Sakura in High Park
May 11, 2019
This weekend Toronto is heading to High Park to take in the cherry blossom trees (“Sakura” in Japanese) at their peak.
I painted this delicate pattern last spring while I was sitting on a streetcar in downtown traffic.
The design is available in my Shopify store, PenJarProductions.com. Just search the term “cherry” and you’ll see how it looks on pillows, phone cases, laptop skins, and, new this Spring, a scarf!
Music credit: “Ishikari Love” by Kevin MacLeod, YouTube Audio Library
Jane’s Walk Toronto
April 27, 2019
A full circle moment for me: several springs ago, I bought a copy of Jane Jacobs’ groundbreaking book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, at my favourite shop around the corner, Another Story Bookshop.
This week, to drum up interest in next weekend’s Jane’s Walk Toronto, Laura and Eric, the owners, have kindly put up a display of my Pen Jar Productions line of Jane Jacobs merch (a tote, a tee and an enamel pin). At the front of the store no less!
I’m proud to be teaming up with a neighbourhood retailer that makes social justice, equity (gender, race and class) and diversity the guiding force of their existence.
Jane’s Walk Toronto is happening May 3-5. For a list of walks you can join, go to janeswalk.org/canada/toronto/ and check out their Instgram feed at @JanesWalkTo.
Let’s celebrate our city and our stories next weekend and all year round!
The staff at Another Story Bookshop were thinking that my tote bag would be a nice way to transport this copy of Walking in the City with Jane Jacobs by Susan Hughes.
UPDATE
A week after I teamed with with Another Story, I put on my party shoes and headed to the opening bash for Jane’s Walk Toronto. The Urban Space Gallery hosted the event. My illustration studio, Pen Jar Productions, was a sponsor.
It felt good donating my Jane Jacobs enamel pins to all 130 Walk Leaders, each of them committed storytellers and determined community activists who are working towards a more diverse and equitable world. Here’s how they responded:
The next morning, Juan, one of the festival organizers, went on the CBC’s Metro Morning to share details about this year’s Jane’s Walk with host, Matt Galloway.
I missed it. I was at my desk journaling in silence during their interview. By the time I emerged and let myself check my phone notifications, I saw from a friend’s text that my little pin had caught Galloway’s eye.
The best thing we can do with our ideas and talents is to catch someone else’s eye and make them think or take a more positive action.
Ever since it hit us that technology has gained control of our weaknesses, we’ve been asking ourselves, how do we fix this?
The hundreds of Jane’s Walks that took place this past weekend in Toronto (and 250 cities around the world) are a grassroots, citizen-led effort to improve the physical and emotional habitat we live in, be it cities or online communities. It puts our shared humanity ahead of individual interests.
Let’s keep looking for more ways to stop the spread of human downgrading. (Tristan Harris’s term).
April 22, 2019
In 1967, she was thinking: air hostess (for the glamour), nurse and office girl with oodles of charm and personality. In 2019, she is thinking of algorithms, black holes, oncology, Odyssey translations, and true crime. She is still being instructed to improve her hair, her voice, her figure, her walk, but the joy of applying herself is stronger than the drumbeat of criticism. Keep going, sister.
Hand Drawings
April 17, 2019
The push and pull of being vs doing. To me, hands are the ultimate doers, storytellers, get-shit-done human power tools. Not so for the copywriters at Elle magazine in 1967. Boy is it fun and weird leafing through back issues. Women’s magazines are the supreme handbooks on how to be, not do. There are times when that has not been true, but fortunes and priorities change, money shuffles, and the magazines with the biggest mouths are shuttered or redesigned, and we revert back to our old ways. Can you tell which quotes are mine and which are not?
When your students draw you
April 12, 2019
I’m one of those instructors who doesn’t mind if her students draw during class.
From my own experience, drawing makes us MORE focused listeners.
My thanks to #DigitalEdu‘er @followhulki for this spot-on portrait of me.
Check out her Twitter bio & blog for a range of her illos!
She also happens to be an OCAD instructor.
I’ll be teaching Foundations in Digital Communications Strategy and Social Media again this Spring.
