The Balloon Project

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In the spring of 2009 under the creative direction of artist Colin Menzies and photographer Wilmer Aburto, a group of children from the Boys & Girls Club of Calgary were inspired to create a world of their own. Each child was presented with the question, “If this balloon was magical, and could fly you away to any other world - what would that world look like in your imagination?” The young artists then added their own illustrations to the photographic portraits. The project will be exhibited with the Creative Kids Museum Exhibit at the Science Centre in Calgary from May 21st to June 25, 2009.

Glacial Erratics

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Glacial Erratics is the occasional paper blog (affectionately called as a "plog"©) written by my husband Glen Dresser. I designed the first edition which was published last May and it features Lisa Brawn's woodcuts and folds out to reveal a poster of Queen Elizabeth. In addition to excerpts from Glen's second novel, Glacial Erratics includes an interview with our friend Correy Baldwin, poet and publisher, as well as musings on the creative writing process.

Congratulations to Box Social

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Congratulations are in order for Mariko and Catherine who have been working very hard to launch their a new project: Box Social, "a new adventure in Canadian art and design." The site went live just a day ago, and it looks great.

"Based in Calgary with eyes on the world, we, on the organizing end are either practicing artists and/or long time fans of finely designed and crafted objects of the eclectic persuasion. While our love for the unusual knows no real boundaries, we are particularly proud of the contributions made to the art & design world by Canada—Wonderland to the North. We have taken our particular interests in Western Canadian artists and decided it’s high time to promote them…"

The artist pages include lots of information from each person and each of their pages has a customized header, which is a nice touch. The site design follows the recent trend of texture and actual dimensional artifacts and scanned textures, but they do it well. If you are a Western Canadian artist and would like to showcase your work with Box Social, you can find out more via this page. Visit Box Social and help this site grow into a great destination for Western Canadian art and craft.

The Work-in-Progress Society

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The Work-in-Progress Society is a group I started on Flickr recently and we're already at 40+ members!

The photographs selected for the pool celebrate beauty in the unfinished. The subjects can be craft, art, design, illustration and the various tools, supplies and mess required to create the works. Whether the project ever gets finished is beside the point — we're just happy to be creating and exploring!

{Irina Troitskaya, Poketo, Think Girl, famapa, vair}

Moments

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Deidre and I both agree that there are moments on this blog that we wish we could freeze and admire for a while. Some of my favourite posts have just looked so pretty, or they had lovely flow from one to the next, or they were personally important (such as this week's announcement of UPPERCASE magazine.) However, the attraction and strength of a blog is its steady stream of updates: it lives in the moment. And so we'll continue to splash inspirations on these scrolling, virtual pages.

Within the magazine, I aspire to create moments of perfection, preserved in print. Each issue will be a beautiful object, representing months of heartfelt, earnest work. We hope that our magazine will become a tangible part of your lives.

And now, here's some inspiration for this Thursday morning:


Michael Bierut (Design Observer) has been capturing moments of thought part of his daily routine: sketching ideas and taking notes faithfully since 1982. "Together, these well-worn books create a history of my working life that spans three decades."

The Happiest Book

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Alex Ostrowski writes, "In one way or another we are all looking for happiness. Some people even say that man's sole purpose for existence is to hunt down and capture this intangible and elusive treasure. In 2006 researchers at The University of Leicester concluded that Denmark is the happiest country in the world - this was good enough for me. In March 2008 I made the decision to visit happiness, and embarked upon a pilgrimage to find it. My experiences are presented in this book.

Only one copy exists."

Type Tuesday: a typeface a day...

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These crazy fellows have decided to create one typeface a day for the month of January, available for free download.

"Type.fwis.com is for me to test myself and see if I can design a new typeface every day for 31 days. You will be able to critique me and download an EPS of the file. This will likely end in tears and embarrassment for myself. I will not convert any of these to real fonts as I have neither the time nor the knowledge. For the true-blue typography geeks who are ATypI members and are deeply offended by my blunders, I am quite sorry and you should feel free to hurl insults and old issues of Emigre."

{Discovered via Design Work Life.}

Creative Customer Appreciation

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One of the great perks to working at UPPERCASE is meeting all the creative people who pass through the shop. Today I met an inspiring artist named Sara Vann who is a Calgary-based singer-songwriter and a music therapist. What started out as a conversation about the tactile joy of papergoods and the whimsical beauty of Little Otsu cards evolved into a great discussion of books, art, and the creative process.

My thanks (playful typography courtesy of Bryan Dalton) go out to Sarah and so many other customers who frequent UPPERCASE. Your kind and generous spirits are appreciated and I hope you continue to make regular visits to the shop and attend our exhibitions. We would also love to hear from customers who visit UPPERCASE on line. If you have ideas or suggestions, please send us an email (info@uppercasegallery.ca).

I am enjoying listening to Sarah's music and urge others to check out her website. Thanks to all for sharing and keep in touch!