Winnipeg, Canada

Warm, heartfelt wishes for the new year…

Banff, Alberta

Don’t miss the upcoming Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour’s visit to Winnipeg… brought to you by the the Alpine Club of Canada… at 19:00 on 19 January 2008 at the Burton Cummings Theatre (formerly the Walker). Watch the trailer on YouTube here.

Boston, Massachusetts

Our friend Chaz Maviyane-Davies is featured in the current issue of the Utne Reader (#145, January/February 2008), under the heading “Graphic Activist—a Zimbabwean designer’s political posters hit you in the gut.” Chaz has been engaged as a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston for the past few years, as he continues tirelessly (or so it seems) in his prolific iteration of activist posters and visiual communications related to human rights and social justice. For a glimpse at Chaz’s prodigious and award-winning works, visit www.maviyane.com

Steinbach, Manitoba

Our Peters family got together at my brother Jim’s place in Steinbach (about an hour SE of Winnipeg) for a love-filled family Christmas celebration yesterday. This photo of my older and younger brothers book-ending my ex-missionary octogenarian dad (at Falcon Lake in 2005) surfaced in the process… admittedly I suffered from being the middle child, but what might their excuse be?… :-)

The President Glacier, British Columbia

We all know that glaciers are melting rapidly (thanks to global warming). Winnipeg climber friend David Cormie took this revealing photo in August… brings back sphincter-tightening memories of punching through into “bottomless” crevasses while on glacier crossings—and a good reminder to travel roped even when the surface looks benign.

This past spring I wrote and illustrated a booklet for the Alpine Club of Canada entitled Top Climbing Knots—the piece includes two friction knots (the Prussik and the Klemheist) that are useful for climbing out of a crevasse… of course, only if you are roped to team members on the surface. :-| If you’re interested in a copy of the booklet, contact me…

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Momentum is gathering for FITC’s debut European event… on 25 and 26 February 2008 in Amsterdam, at the venerable Felix Meritis, the European Centre for Arts and Sciences. I’ll be giving a talk entitled “Do The Right Thing. Do The Thing Right.”

Basel, Switzerland

I was delighted to have the chance to spend the past few days back in my childhood haunts, in and around Basel. It’s been a few years since I’ve been back, and I’d forgotten how much I miss the place (with its unique sights, sounds, and smells)… roasted chestnuts, mulled wine, tasteful shop-window displays, friendly families out on the town… brought back many happy memories. I was also able to cram in quick visits to Lörrach (where I also lived for a half dozen years), to my brother Phil’s (he and his spirited family live in Binzen, just down the road from the Vitra Design Museum [Frank Gehry’s first structure in Europe]), and to Black Forest Academy, the school I attended for many years. Ah, sweet yesteryear…

Washington, D.C.

The talented and passionate folks at Free Range Studios have launched their latest viral movie, just in time for Christmas. Billed as “a provocative tour of consumer-driven culture—from resource extraction to iPod incineration,” The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute fast-paced, fact-filled look at “the underside of production, consumption, and waste.” Watch it here.

Free Range Studios is perhaps best known in the social change field for their highly effective The Meatrix, and other social change projects for clients such as Amnesty International. See more of their work here.

Winnipeg, Canada

My new buttons have arrived (I’ve been participating in GDC Manitoba’s Button Swap in each of the past years)… this year’s missive re-states a timely Buddhist maxim regarding need and plenty (along with a graphic from the collection Revolution Dingbats & Motiondingbats from our friends at unmundofeliz.org in Madrid). Ask me for a button next time we cross paths…

Winnipeg, Canada

An interesting collection of postcards are currently on exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, part of the body of work entitled PostSecret. PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard—since 2004, people all over the world have had their most excruciating secrets appear anonymously on the popular Internet website Postsecret.com. Started as a communnity art project by Maryland-based Frank Warren, Postsecret.com has won several awards and attracts a reported million hits a week. To date, Warren has been mailed more than 170,000 secret-bearing postcards in a mind-bending array of creatively designed shapes, sizes and styles.

View an online selection here.