Jun

13

The Souvenir Shop: Eh! Candy.

Filed Under New Obsession | 2 Comments

Nate Archer Timpins

Last year, I was completely disappointed in myself for missing out on the Gladstone Hotel’s annual Come Up to My Room (CUTMR) show. The 3-day event, which features Canadian designers and artists exhibiting works that are interior or lifestyle based, had many items reproduced for sale, one of which I coveted immensely. Nate Archer’s Timpins, to me, was the best example of taking a Canadian legacy, Tim Hortons, to a whole new level in pop culture.

Nate cleverly converted the Tim Hortons, timbits, into small buttons. So genius! This is art meets commercialism at its best! But it’s so much more! It’s like franchising on the franchise, and the franchise is a comment on who Canadians are and what Canadians are like. It’s about how the Canadian identity is rooted in a very humble history – a hockey player, his hometown roots, a coffee and donut being a reward for an honest days’ work – and how the thing that carved Canadians into their own, was not really the donut, but the donut hole. The negative space. The thing that is usually discarded. The “sweet nuthins” as other donut chains have coined.

Canadians as sweet nuthins. Does that not say it all? Read more