December in the Studio

Alain and Victoria have been good to me. They have been my sounding board, my therapists, my friends - my partners in crime since arriving in Victoria. Their studio has been my church in recent weeks. I feel both safe and free to pursue my ideas no matter how crap they are. In return for some studio space I have been helping Alain and Victoria streamline and organize their administrative duties associated with Ground Zero.

In between our whisky drinking sessions, I've managed to get quite a lot of work done. At a card making workshop, Victoria showed some of the members how to use styrofoam packaging containers as printing plates. By cutting out the tops and bottoms out of styrofoam take away containers and biting into them with a dull pencil or other tool, you can achieve some very good results. I decided to use this technique to produce three editions of prints based on three of my favourite buildings from my recent trip to Scandinavia.

Styrofoam Plate. Villa Mairea. 2009

Styrofoam Plate. Saynatsalo Town Hall. 2009

Styrofoam Plate. Oslo House. 2009

My little corner of Alain and Victoria's studio. December 2009

The latest project is a collaborative one. Amanda, Kirk and I have gotten together quite mysteriously, some may say it was fate. Amanda is the General Manager of the Victoria Event Centre. Kirk is the Technical Director at MediaNet. We've been collaborating on an interesting project to hopefully bring Pecha Kucha Night to Victoria. We are nervously waiting confirmation from PKN headquarters in Tokyo to allow us to host PKN in our great little city. I think PKN would provide a great platform to allow innovative and creative professionals to drink and think together for an evening. Who knows, it might give birth to a new artistic awakening.