Bearshroom

Founded in 2002 by Steve Cober and Kristin Weckworth, Magic Pony began as a modest venture located in Toronto's Kensington Market that focused on importing rare designer toys from Asia for a small circle of devoted collectors. A year later operations moved to a small second-floor retail space in the Queen West Art District. Magic Pony expanded in 2004 with the addition of curated gallery programming, and expanded even further in 2005, when the shop and gallery relocated to a neighboring street-front property. In December 2008, Magic Pony opened Narwhal Art Projects, an expanded gallery space dedicated exclusively to exhibitions. Today, Magic Pony and Narwhal boast an internationally-geared, ambitious schedule of art exhibitions, product launches, artist appearances and public event programming. For more information, visit Narwhal's website at www.narwhalartprojects.com. Magic Pony was at the forefront of the urban vinyl phenomenon and was initially celebrated for its carefully selected collection of designer toys. A term used to describe collectibles produced in limited edition, in a variety of materials (vinyl, plastic, plush, wood), designer toys have become the contemporary version of the artist multiple, produced by multidisciplinary artists, illustrators and designers. The collision of street art, graffiti, fashion, hip hop and youth culture, urban Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct visual art media. For example, a work on canvas that combines paint, ink, and collage could properly be called a "mixed media" work. When creating a painted or photographed work using mixed media it is important to choose the layers carefully and allow enough drying time between the layers to ensure the final work will have integrity. If many different media are used it is equally important to choose a sturdy foundation upon which the different layers are imposed. Many interesting effects can be achieved by using mixed media. Often, found objects are used in conjunction with traditional artist media, such as paints and graphite, to express a meaning in the everyday life. In this manner, many different elements of art become more flexible than with traditional artist media. Tado is Mike and Katie, two very hard working people who do graphic design, illustration, animation, toy design, and a bit of everything in between. Tado are based in Sheffield UK, enjoy eating ice cream, and playing with their dogs. The pair work across a huge range of projects, from logos, animation and web design through to customised cars, designer toys and home-ware! Over the past 7 years Tado have worked like demons to continually produce all kinds of projects – it is the diversity of their work that they love. Tado enjoy all aspects of what they do and try their best to spread love and happiness to the unsuspecting world. As well as their commercial design and illustration projects Tado also have a lot of other projects such as exhibitions and toy and merchandise production. Their first solo exhibition was held in 2006 in LA and was a collaboration with designer retail outlet Kidrobot. Since then recent exhibitions include "MTV Toy" at ‘Design Week’ in Milan (MTV Italia), window dressings for the prestigious Le Bon Marche department store in Paris, and a collaborative show with Jon Burgerman, also in Paris. Tado work closely with several companies on various toy, artifact