Last August I co-curated an art show called Smile On Your Brother that was hosted by Livestock on it’s tour across Canada from Vancouver to Calgary to Saskatoon to Toronto to Montreal to Quebec City. It was a charity show where all of the money raised went towards buying underprivileged kids skateboards. Now this might seem strange to some but for a lot of people I know (myself included) as kids and teenagers, skateboarding was one thing that really kept them out of trouble, and the Contributor charity which produced the show knows this just as well as anybody.

The latest Contributor project is called One Way Or Another and I am again co-curating, this time along with Andy Jenkins of Girl Skateboards, Mike Giles of Furni, Justin Cooper of Society 6, Annie Lam of Breadwinner and Sandro Grison of Vancouver’s own Color Magazine. It’s an online project where we did a public/juried call for submissions, then we had some wild cards where we invited established artists to be involved. How it works is that you go to their SITE and find the artist who you like (out of a stacked stable of more than 40), then you pay $150 and that artist creates a one-off skateboard just for you to hang on your wall. The money then goes directly into buying skateboards which will then be distributed to kids all across Canada. Everybody wins. GO NOW.

THE OFFICIAL WORD:
Contributor has teamed up with Society6 and Club Mumble to curate our second art show in support of Contributor. Building on the success of last year’s group show, “One Way Or Another” plays upon the personal nature of a skateboard. Things like how you grip your board, how loose your trucks are, and heck, how you know that the size of your wheels down to the slightest of millimeters will make the hugest difference. In the end, this little wooden toy seems to be made just for you.

Combining an open call at Society6 and a group of specially invited guests (curated by Andy Jenkins, Bob Kronbauer, Sandro Grison, Justin Cooper, Mike Giles & Annie Lam), we have selected over 40 artists/collectives from around the world to create original artwork on full-size blank maple decks. These specially made boards will be sold at our online shop (www.wearecontributors.bigcartel.com), with all the proceeds going directly back to getting skateboards to kids across Canada.

What makes this project unique is that rather than people buying a already finished piece of artwork, their purchase will commission an artist/studio to make a board especially for them, so when it arrives, it’s an awesome surprise – kind of like a familiar chocolate with a hidden tasty centre!

ART SALE INFO
To see full listing of artists, please visit Read more

If you’re looking for something super interesting to do tomorrow check out Paul Wong’s 5.3, the third of five interactive multimedia projects he’s presenting during the Olympics. Here’s a video about the entire project, below is the info on this particular installment…

The official word:
The third in a series of 5 weekly events, LED Down The Garden Path at the Bloedel Conservatory. Forget robotic lights at sea level, LED at the highest point in the city will be illuminated by an old-school carbon arc searchlight. Paradise will be transformed by sublime projections, evocative images and unexpected elements at Queen Elizabeth Park. Wong and guests have created a media-art installation featuring dozens of new works, including Strangler Tree, The Fallen, Scorched, 2Hot2Handle, Save The Queen by Paul Wong, Walking Through Circles by renowned photographer Brian Howell, Ampli Fly by Christian Nicolay, and Hanging by Heather Keung.

For list of works and to experience ’5′ virtually visit
www.5.paulwongprojects.com

Saturday Feb. 27th 5pm to 10pm
TICKETS $10 AT THE DOOR
Bloedel Conservatory @ 33rd Ave. between Cambie and Main St., Vancouver,
BC Parking opens at 4:45, $1 per hour for this event only. Public
Transit: Canada Line Oakridge 41st.

If you remember back in November we held our annual donor drive and we previewed our blank 2009 donor plaque. Well, we just got it back and now everybody who made a donation to our not-for-profit (Vancouver Is Awesome Inc) in 2009 has their name laser etched into it! This plaque will be proudly hanging on the wall of our office forever. Click it to see a large version and, if you donated, your name!

We rely on donations from the community to help support us and we can not thank you all enough for your incredibly kind donations which help us continue to do what we do. Without your continued support we would not be here.

If you’ve only recently discovered us or you didn’t get a chance to donate during the drive, please consider clicking below to make a donation by credit card or Paypal. We accept them year round and are incredibly thankful for whatever you can offer to help.

Last night Backstage Vancouver held an hour-long Round Table at The Railway Club to “discuss the various challenges we all face in our roles in the independent music industry, and how Read more

a new online magazine + daily blog that is a collaborative project by creatives within and outside of vancouver.

01 magazine | no. 1 | the optical issue
robert geller, stand up comedy, nick pittman, it girls,  mathew bushell, society of the spectacle, joanna bean, witch, design crunch, future folklore, the quiltmaker of gee’s bend.

magazine | blog | facebook

including VIA contributors-
redia soltis, chris allen, jon coleman, grace carter, and myself.

other contributors-
nathalee paolinelli, mel paget, laura vignale, neil simonton, jason upton, thomas lohr, becky brisco, beth richards, caine heintzman, stand up comedy boutique (in portland), josh olson, matthew brown, and DMN & BBLZBB.

Chris Allen is a super talented designer and photographer who I always seemed to hear great things about before I had the opportunity to meet him. His work has been published in Color, Transworld Skateboarding, Font: Classic Typefaces for Contemporary Design, and h(y)r collective to name a few. He has produced work for the Gagosian Gallery, Etnies, The Cheaper Show, Lifetime Collective, Super Champion, Livestock, Made Mag, Endeavor Snowboards, Vancouver Film Studios and Pyrrha. Chris currently is working as a Senior Designer at Cause+Affect, the people behind Pecha Kucha Vancouver. Cause+Affect is a consulting and design studio that specializes in brand identities, print, exhibition design and architectural environments. At the studio, Chris’s work environment changes daily – he could be on location working with a photographer, at the printer on press, working on concepts or refining a final artwork, presenting to a client, or buried in a book doing research for a project. This is Chris’ day to day.

Read more

I’m proud to announce we launched our 2009 website today. For those who don’t know about Endeavor Snowboards, it was started by myself and Scott Serfas, both born and raised in Vancouver, so that’s pretty awesome. This is our seventh website – time flies. Especially cool about this one is we showcase all of the artists we have worked with over the past couple of years – a lot of which are from Vancouver or at least live here now. Jeff Hamada, Nathan Mathews, Dan Fong, Nathalee Paollini, Derek Stenning, Corey Sheppard, Chris Allen, Randy Ross, Rob Dow, Sean Coggins to name a few.

Anyways, check it out – hope you like it!

http://www.endeavorsnowboards.com

Now that the snow has mostly melted, been blown away and/or just plain ol’ disappeared, it’s time to break out these SNOW PHOTOS that we got you to send in during that insane storm that hit us in December and stuck around until January. Remember? How could you forget? Well, in case you did, here’s a collection of more than 40 images that pretty much sums it all up…

CLICK TO SEE ALL OF THE PHOTOS! >> Read more

The new Hyr Collective online magazine is out. I did some styling work with Hyr Collective featuring the store Jonathan and Olivia for this issue. The mag looks great! Also the cover of the magazine is a landscape shot taken from an airplane by another Vancouver is Awesome contributor Chris Allen.

www.hyrcollective.com

To the untrained eye, this might appear to be your average, run-of-the-mill latte…

However, if you look a little closer you’ll realize that…
Read more

300 pieces of art at $200 a piece! Have a look at their site to dig through the bios and samples of work from the over 150 artists who are involved, then make sure to head down to the Storyeum building this Saturday to check out the show.

Here are a few of my favorite folks who are in the show…

Andrew Pommier

Basco Five

Chris Allen

Dave Barnes

Peter Taylor

Rick Marr

Sean Orr