The Twenty Six art club was founded in the year 2000 while most of its members were
studying together at the University of Manitoba. The working methods of the individual members are very diverse. Two-Six
is made up of two oil painters, a watercolour painter, a photographer, a DJ, and a found object manipulator. While they
make their own bodies of work in their chosen fields, none of the members feel locked in to a particular mode of working,
and they will frequently experiment and collaborate with each other.
One activity that they all take part in is the production and installation of Pre-Fabs.
The Two-Sixers routinely meets to paint on small pieces of wood. Once they have a significant amount of pre-Fabricated paintings
the crew will go out in search of telephone poles and other forms of public wood, onto which they securely fasten their work. This
part of the process is known as "Nail Bombing".
Besides being a good excuse to get together, the Two-Sixers see these public installations as
a way to share their work with the people who might not otherwise see it. This form of display allows for a particular message to
be very quickly related to the average pedestrian. There is no red tape to go through, no censoring, and the audience reached is
extremely broad. While charges have never been laid, the legal categorization of Nail Bombing would be somewhere between graffiti
and concert advertisement posters. On the one hand, Pre-Fabs get painted over by graffiti removal teams, but on the other, Two-Six
has never received negative feed back-from any citizens.
Two-Six feels confident that their work is a positive addition to any neighborhoods streetscape,
and therefore feel justified in imposing their aesthetic on the publics wooden surfaces. The core members of the Two-Six Art Club
are Shaun Morin, Ian August, Cyrus Smith, Melanie Rocan, David Wityk, Fred Thomas, and Michael Topf (a.k.a. Dj Brace).
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