You don’t have to travel far to experience the festival, although you can as sites range across the city. Lucky for us, many of our local galleries and art spaces are participating.

Oz Studios is part of the action, with “Rotating Reality” running May 6-27 with an opening on May 6, featuring Sandy Baron’s exhibit of playfully altered landscape photographs.

“Glass Ceiling,” Jill Greenberg’s project about the “setup” of being a woman,  is opening tonight at O’Born Contemporary and will be running until June 2. (Above, from Jill Greenberg: American Girl Doll, 2010)

Don’t Tell Mama features the Chris Grismer exhibit “New Suburban Photomat,” which explores and plays with new photographic processes to create experimental portraits. The opening is May 5 from 7-10pm, and the exhibit is up through May 31st. (Below, a photo from this exhibit: Superfriends, 2010).

“No Permanent Address” has been showing at Gallery TPW for much of April and garnered acclaim, and the run continues through the festival until May 26. No Permanent Address is a three channel video portrait of the New People’s Army, a Maoist guerrilla group in the Philippines.

“The Nine Eyes of Google Street View,” Angell Gallery‘s offering to Contact, will be sure to draw attention. We’ve all enjoyed the strange unexpected images snapped by Google’s cameras while mapping the world.  Jon Rafman’s series compiles “a fascinating array of incidental moments captured by Google’s cameras.” The exhibit opens May 3 from 6-9P until June 2.

If you are enjoying the festival, let us know what you’ve seen and what you recommend seeing.

The good news is that most of the businesses which opened a year ago are still going strong.

Joe Fuda opened his photography studio, Oz Studios, over a year ago, and marked the anniversary by publishing his own book. LAB Consignment has been open for just over a year, sharing it’s space with Silver Falls Vintage.

Goed Eten also opened this time last summer, and has changed quite a bit from a late night spot to it’s current status as a popular brunch and lunch eatery. Telegramme Prints and Salt Wine Bar will also celebrate a year on Ossington later this summer.

So Happy Birthday, Crafted, and many more to come!

Our first choice is one that you’ll need to pre-order, but we got one and it came quickly. Dave Murray does great word-cloud art and there’s a nice poster of the Ossington Neighbourhood. You can find it at his site.

If you’re looking for some pampering for your partner, or co-worker, Lush and Lavish has gift certificates for anything in the place, including manicures, pedicures, massages and more.

Further down Ossington near Queen is Lab Consignment and Silver Falls Vintage, where we found these great mittens by SLO which go for between $28-32. Good for warming up friends, family and co-workers.

Further north on Ossington Ministry of the Interior has these funky piggy banks in many colours which go for between $130 to $350. It makes for a great house decor, and also helps your loved one save some of their coin. How good is that?

If you’re looking for something more personal, get the family together and call Joe Fuda at Oz Studios. He’s doing Christmas portraits. It’s good for creating memories when family is in town. We’re pretty sure he’ll even head over to your home or someplace you enjoy to take the pictures.

We’ve got some more ideas which we’ll post tomorrow! There’s only 6 more shopping days left.

This year brought a lot of new businesses and faces to Ossington, all of which we welcomed, and many of which we covered. We look forward to frequenting many new shops, galleries, restaurants and more to the strip in the year ahead.

Let’s start with February 2010 – Angell Gallery moved from Queen Street West onto Dundas. Angell took over the space of Lennox Contemporary in February 2010, and has hosted a plethora of exhibits ever since.

There was a bustle of activity and then Bohmer launched in March 2010. The beautiful space and delicious food has led more people to Toronto’s new “Restaurant Row.”  March also saw the opening of “Oz Boutique,” an art and design hub which has housed Evan Biddell’s clothing line, but focuses on photographer Joe Fuda’s work and curated exhibits.

We started April with City Store Grocery opening on Dundas, and Crepes and More on Ossington. 8 months later, both are still open and catering to the daytime crowd in our area. That month’s other opening was the weekend-only bar, OurHouse.

May brought pop-ups to Ossington with the short-lived but fun launch of 1st Run Art Gallery, which featured the work of it’s creators. In June, LAB Consignment opened with a splash, sharing space with Silver Falls Vintage on Ossington near Queen. In other just as popular fashion news, TOPSHOP came to Toronto by way of London, and opened within Jonathan + Olivia’s space.

The lazy days of summer were anything but for entrepreneurs on Ossington when several businesses opened their doors, starting with Crafted by Te Aro, a coffee shop from Leslieville branching out. Another import from within Toronto was Goed Eten, which started serving coffee, waffles, poutine and more this July.

For a very short time this summer, Salt opened, then closed. Now it is finally open again for good, serving Portuguese wines and tapas.

This fall we supported the opening of Beau Lieu Bistro at 59 Ossington and also Telegramme Prints and Framing at 194 Ossington. O’born Contemporary is also a new gallery to the strip.

We don’t want to forget all the new openings on Dundas (part of that “Ossington triangle” mentioned earlier) that we covered a couple of months ago about Dundas’ evolution: Bunda Lounge, Churchill, Brockton General, Academy of Lions, Port, and Enoteca Sociale.

Finally, let’s look forward to the continuing growth with new places set to open soon: Pasta and More, Fish Bar, Lakeview Convenience and The Saint are the ones we know about, but we’re sure there’ll be more. Here’s to a happy and healthy Ossington Village in 2011.

According to IMDB the storyline goes something like this: A newlywed couple recovers from a car accident that puts the wife in a coma. Waking up with with severe memory loss, her husband endeavors to win her heart again.

Joe Fuda, of Oz Studios, took out his camera and caught a couple shots and posted them to his Tumbr account.

Yes, that’s Rachel in the distance.

Dani, of CindiLooWho, caught some of the chaos and posted it to facebook, and was relieved to know that the flower store they had set up in the old salon beside Frantic City Books wasn’t real, but was just part of the set.

Is it going to be in the former Cindiloowho location at 134 Ossington? We walked in to check out the scene last Thursday night only to be turned away for a “private party.”  Maybe next time we’ll mention we write the Ossington Village blog and they’ll let us in!

We’ll update when we know more, and comment if you know more too!