-quality, low-overhead, temporary Sacred Space. Statement can be viewed here. www.teaproject33.org, www.kitchensinkpdx.com

Ashley and Gary will arrive in Toronto, Ontario two and a half days before Nuit Blanche to cover the city in posters. During Nuit Blanche Ashley & Gary ask each person that shows up to tell a story or memory about the person they brought. In exchange Ashley or Gary will take a photograph of each of the best friends, upload the image into a laptop, print the image and then use it to make a B.F.F. Button Set for participants to take home. Each person receives the others button. If participants agree, Ashley or Gary will take a photograph of them (wearing their new B.F.F. Button Set!) before they leave the gallery. These images will be printed and posted to a wall in hopes of having a nice collection at the end of the twenty-four hour exhibition.

Paul Notzold is on a mission to explore the role of the mobile device to interact with physical surroundings and build community and not only to escape from our physical space.

TXTual Healing is an ongoing public space project exploring the mobile phone as a way to interact and connect with the physical space we move through everyday. The initial project started as interactive speech bubbles projected on the sides of buildings as if coming out of the windows, giving an audience the ability to be a part of the public performance through text messaging. It has since evolved into other free speech writing tools as well as interactive graphic stories.

Susanne Cockrell and Ted Purves work collaboratively to create social art projects that investigate the overlay of urban and rural systems upon the lives of specific communities. Their projects ask questions about the nature of people and place as seen through social economy, history and local ecology. Their two and a half year project (2004-2007), Temescal Amity Works facilitated and documented the exchange of backyard produce, conversation, and collective biography within the Temescal Neighborhood of Oakland, CA. In the fall of 2006, Amity Works created Sonoma County Preserve as an original project for the exhibition Hybrid Fields at the Sonoma County Museum. Sonoma County Preserve was an exhibition and installation of a wide variety of home-preserved foods made by residents of Sonoma county who had grown, foraged or hunted and had preserved for future use. In their current project, Green Language: Rural Logic and Urban Practice, they are traveling to research and visit artist projects in Arctic Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and Rumania creating a collective network, research platform, and publication series. They have received a Creative Work Fund grant from the Elise and Walter Haas Foundation, a Visual Arts grant from the Creative Capital Foundation, and support from the Oakland Office of Cultural Affairs and California College of the Arts.

Conversion Project
Susanne Cockrell and Ted Purves, in collaboration with Oliver Purves (age 6).

This project involves re-valuing the worth of personal items through conversation and exchange. To begin the project, we chose 4 items from our lives that held a certain amount of personal value and "art" value. After we choose these items, we initiated a conversation with our son Oliver about what they might be worth within his own system of value, relating their worth to things that he already has or things that he desires.

In the process of this conversation, we asked Oliver to determine some guidelines for how each of our items might be "valued". We are sending a record of this conversation in the form of photographs along with the 4 objects to the Infinite Exchange Gallery, where Jen Delos Reyes will attempt to trade them in accordance with Oliver's "value" judgements. Any items that are received in trade will be kept by our family, and documentation of the project will be sent to all participants.

Item#1: A Drawing of Two Ghosts by Oliver Purves, 2006
Description: 15" x 18", color pencils
In Exchange: something Lego, something you can take apart and build again

Item#2: Bird House by British artist Peter Liversidge,
part of a larger installation, 1997
Description: 4.5" x 4.5" x 8", cardboard
In Exchange: a new crayon box

Item#3: no..34 point d'ironie, Michel Foucault,
September 2004, director of publication, agnes b, editor Hans-Ulbrich Obrist
Description: 12" x 16", folded color artist magazine
In Exchange: a basket of candy

Item #4: ceramic work exploring use and function by
graduate student Eric Scollon, 2007
Description: 4.5" x 3", porcelain
In Exchange: an experiment set

Sal Randolph lives in New York and produces independent art projects involving internet-mediated gift economies and social architectures. She is the founder of Opsound, an open sound exchange of copyleft music (opsound.org). Other recent projects include The Free Biennial (freebiennial.org) and Free Manifesta (freemanifesta.org) which brought together several hundred artists in open shows of free art in the public spaces of New York and Frankfurt am Main, Germany, as well as Free Words (freewords.org) in which 4000 copies of a free book have been infiltrated into bookstores and libraries worldwide by a network of volunteers. Her recent project Free Press created an open access publishing house at Röda Sten Contemporary Art Space in Göteborg, Sweden. She is currently developing work in the areas of experiential and participatory art including a series of works where she gives away money. She works with sound as situationalaudio and as a member of the band Weapons of Mass Destruction, and she is also part of the art collaboratives Glowlab and be something. Randolph's work has been presented in the public environments of New York, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and other cities, as well as in gallery and museum exhibitions including Manifesta 4, and Don't Miss in Frankfurt am Main, BüroFriedrich Gallery and the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK) in Berlin, the Palais de Tokyo and Bétonsalon in Paris, La Box in Bourges, Röda Sten in Göteborg, Art Interactive and Oni Gallery in Boston, as well as Pace Digital Gallery, Cinders Gallery, Salvation Gallery, the Fountain Art Fair, and the Conflux Festival in New York.

For the past 10 years my work has centered around the gift and the act of giving things away. I am interested in the way gifts create social networks and activate social encounters. Past projects have involved creating social architectures and gift economies in art (The Free Biennial, Free Manifesta), music (Opsound) and books (Free Words, Free Press). Recently I have begun working with direct gifts of money through one-to-one encounters, street distributions, and in gallery settings. In our society we talk about money all the time, but primarily about making it and spending it. We keep our activites of giving behind closed doors (doors of family, nonprofit institutions, philanthropy), so it remains a relatively invisible part of our daily lives. Gifts of money bring up feelings of excitement, generosity, and gratitude, but also greed, anxiety, stingyness and lack. My current work investigates this nexus of feeling and its social consequences.

Give Someone A Present
A stack of stickers with the word "Present" offered with the following request: "give someone a present." The word and the situation are both simple and ambiguous: take a sticker, give a present. But "present" has more than one meaning, and it's not quite clear whether the recipient of a sticker is meant to give away the sticker itself, some other kind of present, or for that matter some kind of nowness. These ambiguities invite participants to create the piece through their own guesses and understandings. A notebook is offered alongside for participants to tell the story of their exchange.

Give Someone A Present is part of an ongoing series of works involving gifts, including the Free Money series where I give away money on the street, in one-on-one encounters, and in stacks in gallery settings (http://freemoneyrelease.org).

Heath Schultz is a multi-disciplinary artist and recent graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and currently resides in Chicago. Heath is interested in revisiting and rethinking history. Utilizing various methods of investigation and research, Heath’s work aims to heighten criticality and consciousness of our surroundings, as well as examine how history has been recorded and conveyed.

A Brief and Incomplete History of Resistance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign / Toronto: an exchange project

“A Brief and Incomplete History of Resistance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign” is a zine created and distributed in the spring of 2007. I assembled as many “acts of resistance” as possible to make up the content of the zine in hopes of distributing the information and informing the campus of various moments of protest and resistance.

For the Infinite Exchange Gallery I will distribute the zine again, this time in Toronto. I will ask that the receivers of the zine, Toronto residents, e-mail me information about acts of resistance that have occurred in Toronto. Specifically, participants will be asked to exchange information, stories, photographs, and the sources of their information in order to compile a better archive of information regarding the local histories of protest in Toronto. Finally, with the information given to me by participants, I will compile another zine. When completed, the Toronto zine will be sent back to the Kensington Market, the host of the Infinite Exchange Gallery, to be distributed in Toronto. Likewise, I will distribute Toronto zines at UIUC.

I am interested in the exchange of local histories of protest in order to attempt a better and more complete understanding of these activities. What are the larger differences / similarities in these histories? When is resistance successful or unsuccessful? Most importantly, what can we learn from one another by exchanging these often under-represented narratives?

James Servin began his career in New York in 1986 with an entry-level job at GQ. After contributing
articles in his second year at the magazine, he launched a successful freelance writing
career, placing feature articles in a variety of publications, including British Vogue, Allure,
Elle, Metropolitan Home, Details, Organic Style and Natural Health. He has written for many
sections of The New York Times, including The New York Times Magazine, the “House & Home”
and “Styles of the Times” sections. He was a contributing editor at Harper’s Bazaar for three
years and was executive editor at Nylon magazine. He currently writes for House & Garden and
Black Book, among other publications.

The Love Generators
In 2001, I was dealing with a number of health issues that doctors could find no cures for. And then in May 2004, four kittens came into my life. The first one, a female tabby, needed a friend, and so I
returned to the building in Little Italy she came from, where the super takes in strays. There I found three newborn boys who looked almost exactly alike. My friend who lives in the building thought they might be ferile, but the opposite turned out to be true: I've never met more gentle, and genteel cats. I started by adopting two, and then eventually a third brother came to join us. I felt extremely
overwhelmed that first year, my apartment filled with four exuberant kittens. But over time, these extraordinary beings welcomed me into their private world, a place of peace, sweetness and beauty. Sharing their world in photographs was merely a matter of observing and documenting. Often, the cats held the poses, as if they knew that the pictures would one day generate peaceful energy for others. Eventually, one of my symptoms, chronic anxiety, faded away, and the others have healed considerably. I want to pay tribute to my good friends: Melanie, Toby, Andy and Moses.

Sara Thacher makes work dealing with the concept of exchange. As of this writing, she has walked a mile in 18 other people’s shoes and gone on a surrogate vacation for 12 different people. She studied glass at the Rhode Island School of Design and worked in the art-glass industry for several years. Sara lives in San Francisco where she is currently completing her Masters of Fine Arts in Social Practices at the California College of the Arts.

"My work investigates the nature of art as an exchange between the artist and audience. This often takes the form of performative, deliberate activities or gestures. Many recent projects explore how this connection can become more individual and more personal. Several pieces make that interaction the basis of the work itself. In Walking a mile in other people's shoes, what begins as a literal enactment of a clichéd phrase becomes a serious tool for a social intervention. The people who lent me their shoes in which to walk a mile became the audience for, and co-creators of a very personal action-artwork. The gesture, walking a mile, is such a small, mundane activity; these qualities make it the perfect vehicle for considering service, exchange and gift giving as modes of creative exploration.

For Nuit Blanche, I will be exchanging the color of the sky over my head for the color of the sky over the heads of visitors to the Infinite Exchange Gallery. Although I share a continent with Toronto, when I look up at the sky in San Francisco, I do not generally think about the sky in Toronto. What color is your sky? arises from a desire to bridge that distance for one night through the act of conversation."

Karen Wardle
Since Graduating from the University of Manitoba Bachelor of Fine Arts Program Karen Wardle has participated in many group exhibitions across the province including Crafting Contemporary Art curated by Kristen Pauch-Nolin MFA. The exhibit toured for 11 months across Manitoba to rural art galleries including, but not exclusively, Leaf Rapids National Exhibition Centre, Portage La Prairie Arts Centre, and Mentoring Artists For Women’s Art Gallery in Winnipeg. Also included in her list of exhibitions is, Take This You, curator Cliff Eyland at Outworks Gallery, and Why Art?2, Curator Ray Dirks at the Mennonite Heritage Gallery in Winnipeg.

Wardle has also maintained an interest in and been involved in the actuation of alternative galleries and spaces within the exchange district of Winnipeg. Most recently is the inception in 2003 and continued survival of Outworks Gallery. A space developed to provide opportunities for graduating students and emerging artists. She has received a grant from the Manitoba Arts Council and participated in the Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art foundation advisory program 2003-2004. Currently Wardle sits on the Board for Ace Art Inc as President and is an active member and President for Outworks Gallery.

"Currently my work concerns the evolution of space and the closely interwoven relationship between humanity and nature. While drawing meaning from ecological politics, surface and space are the internal forces dictating the dynamics of my images. Paint is the primary medium I respond to. I am always looking to push it to its limits and explore new ways of manipulating the paint, and its relationship to the canvas."

IEG will present works and services in exchange for non-monetary trades. Artists will determine what they feel the value of their work is and what they want in exchange for it. This agreement will ensure the cooperative collaboration that will manifest between the gallery representatives and the buyer. No work in the IEG will have a monetary value. The viewers are thereby invited to swap and potentially even haggle in exchange for what they want. Perhaps the trade will be a blender, a story, a hand drawn map to the best place to eat in Toronto. The possibilities are endless.

IEG knows the value of art and believes that everyone should have access to it in their daily lives. In essence this will be an art market functioning outside of the 'art market' constraints. Located within Kensington Market, this unofficial public art venue serves as a place where people can feel comfortable bargaining and trading. Artists should currently be making work with an interest in service works.

"For one sleepless night Toronto will be transformed by artists. The familiar will be discarded and Toronto will become the artistic playground for a series of exhilarating contemporary art experiences.
One night only. All night long. "
- Nuit Blanche, 2007

Through The Kensington Art Project (KAP), Kensington Market has been accepted as an Independent Project venue, attached to Zone B, in this year's Nuit Blanche.

The bustle of the marketplace is largely what shapes Kensington's vibrant street life. Public spaces are alive with conversation, the sounds of barter and exchange, movement and the energy of artistic creation. You immediately get the sense that life in Kensington is played out on the streets, and not behind closed doors. But Kensington is also an iconic neighbourhood where many urban threads and issues intersect. As a result, key issues that affect the entire city are often manifested and addressed in the Market, first. Kensington citizens often utilize artistic expression as a tool to aid in examining and debating these issues.

The Market is already an unofficial public art venue. Every surface, every street, every alley and every fixture is literally blanketed under layers of swipe posters, graffiti, tags and murals. The streets are often transformed into forums for public dialogue, as citizens showcase their response and opposition to important issues with urban art interventions.

Questions may be directed to: infinite.exchange.gallery@gmail.com