The shop windows of Toronto’s INabstracto are currently dressed in striking black and white wallpaper the subject of which is a little hard to discern at first. But gaze for a moment at the squiggly, doodle-like pattern and images begin to emerge. Called Animaze, the limited-edition wallpaper by Toronto-based artist Julie Jenkinson is at once playful and dark, the kind of twisted imagery that’s likely to appeal to artier members of the urban design set.
Animaze is Jenkinson’s first foray into the world of wallpaper although she’s been coaxing scary characters out of her subconscious for years. She’s got an animated storybook in the works called The Monster Book for Boys and Girls and she produces limited-edition T-shirts, greeting cards and hand-screened prints, all available through her website.
And while the look of her work is incontestably dark, Jenkinson is actually motivated by the idea of play; in her studio is a hand-lettered work that repeats the phrase, “Play. Allow yourself to play.”
“The notion of play is really important to my work,” she says, “that’s what my art allows me to do.”
Because it’s digitally printed to order, Animaze is expensive at $12 per square foot: “It’s pricey for wallpaper but not for art,” notes Jenkinson. And papers like this are typically used as accent walls or even set in large frames and treated as artworks in their own right. Below is a shot of Jenkinson’s studio and a detail of Horsee, one of her screen prints.
Jenkinson may soon be selling Animaze on much cheaper and more durable vinyl rolls – the sheen of the “paper” lacks the high-end matte finish of the inkjet outputs but it’s also much easier to hang. INabstracto’s windows, below — where the paper is also available for sale — were installed by professional paper hanger Mike Scapillati, who I’ll be interviewing in tomorrow’s post.
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