Last summer, my friend & collaborator, Kwende (aka Memetic), passed me the album he had composed for the #2 bus route, part of a commissioned project from Artengine. Memetic had rode the route numerous times, doing audio recordings, and also digging at every record shop along the route. (Interestingly, most of Ottawa's record shops fall along the #2 bus route.) The music he created from these recordings, samples & original compositions, is fantastic - especially for fans of J Dilla or Madlib. We began discussing how the concept would benefit from a visual element — and thus we began doing a video version of the project, with ambient footage of the bus route, and vignettes of Memetic's process. 

The video was released recently on Wax Poetics alongside a review of the album. Below is the 13 minute video for Rideau2Richmond. 

For those collectors who may be interested in owning the entire Confectionaries series, they are now available for sale as a bulk purchase. The total value of the prints is over $1000, and the bulk price for 12 prints is only $540, or $480 when on sale. Purchase the Confectionaries collection here.

In 2014, technology-based art collective, Artengine, commissioned Ottawa musicians to craft soundtracks for a few major bus routes in the city. Memetic got the #2, and he began traveling the route doing audio recordings and digging at the plethora of record stores along the way. The result became Rideau2Richmond, initially slotted to be released only as a smartphone app through Artengine. While talking about the project, I suggested to Memetic — a friend and long-term collaborator — that there should be a visual component to the project. I suggested a simple video of the bus route that would run alongside the soundtrack. Memetic agreed, and decided to take it a step further by producing his first vinyl release, effectively bringing the project back full-circle. At this point Rideau2Richmond became a two-person collaboration, with Memetic deeply involved in the visual aesthetic and the direction of the videos itself.

Tonight, my friend Kevin Lo, a Montreal based designer, is in Ottawa giving a talk on his design practice and publication, Four Minutes to Midnight. FMTM is an experimental literary arts zine working at the intersections of typography, poetics and radical politics. I will be moderating a small conversation after the presentation, which is the second Shoufen talk at Jackpine. There will be free beer at the talk, which starts 7pm at 704 Somerset St. West. Come welcome Kevin to Ottawa and check out more of his work at www.lokidesign.net

A few weeks ago I was commissioned to produce a series of images for Fido Mobile’s #GetCurious campaign. The images were to be a series local to Ottawa, some of which will be used in an Ottawa-specific music video by artist Keys N Krates. 

The project was right up my alley, as it were. I began repurposing existing images I’ve illustrated from around the city and installing them on telephone poles close to where the original illustration was made. As someone who spends a lot of time on location (en plein air) I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to bring viewers of my artwork to the actual place where the work was made. 

One of the themes across my illustrations of urban settings is the telephone pole, partic- ularly old wooden poles, riddled with staples. These poles were amongst the first place I began advertising and promoting my work when I moved to Ottawa. The notion of installing artwork (printed on high quality archival paper) stapled onto a gritty, tempo- rary setting was very interesting. After the initial installations & documentation, I began to return to each location (sometimes in hopes of photographing it in better light). Some of the prints stayed up for days, while others were torn down or taken within hours. 

The notion of remixing and re-appropriateing artwork is very appealing to me. I’m interested and excited to see how they will be used by director Vania Heymann for the Keys N Krates music video. It was a pleasure to return my artwork to their founding location and repurpose them for this project.