Chaka Khan has just confirmed her attendance as headline act for The Autists.

Does this woman need an introduction?

To do so with any degree of originality is to commit to a serious regime of cliche avoidance. And since that cannot be done, we’ll embrace the cliches, own ‘em and get ‘em out of the way in one sentence: Chaka Khan is royalty, an enduring superstar, a wellspring of talent, is a force for the collective soul, a doer of good, a haver of fun and an eminent presence. Oh, and she has a wickedly powerful, sensual voice, too, which is handy when you make your living as a singer. Ok, so it took two sentences.

A visit to her website is a satisfying journey into her music and her soul.

Chaka Khan is a powerful presence in the generosity dept. Through her amazing Chaka Khan Foundation, she helps kids at risk in the South Central L.A. neighbourhood gain access to opportunities in education, and hence, a more promising future. Through a crafty mix of well-harnessed fellow celebrities, insightful mentors, college scholarships, specialized training programs in life skills as well as financial acumen, she’s helping a great many kids use their own brains and ambition to find their way out of poverty and the unsavory forces that accompany it.

And as the relative of someone with autism, Chaka Khan also supports programs that enable kids with autism reach their full potential, as well as aiding their families to offset the associated financial burdens.

We are so touched by this graceful nod to us that it has reignited the fire under us, the one that drives us to make this event so rich, so substantial and effectual, so packed with energy and life and celebration.

So, with maximum sincerity and alacrity, from all of us putting The Autists together and all of those who will benefit from your generosity — thank you, Ms Chaka Khan.

The Autists has just received a commitment from Toronto’s Wills & Co. Media Strategies to help us gain access to donated media, both on- and off-line.

Company president Jeff Wills has generously offered to plug us into his world, which consists of a substantial cross-section of local and nationwide print, TV, radio, outdoor and online media proprietors.

Jeff’s generous stand will aid us in publicizing The Autists to a significantly wider, and more relevant audience than we could ever have reached under our own steam.

Actual fruits of this pledge will be revealed in future posts, but what can be said about it now is: Thanks, Jeff Wills. You are a gentleman and a benevolent soul.

Wills & Co are a highly imaginative group of people who approach media the way Michelangelo approached ceilings.

Among their ingenious inventions is Do Over Day. Taking place each February 26, Do Over Day is the time to do over the good and bad of our lives. It’s a day to reflect, celebrate and relive the glory, wonderment and shame of our many fateful deeds and decisions.

More on this auspicious soon-to-be-holiday is available here.

Wills & Co. also runs an interesting blog (screen-grab above), packed with merciless insights on media, old and new, which can be viewed here.

Peter Doig has just confirmed by telephone from his home in Trinidad that he will be donating a work for auction at The Autists. Further details on the exact nature of the piece will be forthcoming once confirmed.

The Scottish-born painter has deep roots in Canada, having spent a significant portion of his childhood in Toronto, as well as several years in Montreal during his twenties. Many of his most celebrated and coveted works were inspired by, and painted at, his parents’ Ontario farm during the ’80s and ’90s.

Peter often starts from found or personal photographs, though not to recreate their content so much as to anchor the work. His paintings explore the grand theme of man’s relationship with his environment, with the Canadian landscape featuring prominently.

Peter is a genuine living legend within the international art world. His works hang at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Berkeley Art Museum in California and both the Tate and Saatchi galleries in London.

Important Peter Doig paintings have, of late, been fetching in excess of US$10 million at auction.

Peter studied art in England at the Wimbledon School of Art, St. Martin’s School of Art and the Chelsea School of art. He is also an alumnus of Jarvis Collegiate Institute in Toronto.

There are volumes to be read and seen about the man, and because he maintains no website of his own, rather than posting a series of links here, we recommend Googling Peter Doig and sitting back for a long and fascinating journey.

All of us at The Autists are delirious at this game-changing development. We welcome Peter Doig and thank him for his generous pledge to The Autists.

Wow, what a way to end a week of fantastic news.

News just in this morning from Charles Pachter: One of the world’s great living photographers, Edward Burtynsky, has committed to donate a work to be auctioned in support of The Autists.

The native of St. Catharines, Ontario, has astonished the world with his work, much of which has the power to literally evacuate the air from an unsuspecting set of lungs at first glance. He possesses the singular ability to make profoundly ugly landscapes and scenes of utter wrongness irresistible to the soul of the beholder.

The quotidian, largely unseen horrors of modern life, the giant-sized bites it exacts from the earth and its humblest inhabitants, the ultimate essence and price of being industrial — this is the currency of Edward Burtynsky.

His website is well worth a visit.

With humility and gratitude, we welcome the man aboard.

And once again, we are indebted to Charles Pachter for making this happen for The Autists.

As well as bringing us a huge slice of this country’s greatest artistic talent to contribute works, The Autists’ Art Curator, Charlie Pachter, has also graciously signed on as a contributor to our live art auction.

His work is iconic, ironic and patriotic — not an easy blend to master. But master it he does. He’s perfected the creative send-up — royalty, sacred cows (and moose) — whatever passes within reach of his ebullient imagination. His talents extend well beyond fine art into the worlds of architecture, education, fund-raising and, it seems, pretty much anything he applies himself to.

Below, a few choice samples of his work.

We recommend a visit to Charles’ website where you’ll experience loads more of his art, as well as detailed tours of his many architectural and renovation projects, including his current home/studio, The Moose Factory, in Toronto’s Chinatown.

Yet another highly-regarded Canadian artist has agreed to donate work to The Autists’ live auction. Diana Thorneycroft, based in Winnipeg, has exhibited across North America, Europe and in Russia, Japan and Australia. Her work is by turns dark, hilarious and discomfiting, but never less than intriguing, and has thus earned her many an award and accolade.

Her accomplishments range from inclusion in Phaidon Press’ publication Blink, which profiled 100 rising-star photographers, to Canadian Art Magazine naming her most recent show one of its Top 10 Exhibitions of 2008.

See Diane’s portfolio here.

Great news — already — from our newly installed Art Curator, Mr Charles Pachter: He has sought and received pledges from five prominent artists to donate work to The Autists for the live auction portion of the event.

Here’s a little about each of them and a few peeks at their work.

Viktor Mitic, a native of Belgrade, Serbia, is a master of the stylized portrait and vivid, colour-saturated abstracts among his other techniques and approaches.

His work has shown in Japan, Serbia and his current base, Toronto, and hangs in the private collections of many well-known Canadians, from former Prime Ministers and ministers to sports celebrities.

Check out more of his work here.

Joanne Tod is a Toronto artist and lecturer whose vast array of superbly crafted work has been exhibited nationally and internationally over the past 20 years.

Joanne’s work spans portraiture as well as Pop Art-inspired social critique and examination. It is on display in the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Montreal’s musee d’art contemporain, as well as private art collectors.

See more of her work here.

Kim Dorland is a Canadian-born artist whose work examines the psychic, nostalgic spaces of his Canadian upbringing.

His work regularly shows in galleries internationally and is part of collections at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Neumann Family Collection in New York and the Sander Collection in Berlin, as well as several corporate portfolios.

See much more of Kim’s work here.

Thrush Holmes is a talented artist based in Toronto. The OCAD alumnus has had work recently shown in galleries in Ottawa, California, Toronto, Ireland and many other cities and countries. Self-taught, he tackles notions of art, myth, introspection and biography via a great variety of mediums, and to great effect.

His work is also in Elton John’s private collection, and is regularly featured in influential publications.

See more of his art here.

Kent Monkman is an artist of Cree ancestry who works in a variety of media including paint, film/video, performance and installation. His approach swirls over, under and in between extreme in-your-face hellraising and witty social critique. One thing it’s not is dull.

He has exhibited widely within Canada and is well represented in numerous private and public collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

See more of Kent’s work here (and don’t miss the Louis Vuitton quiver).

All in all an exceptional lineup for an art event. An unbelievable one for a fundraiser.

All of us at The Autists and the Geneva Centre for Autism would like to extend a gigantic welcome to all five of these incredible talents, and a profusion of thanks for their generosity.

Oh, and very nice work, Charles.

Gifted, awarded and much celebrated Canadian artist Wallace Edwards has agreed to donate a work of his art — as yet to be determined — to The Autists for auction at our May 2nd, 2010 extravaganza.

The creator, author and painter of Alphabeasts, Mixed Beasts, Painted Circus and numerous other award-laden children’s publications, agreed to the donation yesterday.

Known for his refreshingly unconventional imagination and an ability to get its progeny down on canvas or paper with vivid precision, Wallace has worked hard to establish his reputation as one of Canada’s premier artists.

Born in Ottawa, a graduate of the Ontario College of Art, he works mainly in watercolours and pencil, skillfully blending techniques ranging from cartooning to scientific illustration. His works are in public and private collections, books, magazines and on public display all over North America.

Wallace has received a great many awards, ranging from the Governor General’s Literary Award (Children’s Book Illustration) for Alphabeasts (2002) and the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award as well as the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator’s Award for Monkey Business (2004) to the Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) Gold Medal (for best children’s picture book, age 7 & over) in 2007 for The Extinct Files (2006).

All of us at The Autists extend a warm welcome aboard to Wallace and thank him profusely for his kind donation.

More big news: Canadian art legend Charles Pachter has agreed to act as Gala Art Auction Curator for The Autists 2010.

This means several very good things for our event:

• The Autists stands to benefit from the credibility conferred upon it though having such a major force and persona in the art world as Mr Pachter handling so vital a portion of our event
• The quality of works selected for sale in the Gala Art Action component of The Autists will be superlative
• The likelihood of attracting high-calibre working artists to donate works to our cause increases substantially
• The level of interest from prospective donors, as well as event sponsors, can be expected to rise significantly

From all of us at The Autists, welcome aboard, Charles!

Toronto agency Jib Design & Advertising Inc. has just completed placement of The  Autists’ new ID into the event blog you’re presently staring at. The company’s agreement to take on the task was given to us only last Friday. In just six days Jib has delivered.

And we’re proclaiming it gorgeous. In his witty iteration, Jib graphic designer Dalibor Simic has taken the upbeat, declarative qualities of the logo that Underline Studio designed for us and basically slapped a turbocharger onto them.

But there’s more: Jib’s management yesterday informed us that in future weeks they’d like to enhance the site’s functionality, in particular the bits that apply to Web searchability, ease of sponsorship and other areas.

And all on a pro bono basis.

Our cups runneth over here at The Autists. We would like to express our most profound thanks to Jib’s generous people, in particular Dalibor, but also principals David Shephard and George Argyropoulos, who, when asked if they’d help us out, said ‘Yes’ without a second’s hesitation.

What this means for The Autists is we’re officially up and running as a fund-raising machine. We have us a date, a venue, plus expert design and technical minds at our sides.

Onward we march to the enormous task at hand: Raising a ton of cash for contributing Autists, and for the Geneva Centre for Autism.

Screen grab from jib.ca