MAKING STUFF
and writing about it
A record of the making and the learning along the way: process, material, and the social side of hand-making.
Apr 26, 2017
Nature shows us that after devastation comes renewal
The 91-year-old CEO of the Commonwealth did not deem 2016 another annus horribilis but it was one for the political history books. It seems only fitting that these dark days broken up by...
Mar 29, 2017
Am I blue? Yes, and grey and silver too
“Your hair seems blue,” a friend noted over dinner. It really is. I’ve joined the blue-rinse gang — emphasis on the blue. Denim blue is an unnatural hair hue that seems only natural now that...
Feb 28, 2017
Gritty beauty seen in foundations of this pretty city
I t feels like the Internet has killed the fun of taking snapshots of beautiful cities and people. So many times over the last four months in Mexico I've raised my camera (phone) to capture an...
Dec 10, 2016
Urban design lesson for Vancouver: Life in full colour blooms in car-free streets
A month after I landed in Guanajuato , Mexico it finally dawned on me: there are no traffic lights in this bustling city . You'd think that would be obvious from the outset but those kinds of details...
Nov 12, 2016
Searching for patterns in a confounding, enchanting medieval city
Confundo . (I am confounded.) Never mind that I arrived in a medieval city in Mexico in the middle of the night after a stomach-churning 10-hour bus ride from the coast. Never mind that the next...
Sep 19, 2016
Big painting shift at little house on the prairie
I've just returned from a month in the big country of southwest Saskatchewan: big skies, big farming operations, big empty days that were all too much at the start of my artist residency at the...
Jul 3, 2016
Solar-powered Work Wraps:100% pure Lasqueti Free Store
This all started with too much stuff: the glut of stuff at the Lasqueti Free Store and all my own stuff I need to keep on my person, even more stuff than in my purse life in Vancouver. I work...
Mar 4, 2016
Dream house social engagement project is just a fantasy in too-far-gone Vancouver
I have been preoccupied these past months with a basic question: Where is my forever home? I've lived in the same Kitsilano condo since 1995 yet I never felt truly at home in a building, with a lobby...
Feb 14, 2016
Kiddie chaos just the trick for restarting the creative engine
For the last six Saturdays I have thrown open my studio doors to seven kids between the ages of 5 and 7, ostensibly to offer some art classes, but really, this was for me. I had been feeling a...
Jan 20, 2016
irrational acts of tidying up and doodling a magical combo
Every time I turn around someone’s got her nose in Marie Kondo’s international bestseller book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up or they’re doodling zentangles . I’ve mixed both into one...
