Tom Froese

Robert Chaplin makes snowflakes. You can get one too if you like.

Robert Chaplin was born under a lucky star and raised in the Canadian wilderness. Royal Canadian academician, Guinness World Record holder, publisher and hard stone carver.

Robert Chaplin has drawn pictures every day since the age of five, works to the trade in abnegation of convention, and builds his nation one handshake at a time.

How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
Creativity is given, all people are creative, all of our ancestors were creative, they created us, and they survived long enough to do so. Perhaps its a matter of expression, born of necessity. My survival has depended entirely upon production, in preaching to the converted and working out from there, in developing pieces, which may find quiet enjoyment in the company of another.

Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
From my collectors, friends and colleagues, at the bank, in my kitchen, on the street, in a forest, in the Garbage can, at work in my studio with my ass in the chair. Creative inspiration is difficult to quantify, and maybe even harder to find when you are actually looking for it. Think of all the many problems in your life, how many solutions are there to solve those problems?

What’s the one creative advice or tip you wish you’d known as a young person?
It’s said that youth is wasted on the young and wisdom is wasted on the old. I wasn’t listening to any advice as a young person and think it might be possible that each bit of valuable advice ever received, happened after earning a hard lesson. That in achieving failure we find our greatest success. That and, all the right people are the ones who show up, they are yours, cherish and entertain them.

Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
Hobo Divine, Bruce Turnbull, and Jim Ramsay.

Hobo Divine: Animator, designer, and composer knows as much about timing as everyone alive combined. He lives in Vancouver, taught me how to time my storyboard with a metronome and has worked on animation projects including but not limited to; Ren and Stimpy, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Mad TV.

Bruce Turnbull: Genius painter turned construction contractor and used that process to create a network of enthusiastic art collectors. Born in Vancouver, currently living in Armstrong.

Jim Ramsay: Architect by training, sketchbook genius, patron, maker, and collector by profession.

What did you learn from your most memorable creative failure?
“Be a Primadonna in production and nice at all the parties”

What’s your one guilty creative indulgence?
Writing cheeky rhymes.

What are you reading these days?
This list. ;-)

How would you describe what you do in a single sentence to a stranger?
I make things.

What myths about creativity would you like to set straight?
That the idea is the most important thing.

Who has been the biggest influence on your life? What lessons did that person teach you?
My father taught me that walls are not barriers, and that you can fly a kite high enough for people to take notice.

What was the best advice you were ever given?
See number 2.

What books made a difference in your life and why?
‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelly. Read it in grade four, needed the dictionary, looking up words and reading interrupted the flow of description and slowed me down, so after I’d finished, I read it again. I wouldn’t say it is the best written book but, as it was created by a home schooled 19 year old girl, it provides an excellent foil for public education and allowed me to bypass teen lit.

What has been one of your biggest Aha! moments in life?
When I discovered that one could make bad flaws into choice accents.

If you ever have a conversation with Ryan there is a good chance that at some point he will ask you ‘why?’ Growing up, he took apart and put back together many things just to understand how they were built. He has an annoying tendency to research in detail everything he buys to make sure that he isn’t making the wrong choice, and ended up buying a fixer upper Mid Century Modern house because he watched too much HGTV and figured that it couldn’t be that hard to renovate it into a home worthy of a spread in Dwell. He was wrong.

This constant search for understanding the things around him is what led to working in the field of User Experience. A combination of physical and digital product design experience at Nokia and Microsoft Game Studios along with an MBA in Design Strategy from California College of the Arts in San Francisco led Ryan to the role of VP of User Experience at Engine Digital.

It is here that he finds new ways to apply existing and unconventional approaches to interaction, function and content to define and influence the strategy of businesses that are integrating digital in completely new ways.

How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
Creativity is about finding an unexpected solution to a problem with constraints not directly under your control.

Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
A big part of my work is understanding what people are doing, and more importantly why they are doing it that way. I have been fortunate that my work has taken me to many countries around the world and while this typically involves having interesting conversations with people doing cool stuff, I actually find a lot of inspiration in observing how people perform pretty mundane, everyday things differently from country to country and what they have come up with to make it easier for them to do these things.

What’s the one creative advice or tip you wish you’d known as a young person?
Do. Then once you think you’ve got the hang of it, do more. Discovery happens in the midst of action.

Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
A computer. Seriously. Like in Her. How cool and creepy would that be? I bet her perspective as to why people do what they do would be fascinating.

What keeps you awake at night?
Getting too comfortable. It’s one thing to feel proficient and confident in what you are doing, but to me, if you start to become satisfied and settle into being comfortable you have become complacent and are not making progress. When I start to feel that way I know it’s time to change things up and try something new.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?
Soon after getting married, my wife and I went to Mexico. As part of this trip we thought it would be interesting to catch a bull fight, but what ended up happening was me being volunteered to step into the ring to fight a small bull, matador outfit, cape and all. It was probably the longest two minutes of my life, dodging a few hundred pounds of charging bull, but I escaped getting flipped on my head like two of the other three ‘matadors’ and best of all ended up taking the grand prize of a t-shirt and bottle of tequila!

This is a special event as part of Vancouver Design Week 2014, happening September 15–28. CreativeMornings is committed to celebrating emerging creative talent of all kinds, so we are happy to participate in VDW2014 as an opportunity to cross-pollenate and empower designers and design-thinkers, and help encourage dialogue about creativity and design across all disciplines, catalyzing an even more transformative Vancouver design culture.

Reece Terris is a Vancouver based artist whose work alters the expected experiential qualities of a place or object through an amplification or shift in the primary function of an original design.

Past projects include a six-storey apartment building temporarily installed in the rotunda of the Vancouver Art Gallery, a pedestrian wooden bridge connecting two residential homes, and an architectural false front added to the existing false front of an artist-run centre. 


His practice is manifest through a variety of media, including sculpture, performance, installation, and photography, and quite often, through their hybrid execution, complicates the traditional definitions of each of these.

How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
I define creativity as a making things happen in the world. When the urge or desire to make something real becomes insistent I typically begin looking for an outlet for the the production of that creative impulse.

Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
My creative inspiration typically comes through an awareness of the space that I am in and imagining a formal response to what the space offers. A kind of sculptural dialogue between what is already there and what I am imagining could be there. (I also let my mind wander when reading).

What’s the one creative advice or tip you wish you’d known as a young person?
It took me a long time to get back into post secondary education. Perhaps going back earlier would have been good for me.

Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
Alexandra Morton (living). Or Guy Debord, Gordon Matta Clark or James Brown (deceased).

How would you describe what you do in a single sentence to a stranger?
I create architectural installations and interventions which involve a modification or shift within the intention of an original design.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?
I snuck off to Hungary to crash my parents backpacking trip with the intention of pretending to be my Hungarian double. It was very difficult to locate them however and I ended up diving into a taxi they were about to get into.

What fact about you would surprise people?
My life is well past it’s halfway point. Whenever I think about it, it surprises me. I suppose it may surprise others as well.

To view some of Reece's work, visit ReeceTerris.com

Check out this great blog post from photographer Vivienne McMaster who shares her thoughts on our talk last month with Kim Werker.

CreativeMornings/Vancouver is proud to support Vancouver Design Week! Visit www.vancouverdesignwk.com & register to stay up to date & get involved. Follow @vandesignwk on Instagram and Twitter. #vdw2014 #vancouverdesignwk #vancity #vancouverisawesome #yvrdesign #vancouver

CreativeMornings/Vancouver is proud to support Vancouver Design Week! Visit www.vancouverdesignwk.com & register to stay up to date & get involved. Follow @vandesignwk on Instagram and Twitter. #vdw2014 #vancouverdesignwk #vancity #vancouverisawesome #yvrdesign #vancouver

We recently welcomed Cossette to the CreativeMornings/Vancouver family, and the honeymoon has been splendid.

A leading integrated marketing communications agency in Canada, Cossette is a close-knit community of talented people and innovative creative experts who build powerful brands for their clients. They’re also our newest support partner, and we’re excited to see our complimentary communities mingle.

"As a agency that celebrates all forms of creative expression, the fit with CreativeMornings is a no-brainer," explains Nick Richards, Cossette’s VP Creative Director. "Every day we invite and embrace creative opinion and inspiration from all corners of our own organization. To be a part of CreativeMornings who support the cultivation and sharing of fantastically talented creative thinkers from all corners of our own city seems like a perfect fit."

We would like to extend our gratitude to Cossette for being a local institution that supports and believes in the power of creativity and community engagement.

Learn more about Cossette on their website, or say hello on Facebook or Twitter.

Photo: Some lovely folks from Cossette’s Vancouver office, taking in our August talk with Kim Werker. (Source: Cossette on Twitter.)

Andrea Chlebak is the Senior Digital Intermediate (DI) Colourist and Director of Creative Services at Central, a boutique post-production facility in Vancouver.

Even as a young child in Winnipeg, Canada, Andrea was inclined to view the world as a series of moving pictures. In fact, her earliest paintings feature the family’s kitchen curtains billowing in the breeze. She fell in love with photography as a teenager, but a continued fascination with movement ultimately led her to film.

A fortuitous encounter with film as an art student first opened Andrea’s eyes to the possibility of a career as a colourist, but several years would pass before she took her seat in the colour suite.

After graduating from the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design in 2002, Andrea honed her skills in on-set photography, and picture editing before joining Central in 2004. When the company opened the city’s first DI colour grading studio, she seized the opportunity to become a colourist’s assistant.

Within six months, Andrea had earned the main DI colourist credit on her first feature film. Since then, she has cast her keen eye over a rapidly growing library of television series and films, including Hollywood heavy hitters like Elysium and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and award-winning documentaries like Facing Ali and Saving Luna.

Having studied art and film and spent years behind the lens as a photographer, Andrea brings an artistic sensibility and technical rigour to her projects. Her flexible approach and infectious personality have resulted in rewarding collaborations with respected directors, cinematographers and VFX supervisors.

Outside the colour suite, Andrea finds inspiration all around her, from the chestnut tone of her morning espresso to the rich emerald forests and cool grey waters of the Pacific Northwest.

How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
I used to think of creativity as being synonymous with productivity, but lately I’ve been thinking about it more simply as the process of making connections. I visualize this as looking through a viewfinder to photograph a scene. The image you produce is simply the result of the connection process. Seeing the scene in real life, looking through multiple lenses and angles, and then choosing a combination of angle, lens, and exposure is the result of you being able to see the same thing in different ways and connect a few ideas.

When I work on a film I learn as much as I can about the director’s main influences and then I collect inspiration from a variety of sources to inspire the colour treatment for that film. Forming the vision is in many ways more creative than the actual production aspect of what I do.

Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
People and places. Most of my collaborators (directors, cinematographers) have fought hard to get to where they are and are extremely passionate about what they do, meaning they all have good stories. Spending time getting to know them, learning about how their experiences and motivation, really inspires me and influences how I work.

I also feel that travel brings necessary insight, so I try to plan in a small break at some point during a big project. I find that getting away from the work, enjoying life and seeing a different part of the world really helps invigorate my process. Most often I return to my work and something has changed in how I see it.

What’s the one creative advice or tip you wish you’d known as a young person?
Share your work and ask for criticism, but don’t attend every review of your work. Let people meet about that scene, layout, website navigation etc on their own — force them to summarize their reactions and [attempt to] give coherent notes. Remove yourself from the discussion, especially with a group of producing types.

By doing this you spare yourself irrelevant notes and comments motivated by fear or lack of knowledge (e.g. “Can you make that text bigger?” “Can you centre the photo so people definitely see it?” ” Can you make everything brighter and less interesting because I am worried that the person with the old television, who has the colour settings set to ‘Sport Mode’, won’t see every detail in that shot?”).

If you show up to a review like that you are saying, “Please! please give me all of your notes and then integrate everything you say.” The outcome is rarely positive; either you get stuck defending your work, embarrassed to be on the project, or you become a production artist enabling the “design by committee” process.

Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
Terri Tatchell, Pete McCormack, Evan Goldberg

What fact about you would surprise people?
I am a would-be 8th generation baker. My parents actually owned and operated a bakery from when I was about 4, so you could say that I grew up in a bakery. The experience is so much a part of my personal make-up, I can’t help but reference baking as a metaphor for what I do… I also make a mean artisan sourdough.

How does your life and career compare to what you envisioned for your future when you were a sixth grader?
In the sixth grade I was obsessed with Disney (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and The Lion King especially) and I loved to draw. I asked for a framed cell painting from The Lion King one Christmas and I dreamed that I would be an animator when I grew up.

Funny enough, I just finished grading an animated film with Roger Allers, the director of The Lion King. So you could say that I wasn’t far off in my vision. He even drew me an original Simba for my wall since I never got the cell painting.