“Feats of strength!” The speakers boom through the Metro Toronto Convention Centre as Krystal Younglove takes the stage, striking a pose at the end of the hall.
She plays the role of strongwoman, bantering with the crowd, teasing men to smile — then flipping the script by joking that she’s the one making them uncomfortable.
The exchange earns a warm chuckle. Younglove’s act, which includes lying on a bed of nails while a 20-something man stands on her, plus a classic game of tug-of-war, fits the theme set by Oddities and Curiosities Expo co-founder Michelle Cozzaglio: community.
“Every city we go to, it’s almost the same but different,” said Cozzaglio, her smile as bright as her purple and green hair. “It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re grabbing all the weirdos in the area — they’re coming out, and they can be around people like them, meet people they follow online.’
“It’s just giving them a place to feel comfortable and be themselves.”
Toronto, she said, is no different. The show received more than 4,000 vendor applications from across Canada.
What began as a grassroots expo in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2017 has become something much bigger. Cozzaglio and her husband, Tony, never expected that their love of strange artifacts and design would turn into an international travelling curio shop.
Now on its second world tour, the show kicked off in Los Angeles in January and made its way to Toronto — one of only two Canadian stops, the other being Vancouver in October.
Cozzaglio always builds in a couple of extra days between shows to take in the local vibe — spooky or not. That aesthetic, however, is baked into the branding, which merges Sailor Jerry tattoo motifs with the macabre. A standout: the backdrop illustration by Vojtěch “Woody” Troják, featuring two scorpions dancing under a planchet with piercing owl eyes.
The focus, though, is on the artists and crafters who travel from all over to join the expo.
Among them is Jesse Jubenville, who came from Windsor with her work: cameo frames with preserved butterflies, antique lamp bases repurposed into cloches, and glass coffins filled with vibrant insects and ethically sourced bones and animal skulls. This was her second time at the expo as a vendor for her shop, Curio Cathedral.
“I feel like it’s a really cool way to show off my art,” she said. “I’m a little shy, so sometimes I get overwhelmed by the crowds, but it’s really exciting when people take pictures, ask questions, want to know what animal things come from — that’s my favourite part.”
Jubenville said she’s always been drawn to the spooky. As a kid, she’d find bones in fields and was fascinated by them.
“I’ve just kind of grown up with it and kept doing oddity-based stuff,” she said. “I’ve always been into unique, spooky things.”
Alex Davidson hails from Cincinnati, Ohio — just a stone’s throw away from Mothman country. He tours with the Oddities and Curiosities Expo to connect with fans.
Five vendors tour with the show full-time, including Cincinnati-based artist Space Wolf, or Alex Davidson. While he’s not a baseball fan, his art spans painting, printmaking, woodworking and photography.
His work leans ethereal and science-fiction inspired, but also taps into folklore — think Mothman and the Wendigo.
“For artists, social media used to drive business,” he said after chatting with a young fan. “But now it’s become pay-to-play. And there’s so much saturation.”
Davidson was once exclusively online, but travelling expos have opened up a new way to connect.
“I talk art all day, and I make a living doing this,” he said. “I love travelling the country and seeing all kinds of wild stuff.”
The Oddities and Curiosities Expo tours through the U.S., Canada and Australia. Davidson doesn’t make the trip Down Under — not yet, anyway — but hopes that changes soon.
“It’s one thing to see art online. It’s another to see it in person,” he said. “It’s exciting for everybody who comes out, because they get to see things they wouldn’t normally see.”