If you missed last week’s talk with Charles van Sandwyk, the video is now available for your viewing pleasure on our website.
This short clip was shot with Charles shortly after his talk. He is a terrific speaker with a storyteller’s voice.
CreativeMornings/Vancouver couldnât serve up so much as a single coffee without our wonderful and dedicated volunteers. So this week weâd like to introduce a few of them to you. Wave hello to Heather Mitchell!
Charles van Sandwyk tells a Christmas story in July.
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Charles van Sandwyk showed artistic talent at a young age, proving to be an exceptional calligrapher in elementary school before going on to develop a unique style etching copper plates as a teenager, after his family emigrated to Vancouver, Canada.
Backpacking in his late teens, Charles found himself in Fiji, connecting deeply with the locals and, eventually, building a home on the island of Tavewa where he lived in a straw hut for ten years. His experiences on this island as well as education in his youth shaped Charlesâ appreciation for ancient living skills and a poetic way of life.
Now in Vancouver, Charles has brought that heritage with him, continuing to live minimally and mentor others in the art of bookbinding. In this talk, Charles discusses his craft, art, illustrations, the process of book making and tells a Christmas story.
Kim Werker is a writer and freelance editor who tries to make something â anything â every day. Many of those things are awful; some are not.
Her favourite passion is Mighty Ugly, through which she facilitates hands-on and discussion-based workshops and lecture-conversations that help people confront creative demons, experiment with new approaches to creative expression, and build confidence in what they make and do.
Her latest book, Make It Mighty Ugly: Exercises & Advice for Getting Creative Even When It Ain’t Pretty, will come out at the end of August.
Say hi and catch up at www.kimwerker.com.
How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
I donât define creativity; Iâm not terribly concerned with an exact definition, so I think of it very generally as having to do with solving problems, and I leave the pondering of more precise definitions to other people.
In my career, I strive to strike a balance between expressing myself and reaching others. As a writer, I try to avoid shouting dramatically into a void. Rather, I try to say what I need to say in a manner that allows/inspires/enables other people to engage with it in some way. Thatâs the problem I try to solve every day, which is the context in which I consider my work to be creative.
My career is more than trying to be a successful writer, though, and the problem I try to solve in everything I do is the problem of deciding not to create. Whether a personâs creative act might be figuring out how to redesign a spreadsheet at work or how to fill a 3x4-foot canvas for a gallery show, thereâs always a struggle involved, beginning with the decision to take on the problem in the first place. Iâm starting to ramble here. I will not spiral down into esoteric or erudite philosophizing in my talk.
Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
âInspirationâ is another of those words I find problematic! When I was 21 and went to my first big American National Park, I was appalled to find a spot called Inspiration Point. I felt no inspiration there! Why did the sign-maker and park-planner assume I would? How insulting.
No. As someone who rarely finds âtypicalâ things to be inspiring (the Grand Canyon? Unmoved.), I try not to think about inspiration at all, ever. Sometimes Iâm compelled to create, sometimes Iâm not. So sometimes I sit for hours writing feverishly and I forget to eat or go pee, and sometimes I watch entire seasons of dark, brooding shows on Netflix without feeling like making anything.
By not concerning myself with trying to find inspiration, I find those dark times down the Netflix rabbit hole happen less frequently than when I spend significant energy trying to remain âinspiredâ.
Whatâs the one creative advice or tip you wish youâd known as a young person?
That I am, as all people are in some way or another, creative in the first place.
I spent a lot of angst-ridden years as a young person concerned that I was nothing like the talented artsy people I saw all around me. (Iâve also given up being at all concerned with âtalentâ.) Iâd sit my young self down and say, âKim, quit your fretting about wanting to be creative. You are. Thereâs no one â or dozen â ways to do it, you just do it. Everyone does it differently, so get over yourself. Stop thinking, start doing.â
Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
Omer Arbel. Katrina Pacey. Jessica Glesby.
What are you reading these days?
Iâm reading a book called The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Canât Stand Positive Thinking, by Oliver Burkeman. Iâve been reading it for months, because I hate the idea of being done with it. The book is, generally speaking, about how accepting the crap parts of life is a surer root of happiness than forcing the crap out in favour of so-called positive thinking.
I encourage people to make ugly things on purpose, so itâs no surprise that a book with this premise would resonate with me. But itâs also a very well researched and -written book. Iâve learned a lot from reading it so far, and Iâve recommended it pretty much to every human being.
What has been one of your biggest Aha! moments in life?
I only remember the big ones. Here are a few: I had trouble saying the word âworldâ when I was a kid â too many glide sounds, I think. I remember that I was sitting next to my toy box and playing with a doll when I was around five years old and I pronounced the word properly for the first time. I felt so free and capable! (I suppose Iâve always been a bit obsessed with words.)
I remember when I discovered that Andre the Giant talked funny not because of his gigantism but because he was French and had an accent. That may not be the most politically correct thing to mention, but it was a big eye-opener for me, because it made me very keenly aware of the automatic assumptions I make all the time without thinking. After that realization, Iâve tried hard to notice those assumptions, and question them till they become more conscious or just go away
I had a very subtle aha! moment this year (I suppose its subtlety means it wasnât actually an aha! moment, but, well, Iâm breaking the rules all over the place) when I discovered that I can make very concrete commitments in regards to my personal practice of making stuff, and that I not only derive satisfaction from the commitment, but that itâs also immensely freeing. (Which is, naturally, hardly a unique experience. It is, however, something Iâll be speaking about in my talk.)
Speaker photo by Miranda Lievers, Blue Olive Photography.
Take a moment to meet artist Charles van Sandwyk â then be sure to register for his talk this Friday, July 4!
Born in Johannesburg in 1966 and raised in Vancouver, Charles van Sandwyk began selling his drawings and watercolors in the early 1980s.
In 1986, he won the Alcan Award for his limited edition book A Selection of Neighbourly Birds. The book, illustrated with etchings printed on an antique intaglio press, was his first venture into the world of handmade books.
Since then, Van Sandwyk has created a number of limited edition books. His charming private press books pair animal characters with whimsical verses.
Van Sandwyk’s style is inspired by the paintings and prints that hung in his family home. He splits his time between Vancouver and Fiji, and his enthusiasm for the natural world is clearly evident in his books.
Collectors have come to love van Sandwyk’s limited edition books for their beauty, simplicity, and vibrance. Some of van Sandwyk’s paintings hang in the National Library of Canada, as well as in several important private collections.
How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
I believe creativity is something we each possess. Even animals possess creativity. The creative surge often rises when faced with a challenge. Here is an example: the four of us who work together at CVS Fine Arts were not cut out at all for the modern world - but we were cut out for the real world - the world of delight, the world of kindnesses; the world of old -style beauty; the world of poetry and elegance. The only option for us was to make it work. So we made a nest for ourselves to create beauty, hoping we could spread the word if we found people kind enough to lend an ear.
My challenge has always been to exist in spite of, and make my way through all the disgusting nonsense of politics, mindless ownership and societal demands without blowing my brains out. Creativity is never taking no for an answer.
Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
My studio in Fiji is where I find my best creative inspiration - somewhere I can get away from it all. I create best in nature, away from the clamorous inelegance of modern life.
Whatâs the one creative advice or tip you wish youâd known as a young person?
It is hard to say… Some days it seems that I knew more then than I do now. I suppose the fact that ones early work has an innocence which, over time, fades and cannot be repeated, is something I wish I knew all along. Innocence cannot really be replaced by a mature, more practiced technique. Here’s another thought in hind sight: No matter how much you train yourself to emulate the skills of others, if you are after some sense of meaning in your work, then your true character will shine through regardless of how hard you are trying to copy someone else.
Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
Does this have to be someone local? If not then I would choose Wes Anderson who directed the movie called THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL. I also think that Neill Blomkamp the director of District Nine would be interesting.
Whatâs the craziest thing youâve ever done?
The craziest thing I ever did was also the most sensible: I lived for ten years in a little grass hut on an island in Fiji, learning to spear fish and grow vegetables. Subsistence living is poetic in its own way - it allows everything else in life to make proper sense of itself.
What fact about you would surprise people?
I think it may surprise people to know I am the world’s laziest workaholic. I go through protracted periods of guilt-ridden indolence, followed by tireless spurts of productivity. I am incapable of a daily 9-5 routine. The indolence is actually a thin disguise for thinking things through - there are no less than ten different stories bubbling away in my brain at any given time and it is just a matter of which one to pursue to it’s conclusion first.
If youâve been curious about the kind of artwork our June 6 speaker creates, ponder no more. Hereâs a selection of work by Heather Dawn Jones.
Aaron Smith, founder of GoVoluntouring, speaks on the freedom to help others at CreativeMornings/Vancouver.
Heather has a visual art practice that emphasizes the transformation of ordinary and discarded objects into immersive works of art. She began to develop her unique style in her final year of the B.F.A. program at Emily Carr University, working with ephemera and salvaged wood to build architectural cabinets.
From these small beginnings she quickly began to work big, building large scale architectural sets for The Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret including The Village Project â a village built from pallets and inhabited by artists â the immersive 1930s-esque set for Hard Times Hit Parade. She has since created work for numerous local theatre companies, as well as community events such as Illuminaries and Parade of Lost Souls.
Her most recent work includes a life size tessellated horse built out of punched tin cans and cold-forged recycled copper for the Chinese Cultural Centre of Vancouver. This project exemplifies her sense of creative reuse that remakes the familiar into the vibrantly unexpected.
Her work encompasses a strong sense of community, as expressed through the teaching of skills in workshops, working with other artists in collective creation, and designing art that facilitates intersection and connection. She is currently working as the lead visual artist for Vancouver International Childrenâs Festivalâcreating interactive art installations that engage children and youth in the making of art.
As of late, Heather has been dedicating her time to the development of a 50-acre international artist residency and performing arts centre, âThe Lookout Arts Quarryâ located in Bellingham, WA. As itâs name suggests, it was previously an industrial rock quarry site.
She lives in a hand built patchwork house on wheels, drives backhoes, builds large scale engineered artist facilities, builds wooden art installations including her favourite little lean-to church atop the hill, creates graphic design promotions, produces festivals, and organizes artist residencies.
She spends her free time expanding her skills as an artist into the realm of performance, shadow puppetry, dance, and experimental sound. In all, from visual art to performing art, graphic design to construction, her work is quintessentially quirky, engaging, playful, and larger than life.
How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
The english language contains only 26 characters, yet through reconfiguration entire novels containing thousands of concepts are built. Creativity is the reconfiguration of simple materials, movements, sounds, ideas into unique, less encountered forms.
It is the exploration of configuration. The more one practices this act, and it can be as simple as trying out a different way to walk from one side of the room to the other, the wider oneâs range of mobility / ability grows, the further away from ânormalâ oneâs range becomes.
The applied practice of creative exploration is a lens I direct towards all aspects of my life: ways of walking, singing, whistling, dressing, sewing, cooking, making⊠It is in the Visual Arts, however, that I have invested the most timeâhence my visual art work has traveled the greatest distance in exploration from the ânormâ. Similarly, my materialsâtin cans to paper trash ephemeraâexpress this creative exploration of what an art material can be and how art can be made.
Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
In the discovery of the everyday. I take note of what I find great quantities of (dumpsters full of a certain material), or what I am attracted to (gold foil from a chocolate bar), and I have a conversation with these materials. I pick objects up and turn them around, test their strength, weight, admire their colours and qualities, maintaining an open mind to observe what responses my imagination conjures.
Whatâs the one creative advice or tip you wish youâd known as a young person?
Rather, I might wish for less creative advice. Kids are naturally creative. It has taken years of practice to strip away the definitions of art and structures of art-making that have limited my ability to confidently create new work. The expectation is that art is made from materials bought from an art store, art is painting, art is drawingâIn fact, there are so many more possibilities.
Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
David MacMurray Smith. fantasticspace.com. Teacher of spiritually transformative performance art. His course work is one of the best kept secrets in Vancouver⊠it certainly changed my life!
How would you describe what you do in a single sentence to a stranger?
I simply state âI make artâ. I then point to different objects around meâpop bottle caps, a broken straw, a brick, a rock, a lamp post, whereupon I proceed to enact how I make art: standing atop a tall object, jumping down, running between the lamp post and a bench. Lifting my arms in the air I weave an imaginary creation around the person so that the lines I have drawn with my eyes, hands, and vocal exclamations surround them, they feel it and become a part of it.
Where was the last place you travelled?
New Orleans, in December. The great craw daddy toe tappin snap of a town. I lived and created out of two red houses that had been united by the falling of their centre walls, red light lit plexiglass placed between their divide to create a single large room. Many rambling staircases and attic spaces were seemingly strung all around, hanging from nails and pieces of salvaged wood.
Out back of it, recycled metal was welded together to create a tree house palace one could swing and jump about on with only some trepidation of its fear-inspiring heights. I collaborated with 10 other artists for 10 sleepless days and nights to create an immersive shadow puppet theatre piece for the Fringe Festival.
Momo (my artistic collaborator) and I became shadow puppets ourselves, our dancing shadows on the ground, the silhouettes of trees, the treehouse palace lit up like a stage, it all served to inspire the immersive, interactive shadow work we were creating at the time.
Heather has a visual art practice that emphasizes the transformation of ordinary and discarded objects into immersive works of art. She began to develop her unique style in her final year of the B.F.A. program at Emily Carr University, working with ephemera and salvaged wood to build architectural cabinets.
From these small beginnings she quickly began to work big, building large scale architectural sets for The Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret including The Village Project â a village built from pallets and inhabited by artists â the immersive 1930s-esque set for Hard Times Hit Parade. She has since created work for numerous local theatre companies, as well as community events such as Illuminaries and Parade of Lost Souls.
Her most recent work includes a life size tessellated horse built out of punched tin cans and cold-forged recycled copper for the Chinese Cultural Centre of Vancouver. This project exemplifies her sense of creative reuse that remakes the familiar into the vibrantly unexpected.
Her work encompasses a strong sense of community, as expressed through the teaching of skills in workshops, working with other artists in collective creation, and designing art that facilitates intersection and connection. She is currently working as the lead visual artist for Vancouver International Childrenâs Festivalâcreating interactive art installations that engage children and youth in the making of art.
As of late, Heather has been dedicating her time to the development of a 50-acre international artist residency and performing arts centre, âThe Lookout Arts Quarryâ located in Bellingham, WA. As itâs name suggests, it was previously an industrial rock quarry site.
She lives in a hand built patchwork house on wheels, drives backhoes, builds large scale engineered artist facilities, builds wooden art installations including her favourite little lean-to church atop the hill, creates graphic design promotions, produces festivals, and organizes artist residencies.
She spends her free time expanding her skills as an artist into the realm of performance, shadow puppetry, dance, and experimental sound. In all, from visual art to performing art, graphic design to construction, her work is quintessentially quirky, engaging, playful, and larger than life.
How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
The english language contains only 26 characters, yet through reconfiguration entire novels containing thousands of concepts are built. Creativity is the reconfiguration of simple materials, movements, sounds, ideas into unique, less encountered forms.
It is the exploration of configuration. The more one practices this act, and it can be as simple as trying out a different way to walk from one side of the room to the other, the wider oneâs range of mobility / ability grows, the further away from ânormalâ oneâs range becomes.
The applied practice of creative exploration is a lens I direct towards all aspects of my life: ways of walking, singing, whistling, dressing, sewing, cooking, making⊠It is in the Visual Arts, however, that I have invested the most timeâhence my visual art work has traveled the greatest distance in exploration from the ânormâ. Similarly, my materialsâtin cans to paper trash ephemeraâexpress this creative exploration of what an art material can be and how art can be made.
Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
In the discovery of the everyday. I take note of what I find great quantities of (dumpsters full of a certain material), or what I am attracted to (gold foil from a chocolate bar), and I have a conversation with these materials. I pick objects up and turn them around, test their strength, weight, admire their colours and qualities, maintaining an open mind to observe what responses my imagination conjures.
Whatâs the one creative advice or tip you wish youâd known as a young person?
Rather, I might wish for less creative advice. Kids are naturally creative. It has taken years of practice to strip away the definitions of art and structures of art-making that have limited my ability to confidently create new work. The expectation is that art is made from materials bought from an art store, art is painting, art is drawingâIn fact, there are so many more possibilities.
Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
David MacMurray Smith. fantasticspace.com. Teacher of spiritually transformative performance art. His course work is one of the best kept secrets in Vancouver⊠it certainly changed my life!
How would you describe what you do in a single sentence to a stranger?
I simply state âI make artâ. I then point to different objects around meâpop bottle caps, a broken straw, a brick, a rock, a lamp post, whereupon I proceed to enact how I make art: standing atop a tall object, jumping down, running between the lamp post and a bench. Lifting my arms in the air I weave an imaginary creation around the person so that the lines I have drawn with my eyes, hands, and vocal exclamations surround them, they feel it and become a part of it.
Where was the last place you travelled?
New Orleans, in December. The great craw daddy toe tappin snap of a town. I lived and created out of two red houses that had been united by the falling of their centre walls, red light lit plexiglass placed between their divide to create a single large room. Many rambling staircases and attic spaces were seemingly strung all around, hanging from nails and pieces of salvaged wood.
Out back of it, recycled metal was welded together to create a tree house palace one could swing and jump about on with only some trepidation of its fear-inspiring heights. I collaborated with 10 other artists for 10 sleepless days and nights to create an immersive shadow puppet theatre piece for the Fringe Festival.
Momo (my artistic collaborator) and I became shadow puppets ourselves, our dancing shadows on the ground, the silhouettes of trees, the treehouse palace lit up like a stage, it all served to inspire the immersive, interactive shadow work we were creating at the time.
