House Work was a Vancouver group show of works by women artists and designers, assembled by curators Caitlin Jones and Shiloh Sukkau, who created an informal exhibition space inside a large garage belonging to fine art shipper Thiessen Art Services. The show opened on a beautiful fall evening in September. There was wine and a display (by Claire Saksun) of bagels suspended from a clothesline over gorgeous jewelled dips, presented on top of plinths. Attendees were supposed to tear the bagels off the line, dip them into the dips and eat them. Mashed eggplant nestled into delicately folded radicchio leaves and translucent green basil oil floated on hummus, creating a surface like stained glass. The dips were perfect; no one wanted to be the first to destroy them, but we also wanted snacks. This bagel and dip installation was the curators’ welcome into the binary of amateur versus professional, private versus public, art versus craft versus design: binaries explored, challenged and used as a means for collaboration by the featured artists. A brightly coloured, large format collaborative painting by the artists Kiki BestWest and Charlotte Ruby Campbell took over one wall, the result of a homework assignment from their self-directed “Pretend MFA” program, where they follow their own interests and invite speakers and other participants to exchange ideas, joy and inspiration (unburdened by any institutional framework). Beside this was a group of rippled vases, platters and bowls created by Nathalee Paolinelli and decorated by her young daughter, Ayalen Munoz, who was offered the pottery as a canvas for finger-painting, this time with glaze. The crowd on opening night was mostly women and a few partners, some of whom held their small children up to the line to grab at the bagels. One child, after eating a bit of bagel, ran across an exquisitely dyed, pastelled and hair-sprayed rug, part of a sculpture entitled “Put Together 1/2” by Emily Hill. The rug lay beside a large oil stain, likely made by the moving truck which usually parked in the space. The artist spotted the footprint left behind, got out her can of hairspray and touched up pokey strands of orange, yellow and green wool. I left through a mist of hairspray, inspired to find conversations and collaborations in places I might not have thought to look before. —Shyla Seller