Summer market at the Jimmy Jazz celebrates imaginative freedom and DIY spirit
Guelph is home to a number of DIY and craft markets of varying regularity, from the quarterly Guelph Night Market to the Kazoo! Print Expo, which runs every year during Kazoo! Fest.
By far the scrappiest among these is the Punk Rock Flea Market, running monthly in the summer and early fall at the Jimmy Jazz. We visited the Flea Market during its latest incarnation on Sunday, May 27, and spoke to some of its organizers and vendors about their work.
Nick Clark
Punk Rock Flea Market & Pressed by Nick
I run and organize the Punk Rock Flea Market. I also make pins as well as “Pressed by Nick.” I started the Flea Market last year in July with Jim Hare. We did it every month from July until October. This year we started in May and we’re still going until October. I think [Punk Rock Flea Markets] started in New Jersey, then there was one in Hamilton, and then it grew to London. Now there’s one in Guelph, one in Kitchener, and one in Toronto too. It’s kind of just a thing. Hopefully it takes over Ontario.
I accept everybody. If you apply to some other markets they might like weed through and pick people who’ve been to previous ones and been successful. I try to fit basically as many people as I can in in the space I have. The only reason I turn down vendors is if I run out of room. There’s also no vendor fee — that helps draw a lot more people in.
Sarah-Jean Villa
Rocking your true inner beauty is just being your authentic self, not caring what other people think. Just being you, who you are, whatever that means to you. I go to schools and talk to kids about rocking their true inner beauty, and my story, and what I do, and my life, and about what I’ve been through. And basically it’s just about being true to who you are inside and out, and rocking it.
I’m a singer-songwriter — that’s the main thing. That’s why I started making clothes, for my own costumes. And I was like, “People might like this.”
I meet with a person, we exchange energy, and I make them something custom for them, who they are as a person, to make them feel wagical. “Wagical” is my own word — it means “weird magic.” I’ve been called weird my whole life, so I’m like, “I’m just going to implement that in my own language.”
Gerardo “G” de Leon
Tattoo artist / vintage punk apparel
I was just here today selling a bunch of band shirts that I’ve collected over the years — some rare stuff, some super old stuff, some newer things — stuff that I’ve collected that’s just sitting in my room. My collection is so large that I have to part with some of it. I just keep collecting, and you have to pick and choose what’s going to be left behind. I figure, why not give them to people who are going to appreciate them more, instead of them just collecting dust? Some of these shirts are pretty old and rare, [ones] you’ll never find again — hey, why not sell them and let other people enjoy them?
I’m a big world traveller. I travel all over. Some [shirts] I’ve collected in Europe, all over the States, like New York, California, L.A. — a lot of L.A. shows, a lot of L.A. hardcore stuff. Basically, just all over.
I have a really old Choking Victim shirt that I actually found at a show. I was pretty stoked on it, because you can’t find this thing ANYWHERE. Even the shirt that I have on now — it’s a Leftover Crack shirt — everyone’s like “Where did you get that?!” It’s almost like you have to physically go to the shows sometimes to find these shirts, [and] not everyone can go. Not everyone can make it to Toronto, you know what I mean? Or New York. Sometimes bands like Leftover Crack, who have a lot of drug history, can’t get over the border, so these bands come around every … what? Ten years?
Alysha Campbell
I make gemstone jewelry, crystal jewelry. I work a lot with minerals, bones, brass, metal, chain, and wire wrapping. I do it because I believe in the healing properties of gemstones. I want to get it out there. You harness the power of the stones when you’re wearing them. I believe in that and I believe in their healing properties.
I started making them for myself because I wanted to wear stones. I was holding them in my pockets, and I was like, “I want to start wearing them!” Then friends were just like, “Oh, I want one now!” People started doing custom orders. That snowballed into me doing it all the time. It’s fun for me, and I feel like I’ve gained a lot since I started working with stones and the more I do, life is manifesting and getting better as it goes.
One of my favourite stones would be amethyst. It’s a third-eye chakra, it [increases] intuition, and I feel like it’s a really powerful, beneficial stone for anybody. That one is my top.
Legion
Legion’s Visions of Death and Beauty
I’m a musician and artist. I do paintings, I do prints of my paintings, I do wood burnings. I’m a multi-instrumentalist — I play guitar, bass, banjo, keyboard, ukulele, mandolin a little bit. I sing. I write my own shit. I do it all.
I’ve only been doing art for maybe three years — it’s a new process for me. Just so instead of having to pay someone to do work for my albums and t-shirts, I could just get it out. I find — I’ve had this with my tattoos — when I’m trying to explain my idea, they never quite get the picture in my head. So I was like, you know what, I’m just going to learn how to do it myself, so nothing’s getting lost in translation. [For] this tattoo here, I had a very specific picture in my head — and he didn’t deliver. I [still] did it — I was like, “Well, it’s still kind of cool” — but it wasn’t what I had in my head. And with my own art I wanted to avoid that.
Plus it’s cheaper. I’m very DIY, I do everything myself. All my instruments are pretty low-end. I don’t have a lot of money for expensive instruments. I use acrylic paint. I usually get cheap [supplies] on sale at the dollar store — a lot of these smaller canvases are from the dollar store — or I get them at Christmas time. The boxes, the blanks, are from the dollar store. Probably the most expensive thing [here] is this book — the actual book itself was maybe like $10.
I love horror movies, the classic slashers. And I also like comic books. My son got really into comic books for a while, and we shared that passion together. [I’m also] a marijuana enthusiast, so that’s where that comes from.
[My subject matter] can [connect with people,] but it can also very much not connect with people. Some people walk right by — they’re like, “Oh that’s a bit dark for me, thanks.” Fair enough.
Michael McGlennon
I’ve always been drawing since I was a little kid — translating my experiences through visual things. It took me a long time to learn how to write [laughter] and read. I started drawing to communicate early on. It’s an ongoing thing, but I think of what I do as communicating with a parallel universe. Nothing that I draw is real, but it’s all based on real feelings. I’m tapping into a different sort of existence — or trying to.
I only came up with Moon Toboggan because I thought people couldn’t remember my name. Moon Toboggan is a weird object that seems to stick in people’s heads better — it sounds Canadian, and fun, and [like] space exploring.
Punk rock means doing it yourself, no one helping you, and owing no one any apologies for what you’re making. It’s all you. It’s your call.
[My music and my art] are only starting to [interact] now. I made a seven-song concept album, a big story about falling in love and being transformed. And then I realized that I could draw it as well. I started seeing all these interesting relationships between things that I draw and things that I write songs about, probably because they’re all coming from the same sort of experiences. I’m trying to connect them all more, but it’s difficult to figure out a way to do that because I don’t want to be telling anybody how to experience anything, so I don’t want to be telling you, “Look at this drawing while you hear this sound” — you know what I mean? But in my optimistic moments, there are crossovers. There’s a oneness.
The Punk Rock Flea Market returns to the Jimmy Jazz on Sunday, June 24.