Toomas Tamm’s contribution to XIBIT is a series of works completed over a lifetime of doing something else. In the beginning, he doodled in public school during the immediate post-war period. Fortunately the WWII themes of open cockpit propeller driven fighter planes machine gunning their way through homework essays and arithmetic exercises, no longer exist. The prevailing relative peace of the cold war years brought peer acclaimed success in high school to copying disrobed movie stars from the more popular magazines and creating gag cartoons to alleviate the boredom of French as a second language. Thankfully none of this work survived the ravages of teen enthusiasm.

The level of yet higher education was improved by mandatory drawing and painting of natural objects in the not-quite northern Ontario, followed by tedious watercolour washes in the studio. The aggretion of the commercial work period was punctuated by short periods of intense effort to maintain a skillset and express otherwise unspoken emotions. Commonly called vacations. Some of these works made it under glass and survived to bleach in the glow of artificial light. The culmination of these asides came in partaking of Saturday classes directed by Toronto artist Graham Coughtree at the invitation of Ants Elken.
During this defining time the artist developed a sustained interest in minimalist black and white ink sketches. As it happens many of these works have survived years of hanging about the family residence to appear now to the scrutiny of the critical eye.
The tenor of this self-promotion will add colour to an otherwise monochrome palette.

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XIBIT, the joint exhibition of the handworks of Ants Elken and Toomas Tamm will be on display on May 13th at the Toronto Estonian House from 4 pm to 10 pm. The official opening is at 6pm. Please consider this as a cordial invite to celebrate the completion and display of their artistic efforts

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