A million things!

I have so many things to write about!

1. I have my new computer!
I decided I needed new equipment when the latest apple operating system wouldn't download on my laptop. But I had to bide my time for multiple reasons. I planned it all out so that as of this morning, not only do I have a gorgeous new MacBook pro (Named Mutsu), but I also have the Adobe Creative Cloud, Drawscribe and an iPad. I'm seriously chuffed to finally have CS6 - something I've been lucky enough to use where I'm currently working an a part-time in-house designer - for my own personal use.

I'm really super duper excited about using Drawscribe, which I've been coveting since I finished Vector Basic Training by Von Glistchka.

2. I've got a new art idea!
I just happen to be on a visit to Canada as a surprise for my best friend's birthday. Before I arrived my mum informed me about an art project that the city has organised involving stories about the river. The initial information I got about it was extremely vague and it wasn'
t until Saturday, when I went to the project meet-up, that I really found out what it was all about. It was awesome and exciting and - most importantly - inspiring.

The deal is, Calgary is doing a series of art projects along the river and they wrangled a bunch of people from Inglewood, the community where I was born and raised, to share their stories about living along the Bow river. For those of you who know nothing about Calgary, Inglewood is the city's oldest neighbourhood. For those of you in the UK, this means that there are buildings over 100 years old. Yes, I know that's not 'old' by your standards but we're a colony, dammit. So that's super old for Alberta.

Anyhoo - I was born in and have lived in a house in Inglewood for 21 years. Needless to say, I have loads of stories about growing up here, being one block from the river, a short walk to a wild land park, bird sanctuary and fish hatchery and a few minutes from the zoo. It is also considered 'inner-city' because it takes about ten minutes to get to the heart of downtown.

This is an amazing, magical community and despite all my travels it is my favourite place in the world. So I've decided I'm going to write down some of my stories but not only that - I'm going to illustrate them too! Like little graphic novel-type-comic-esque blog entries. Coming soon!

3. Wreck City
If you live in Calgary you need to go see Wreck City! The deal is there are a bunch of houses on 7th and 5th Ave N.W. (Behind the Sunnyside Train station) that are set for demolition. The developer partnered with a bunch of local artists to turn the houses into an art 'gallery'. Essentially, the houses are being torn down anyway so until that happens they have been taken over for painting, sculpting, drawing and re-constructing.

I spent two hours there on Sunday and it was absolutely amazing. For those of you who don't live in Calgary - here are some photos.