Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
Evelin Richter’s latest sculptural work (a figurative slab-built piece in stoneware, finished with various stains and low-fire glazes; 17 x 8 x 17 cm) went off to the charity fundraiser Art for Angels this weekend. Ev created the sculpture entitled Are you there? as “a whimsical expression of a quest for meaning in our time.”
We’ll be attending the Art for Angels “Art & Cocktail fundraising evening” together on Wednesday, 12 March at ALIVE in the district (140 Bannatyne, drinks at 18:30, auction starts at 20:00). This year’s “charity of choice” is Easter Seals Canada along with the Society for Manitobans with Disabilities (SMD). For tickets, contact wrapit@shaw.ca or call Dana at (204) 771-2249.
Winnipeg, Canada
Of interest to type-lovers: the Type Directors Club has announced the winners of its typeface design competition TDC2; the journal Typographica has posted the results of its fourth annual review, dubbed “the Oscars of typeface design.” There is a profusion of great faces being released around the world these days, much to the delight of typophiles. In the past week we’ve acquired licenses to the beautiful and versatile text family Chronicle, a “blended Scotch Transitional” by New York’s Hoefler & Frere-Jones, as well as the casually artful Pronto by Argentinian designer Angel Koziupo of Sudtipos.
Faces shown: the blackletter Fakir by The Netherlands’ Underware; the grotesque National by New Zealander Kris Sowersby of KLIM; the renaissance-inspired Augustin by Ludwig Übele of Den Haag; and the calligraphic Burgues Script (Bourgeois in English) by Ale Paul of Sudtipos in Buenos Aires.
Iqaluit, Nunavut
The past three days have been a blur—art directing annual report photography in remote northern communities for our client, The North West Company (the oldest retailer in North America, also the largest non-governmental employer of Aboriginal people). Our sortie took us to the Cree community of God’s Lake Narrows in Manitoba, then across frozen Hudson’s Bay to the hamlet of Cape Dorset (famous for its Inuit sculptors) on the southern tip of Baffin Island, then on to Iqaluit (formerly known as Frobisher Bay, and now the capital of Nunavut, Canada’s newest territory). Folks who have never been to Canada’s high north have a hard time imagining just how harsh and sparsely populated an environment this is—though spread over an area equal to the size of Western Europe, all of Nunavut has a population of less than 30,000.
Predictably, the weather was cold (-30° Celcius, with wind-chills below -50°). The Company truck would not start in Cape Dorset—we were picked up from the airstrip by snowmobile. The people were warm and welcoming, however, as has been my experience on prior trips to these remote regions.
Photos: Our cozy cabin for the first night at God’s Lake Narrows Lodge; Cree vocabulary snapshot from the school billboard; warm Inuit smiles in frigid Cape Dorset; Iqaluit stop-sign (Inuktitut); boarding the Company plane at the fibreglass-skinned airport terminal; happy teens at the NorthMart store. (Thanks to photographer Ian McCausland for shots 1, 3, 6).
