New online magazine Lyte.Arts is for art lovers and art makers

A small group of students from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) has launched a bi-monthly online magazine called Lyte.Arts, for "people who live for, love and make art." It's feature-rich and handsome and worth a visit to see what young artists think about what's important.

Half the magazine is devoted to interviews and features about established illustrators and fine artists; the other half is devoted to student work and interviews, art news, an illustration blog, a job board and information about upcoming exhibitions, websites. Readers are invited to make submissions. It contains no advertising, nor does it look like that is in the cards.

The first issue has a number of typos (which indicates that as copy editors, the team are good artists) and, being put together in Flash, has some navigation problems. But these are mere quibbles for what is a very ambitious and intriguing idea.

The publishing team is Jesse Graham, a freelance illustrator, Ngqubutho Zondo, a freelance graphic and web designer, and Wai Yuan, a freelance graphic designer. All live in Toronto.

Feature interview subjects include photographer Sheryl Dudley, illustrator Patricia Storms (both from Toronto), painter Gareth Bate and NewYork-based illustrator Marcos Chin, who graduated from OCAD in 1999. (The illustration above is by Chin and from the first issue.)

[Thanks to Patricia Storm's blog BookLust for alerting me to this new publication.]