Sara Heinonen centres her photographic practice on her hometown of Hamilton, ON. Inspired by the unique character of the city’s urban fabric, she seeks to “record the beauty of everyday places and views as careful compositions focused on light, colour and form”. Recently, her witnessing of the rapid transformation of Hamilton has incited Heinonen’s consideration of how to broaden the scope of her portrait of the city – from capture of distinctive moments to compressed presentation of a larger narrative.

Hamilton is undergoing an urban renaissance not unlike the one that gave us the handsomely modern Stelco Tower at Jackson Square fifty years ago. This time around, cranes encircle this central building —cranes that will transform the city with more and taller buildings filled with condominium units. Though Hamilton has a tiger-tough vibe, it’s just a kitten of a metropolis with some rough patches we might just want to hang on to for old time’s sake.

I wanted to use the Smokestack Quarterly opportunity to experiment with using multiple images to push my photography practice. The montage of photographs taken on the streets of the city is a play on classical triptych paintings with a nod to Berenice Abbott’s documentary photography project Changing New York. In this case, it’s Hamilton Changing and it’s a pixel-rich punch of colour.

-Sara Heinonen

Hamilton icon, Lewis Mallard, has captured the heart and soul of the city since he first launched his character persona in the early days of Covid. Creatively connecting with the local community initially through spontaneous public appearances as a self-made mallard duck, Lewis has since expanded his fun and playful artistic practice to include the creation of paintings, drawings and prints.

As Lewis Mallard describes, the narrative presented in this 13-layer silkscreen print was informed by a comically odd encounter witnessed some years ago between a goose and a dandelion. In a reasonable attempt to source a plentiful snack supply, this goose seemed to think a dandelion head could be worth a try. Turns out It didn’t cut the mustard. Quick ingestion resulted in equally quick expulsion, but gratefully equally generative material for a new artwork too. Creation of a unique issue for the 2023 Smokestack Quarterly proved to be the perfect opportunity to relive and translate this memory into print.

Spencer Ashley’s illustrative practice takes elements of contemporary living as the basis for creation of satirical and playful imagery.

WYWB captures a reflection on aspects of their social life, where at times, the atmosphere seems to prioritize partying and drinking over the nurturing of relationships. Additionally, the isolating implications of both choosing sobriety or habitual drinking. This image plays on the sentiment of “I wish you were here”. Satirical in the idea that we might wish someone to be a bottle of beer, or even for the “non-alcoholic” beverages to be alcoholic, Spencer invites viewers to explore the multifaceted nature of drinking, loneliness, and friendship.

Invitation to participate in the 2023 Smokestack Quarterly offered Spencer not only opportunity to re-engage with print, but also with the Smokestack studios, where they was first introduced to screen printing through a summer internship in 2019. Even within their digital practice, Spencer credits this early experience as impacting their understanding of layering shape and composition.

Elicser Elliott’s signature visual language is grounded in character-based, narrative imagery. Defined by bold colors, expressive gesture, and dynamic figure relations, his murals and public artworks are recognized for bringing the communities they reflect to life.

Though having worked extensively with a wide variety of both traditional and non-traditional artistic media over the course of his career, Elliott’s creation of the 2023 Smokestack Quarterly fall edition, emerged as his first professional experience with collaborative, limited-edition printmaking. In his characteristically experimental fashion, he took the opportunity to really explore the possibilities of the medium.

Slumbers Cousin, 4th Removed integrates analog and digital printmaking processes with added spray-painted and hand-drawn elements. Each independent work in the edition builds off a single image base, which Elliott then intuitively responded to with distinct additions of uniquely layered marks, text, and imagery – a truly variable edition.