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Tyler Clark Burke was born under seven tornadoes in Lexington, Kentucky. She left before she learned an accent, though the racetrack and bourbon never left her blood. Her parents later moved to Winnipeg, immediately forming a community group to sue a menacing church. They had meetings and threw big parties and made t-shirts which read "God is not dead, he's just stuck in traffic". Tyler wore these shirts to elementary school, and also at home when she was drawing strange clowns for Fellini.
Her first show--at least ten years later--was in the back of a bar with pictures clothes-pinned to strings over two dirty pool tables. She "sold" her first pieces that night to two strangers who had wandered in from the cold--one was Mary Margaret O'Hara, the other Bob Wiseman. When it came time to deliver--and Tyler hated to follow-up--Mary Margaret didn't answer her phone, and she just couldn't take money from Bob (years later she handed him the painting in an envelope and ran away).
Things somehow got better. She started a record label (internationally acclaimed Three Gut Records), was the Art Director for Wavelength, won strange design awards, started a music-art-dance party called Santa Cruz and contributed illustrations regularly (and still does) to the likes of The Walrus, Dose and Eye Weekly. When Googled, you'll also find that she sometimes writes, she's had a string of unusual bike accidents, she collaborates with Feist, she's toured the U.S. on a reading/performance art tour, she lived in a slanty shanty, she casts videos (k-os and Buck 65 most recently), illustrates t-shirts/books (Sarah Harmer, Feist, Darren O'Donnell, The Constantines) and she shot the notorious Peaches' crotch shot album
cover.
Her work has been shown at Awol, Sis Boom Bah, Luft Gallery, The Drake Hotel (6-week artist-in-residence), Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects (salon at 1080 Queen St. W.) and Magic Pony.
Her art has been favourably reviewed or featured in The Toronto Star, Lola, Eye Weekly, Now Magazine, Metro (San Francisco), SF Weekly, Vancouver Straight, The National Post and on the CBC and Bravo.
Most famously, she once said "things come together the more they fall apart".
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