POD Project - Do you dot your i's?

This month's POD subject was typography. Laurel, the blogger with whom I share this project, gave me three little pages of text about typewriter keyboards. On the back of one of these pages I saw my "point of departure". It was a couple of paragraphs about why we place a dot on the i.

“It has to do with something called ‘minim confusion’. In handwriting, a minim is the small downward stroke used in m, n, i, u, and so on. In early writing there was no dot on the i, and the minims were written almost identically. This could lead to confusion in words containing a lot of minim next to each other.” An example was given: minimum. I loved how it looked without the dotted i's. Can you see the word repeated throughout my piece?

Artist Trading Card's Event No.3 -- part 2

As usual the Artist Trading Card event at the Latcham Gallery was busy and exciting as 16 "traders" buzzed around the room asking "Wanna trade with me?"

Here are the cards I traded that night. You can see my favourite three cards on my flickr site.

For my friend Laurel, of Cranberry Cloud, it was a family event. Her husband John participated again and her daughter Eleanor took part in her first ATC event. I traded with each of them and they have allowed me to post their creative cards here.

Laurel's card. Be sure to view all of Laurel's cards on her site!

Eleanor's card. She did cool linear portraits with a single colour added to each. This one is called "Lime".

John's cards require installation. They come flat and you assemble the three cards on the enclosed wire to create a three dimensional piece. His series is called "Caulderizations: 2010". (John, let me know if you have a site I can link to!) Update: if you have a facebook account you can view John's cards here.

Artist Trading Card's Event No.3

My first batch of ATC's. I made these in November 2008.

These are from March 2009.

This coming Wednesday I will be attending my third Artist Trading Card event. It takes place at The Latcham Gallery, a lovely public gallery in Stouffville, Ontario.

I had known about ATC's for a few years and searched online for trading events in my area, to no avail. Needless to say, when my art teacher, artist Judith Livingston informed me about the event at The Latcham I knew immediately I would be there!

For this Wednesday I have 13 cards ready to trade. I'll post photos of them later in the week.

Alex Janvier is on my list

I had intended to make this post a list. With the list I would add a complimentary or, at least, an impressionable photograph from my personal collection. As I was scrolling through I came across some photos I took last July while on a trip with my family to Ottawa, Canada's capital city. The pictures are various views of a mural painted on the ceiling of a grand stairwell in the Canadian Museum of Civilization. I remember craning my neck for a long time and being awed by the work. Not having written the name of the piece or the artist at the time, today I searched "ceiling art" at the Museum of Civilization's website. I was thrilled to find an unexpected amount of information about the actual work, titled "Morning Star" by Alex Janvier.

The paragraphs state details about the "features of the painting reflecting aboriginal values and philosophies." The circles, the colours and the four quarters are among the many symbolic features of the painting. Regardless of the symbolism I was (and still am) mesmerized when I view my photos of this piece of art.

An added bonus was found at the bottom of the text: a link to his web site. I felt like how my children do on Easter morning when they hunt for chocolate eggs. I couldn't wait to find information about him and view the artwork on his site. Fed up with my oohing and aahing, my daughter pulled herself away from beside me to venture to her own inspirational whim.

We can feel great pleasure from viewing art (or photos, or people, or cinema, etc.). But sometimes something we view knocks us speechless. Alex Janvier's work did that to me. I thank him. What a gift.

Back to my idea of posting a list tonight. There will not be a list here in this post as I had planned. However, Alex Janvier is a new and very definate member of my top ten favourite visual artists.

Illustration Friday - Subterranean

For my contribution to Illustration Friday I created this collage, mixed media piece. At the top, watercolour on rice paper overlaps another watercolour. The red at the top is the same paper as at the very bottom. In between are overlapping layers of coloured cover stock and some papers I printed. The white line work was done with acrylic ink.

Illustration Friday - Perspective

This is my perspective on this week's Illustration Friday's subject!

For the most part, I consider myself a half-full kind of girl!