When you’re a junior associate, you never know what awaits you when you walk into another lawyer’s office with a question or an update on a file; will they be patient and kind or harried and hurried? Happy-go-lucky or stuck in a sour mood? Even though I am blessed to work at a firm where I’m always received with a smile and as much help as I need, I know that’s not the case in every workplace. You never know exactly what you’re going to get from a colleague — or from life in general for that matter. It’s all one big surprise.
It’s kind of the same deal with Come Up to My Room, the Gladstone Hotel’s annual design event and exhibition, which is taking place this weekend. Every year, the Gladstone’s curatorial team hand selects designers and artists who are given the ultimate creative mission: to transform one of 11 rooms on the second floor of the Gladstone, or one of 16 public spaces, into something entirely new. The curators are barred from seeing the designs until the show opens to the public, which means participants are totally unbridled; they can be as ambitious and innovative as their imaginations allow. The results are a mystery until the doors of the exhibition rooms are flung open for all to see.
Come Up to My Room is also totally accessible. The exhibition entry fee is only $8 and some components of the event are completely free. The lecture “Design Talks – Thrive: Design for 100%,” which features different speakers opining on how to make unique design and art accessible to all citizens, regardless of social class, is open to the public at no cost on Saturday afternoon. The weekend’s main bash, the Love Design party held on Saturday night, is also free.
I personally can’t wait to bound up the stairs to the different exhibition rooms and get jolted into the creative worlds of some of our country’s most cutting edge artists and designers. Bruno Billio is co-designing a room with neon light sculptor Orest Tataryn that I’m particularly looking forward to entering (Bruno’s chair and book sculptures intrigue with their controlled chaos), but I know that all 11 rooms will offer the element of surprise we’re all so used to in work and in life. The trick is learning how to accept the imbalance of the unknown and to appreciate life’s uncertainties as much as possible. I’m hoping Come Up to My Room will teach me how to do just that, so that I can savour not only the rooms at the Gladstone this weekend, but every room I enter in the future, too.
Leanne is an associate at Heenan Blaikie LLP. She spends her free time indulging in art, film, music and literature and swears that culture tastes better than chocolate. Her column will appear every Friday here on lawandstyle.ca.