ordinary ordinary ordinary raw, monotone, lo-fi.
Ordinary Woo Publication · Spring 2020
Letters from the Directors It is these times of uncertainty and loss when we come to appreciate the physical interactions within our community and education. These were so mundane and stable that we never imagined the possibility of losing them. However, I am grateful that Ordinary was able to wrap up just in time with amazing faceto-face ideation, critique, and revision. Ordinary showcases simple, raw, and monotone work, and it seeks to find balance and calm in this current mess. We created Ordinary to complete the year off with Extra – Ordinary! It has been a pleasure to be your Editor in Chief this school year. I am happy to have known all of you, and I want to thank my wonderful Woo Team and the Emily Carr community for your dedicated participation. I cannot wait for next year’s new creations for Woo Publication!
Our Ordinary issue comes out at quite an unordinary time: social justice movements are happening on a global scale, while the planet is literally on fire, and a pandemic is sweeping over our population. Yet, it is only fitting that Ordinary comes into life now: this issue is all about the gritty, unfinished, and commonplace side of our art and design practice, in contrast with the polished and playful Extra. Wrapping up my terms as Creative Director, I would like to say thank you to all the Woo readers who have been supporting us, and especially to our Woo Team, without whom there would be no Extra – Ordinary! I am beyond excited to see what the next generation of the Woo Team has in store for our student publication! Creative Director Triet Pham
Editor in Chief Christine Fwu
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Media Director Nicole Yamamoto
Woo Team
Media Team Carrie Braybrooks
Editorial Director Sanya Arora
Aamir Ullah
Editor in Chief
Shannon Miller
Christine Fwu
Creative Director Triet Pham
Alex Westcott Genki Ferguson
Design Team
Madeleine Salomons
Aviva Davis
Monique Germain
Kayla Drobot Paula Burbano Dory Xu Bonnie Wong
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Editorial Team
Selected Works
DANIKA OYSTREK · Untitled · 28
CAMILA SZEFLER · 6:30 AM · 6
ALEX GARCIA, YUJIE TANG, & ROWENA LU · NU · 29
ZARA HUNTLEY & MAGGIE LIU · Plastic Water · 7
JULIA CHANG · 5483 · 30 – 31
SABRINA BOULAY · Objects of the Everyday · 8
MICHELLE CHAN · Sunday Morning · 32
JINGTONG CHANG · Off Grid · 9
AILY NISHIOKA · Let Go · 33
KOBIE GINGRAS-FOX · Morning Walk · 12
ALEXANDRA BOX · Which way is up? · 36
MADELEINE SALOMONS · An Upward Slope · 13
RUBY PANG · Lipton Tea with One Lemon Cube · 37
EMELIE KANWISCHER · Mutual (Im)permanence · 14 – 15
DUNG NGUYEN · Night Parade of A Hundred Creatures · 38
ABI TAYLOR · Intruder · 16
AURORA QUINLAN · A Search for Something · 39
HAZEL XIANGHUI HO · Oden · 17
SOPHIA MIDDLETON · Vessel · 40
VY LE · The Woman · 20
AMICA PASQUALE · Tiny Timothy
VINCENT CHORABIK · Laundry Day · 21
the Summer Brachiosaurus · 41
YSABEL OWEN · Growth · 22 ZHONGTING LI · Taiwan, 2019 · 23 BONNIE WONG · 90’s Babies · 24 KRISTY HUI · Headspace · 25
ELAINE ZHOU · Floating · 44 KAYLA DROBOT · Raining in Pasadena · 45 MORGAN MARTINO · Vernacular Artist · 46 VANCE WRIGHT · Silvery Steps · 47 SARAH DOUCETTE · Table Settings · 48
Woo Editorial SANYA ARORA · 10 – 11 ALEX WESTCOTT · Love, Hate, Love, Hate Relationship with Math · 18 – 19 MONIQUE GERMAIN · Grocery List · 26 – 27 MADELEINE SALOMONS · It is the light, for me · 34 – 35 GENKI FERGUSON · On Leaving · 42 – 43
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6:30 AM Camila Szefler • @camila.sze printmaking linocut • 2019 An average morning.
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Zara Huntley & Maggie Liu
Plastic Water
Plastic Water is a data visualization of the 57 active long-term drinking water advisories in Canada as of December 2019. This number fluctuates often, and as of January 2020, is at 58, a majority affecting First Nations communities. Each ring represents a community with inadequate access to clean drinking water, which often leads to buying bottled water.
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rendering & 3D printing • 2019
oxidized ceramics • 2019
Sabrina Boulay • @legendary_cactus
Objects of the Everyday
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This series of pictorial embroidery illustrates ancient Egyptian livings, reflecting on where information and knowledge could be present, and what forms we could use to embody them.
Off Grid 9
Jingtong Chang embroidery & wood • 2018
*breathe in*
Sanya Arora
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*breathe out*
Morning Walk
Kobie Gingras-Fox • @manybeeskobie gouache on paper • 2020
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An Upward Slope Madeleine Salomons • @madeleinesalomons photography series • 2019
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Mutual (Im)permanence Mutual (Im)permanence is a mixed media performance executed in winter 2019. The performance took place over the course of three hours and is documented through the use of stop motion. In the performance, the materials used are ice, dye, wool, cotton, and a felting needle. I am seated on the ice, and begin to agitate the fibers through modes of stabbing and folding; these actions lend way to the ice becoming encapsulated in the wool. Once encompassed, a second transformation occurs through the continuous disruption of my weight and heat in contact with the felt and ice.
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Emelie Kanwischer • @_eemeliee_art mixed media performance • 2019
The interaction between myself and the dyed ice produces a sense of urgency. The ice is vulnerable against my warmed body. The contrasts interrupt one another through the action of melting, causing dye to expand, and staining myself, the wool, and the drop cloth. In the shell I created, Impermanence is conveyed through the material use of ice and the ephemerality of the object; melting, evaporating, and changing in form, a comment on our climate crisis. Permanence is articulated through the traces left behind from my impact on the dyed ice. The heat from my body caused the ice to melt more rapidly, but the act of containing the ice in a bundle of wool, and needle felting the wool together, slowed this process and represents the small actions we take to help the environment. All these actions upon the ice release an expansion of dye, permitting a visible and permanent trace left behind. The title of the work Mutual (Im)permanence, is meant to convey the dichotomy of these associations between myself and the ice, mutually responding and reacting through permanence and impermanence.
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I drew this over winter break. The inspiration came from a dream and the drawing is based on my desk at home.
Intruder
Abi Taylor • @abi.t.t watercolour & ink • 2019
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Oden Hazel Xianghui Ho • @hazeandmirrors watercolour • 2019
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Love, Hate, Love, Hate Relationship with Math
Alex Westcott
As I grew older, math grew worse with me throughout highschool. I was put into the math classes with the students that could complete seven homework questions in a matter of minutes, while I sat with both hands pressed against my temples or pretending to jab a pencil in my eye. Why this was my fate, I couldn’t say. Goodness knows I brought the class average down considerably. Eventually doodling or scribbling question marks over my paper became a customary practice, especially during tests. I will say however, I didn’t just throw in the towel with math. I put in the hours. Unfortunately enough for myself, no teacher, tutor or close relative of mine would have considered me particularly successful in the foreign world of mathematics.
Once upon a time arithmetic wasn’t so bad. I didn’t really mind memorizing the multiplication tables. It was kind of like learning the alphabet, deciphering a code that could tell me all kinds of secrets after I puzzled it out. It was a game of sorts and I wasn’t half bad at it, but it was ruined when some of the alphabet was thrown in with the numbers. They called it algebra. Pure madness. My juvenile academic career had been breached by x’s and y’s. I had an evening tutor with whom I’d spend hours reviewing, in order to prevent me from getting a failing grade. We would work through each relevant practise question in the book while she stared into my soul, making me promise I understood. But I’d walk into class having studied all the rules, laws and equations beforehand. Unfortunately enough, the material would evacuate itself on its own condition, leaving the space between my ears with zero answers to pull from and an utterly drawn expression on my face. Thriving in any math course would perhaps be mission impossible.
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I would take my seat at the front of class, “write” my math test and leave the classroom about thirty-or so minutes after everybody else with a smile. Here is why: at that point in my life, there was no greater feeling than leaving room twelve and not having to walk back in for the next four or five periods. It was this fact that always put an ear-to-ear grin on my face that would rest there for the remainder of the day. I remember reading an essay on the importance of math by a man named Pawan Srivastav. I couldn’t tell you the exact reason for reading it, but I was likely looking for some kind of understanding as to why I really needed this subject in my life in the first place, seeing as everyone seemed to make it out to be such a necessity for survival. Mr. Srivastav said that studying mathematics prevents one from being negligent or slipshod and that it increases mental awareness. I questioned this because during the average math period, I acutely remember my brain feeling like mashed potatoes. My face would rest in a vacant expression in the cups of my hands and my overall state being almost completely the opposite of what Pawan considered “alert”. More often than not, I’d leave the seventy minute period feeling slightly jet-lagged.
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I haven’t done half bad without conquering the whole numbers thing. Sure addition, subtraction, multiplication and division all come in handy every now again but I’ve come to terms with not being a wizard at math. I’ve learned other, less algorithmic things that I can offer, and I’ve come to terms with that. For all I care squares can remain incomplete, equations can prevail un-factored, and x and y can stay hidden. Delicious ambiguity.
"Once upon a time arithmetic wasn’t so bad.”
The Woman Vy Le • @vee_lng woodblock print • 2018
A very preliminary work I did when I first tried out woodblock printing, which eventually made me fall in love with the technique.
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Laundry Day Vincent Chorabik • @vincent.chorabik assemblage / painting • 2019
1 Green Dress, 2 Leggings, 2 Shirts, 4 Socks, 1 Shoe Lace, and 4 Clothes Pins on a Wooden Stretcher. Celebrating and representing the invisible labour of doing laundry, typically placed on women.
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Growth Ysabel Owen • @ysabelowen scratchboard • 2019
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Taiwan, 2019 Zhongting Li • @tommyillustration gouache • 2019
On May 24 th, 2019, Taiwan became the first nation in Asia that legalized same sex marriage. The illustration is a celebration of the great step forward for legal rights in the Asian LGBTQ+ community.
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90’s Babies Bonnie Wong · @hoyandesign beads · 2019
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Headspace 25
Kristy Hui · @kris.hui.photography photography · 2018
Grocery List Monique Germain
Ground beef, pasta, sauce, Bell peppers, cucumber, peas, Potatoes, onion and eggs, Milk and butter and cheese, Sandwich spreads and filling: Honey, banana and jam, Lettuce, bacon and mayo, Nutella, tomato and ham, Band-aids.
Tea (earl grey and mint), Soy sauce, rice and meat, Salt and pepper and ketchup, Hamburger buns (whole wheat), Apples and pears and oranges, Grapes (both red and green), Toilet paper, tissues, deodorant, And one (1) singular bean.
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Untitled
Danika Oystrek · @danikaart 35mm film · 2020
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NU The NU yoga block is a re-design of a home accessory made out of wood. It has a completely different style from the typical yoga block on the market. We thought it would be especially fitting for Vancouverites. It would be sold at Walrus, a local boutique.
Alex Garcia, Yujie Tang, & Rowena Lu ajgarcia.myportfolio.com · wood · 2019
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5483
Julia Chang • @y.tzuc 35mm film • 2019
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5483 is the distance in kilometres between Egypt and Iceland. Two places in extremities of geography, temperature, and culture, yet the distance between the two identities are removed through these moments.
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Sunday Morning
A plant-filled household on a blue weekend.
Michelle Chan • michellechann.com digital illustration • 2020
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Let Go Aily Nishioka • @ailyn.026 digital illustration • 2019
This piece depicts two people who desire to stay together despite knowing that letting go is best. The white string that forms the words “let go” expresses the fragility of their connection as the string unwinds.
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It is the light, to me A man walks through an underground train station. He speaks loudly, excitedly, drawing the attention of most within earshot. He pauses as he walks, pulls his phone away from his ear, and taps it frustratedly. “Ah, stupid phone,” he says. He sighs and places it in his pocket and walks towards the exit.
I see an old man sitting on a bus on my way home from work, with a backpack in his lap and an old MP3 player clutched tightly in his fist. The song Eternal Flame by The Bangles is on the screen. I can hear it through his earbuds. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back.
Madeleine Salomons
After it rains, a certain sort of emotion bubbles in my chest when I take a breath. It is the feeling of something heavy lifting up up up.
There is a wide, blue, cloudless sky I see when driving in my hometown. It is an expanse that is impossible to replicate.
The last the last the last smile I can remember was a man I passed on a busy street carefully carrying a large box with several potted plants balanced on it. When I complimented him on the beautiful flowers, his mouth opened and bloomed across his face in a happy pink curve. “I’m turning my house into a home!” he exclaimed.
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A dog prances around a large, green park in the daytime. Their owner calls them loudly, whistling and patting their legs. The dog catches up to a woman carrying weighted grocery bags and whirls around her. She laughs.
My childhood comes back to me in memories memories memories. The young girl across from me on the bus holds her Slurpee carefully, and closes her mouth over the straw. I can feel the sticky, sickly sweetness sliding down my own throat.
There is a hollowness that is low in my belly on the first night in an apartment that is all my own. Somewhere in the world, that same hollowness exists in someone else. It makes the emptiness a little easier to swallow.
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The last the last the last song I can remember was a beautiful melody sung by a woman on a street corner with a scarf wrapped around her neck and a big sweater enveloping her torso. Cold air escaped her mouth with each note. Her nose was red, and she grinned when a mom gave her child a toonie to drop in her hat.
I wake up to the silence of a snowfall. It is unfathomable that the wideness of the world can be quieted quieted quieted with a single thing.
Van Gogh writes to his brother. “Still,” he writes, “a great deal of light falls on everything.”
Which way is up? Let us rename the streets to reflect our affinity for the workers
Alexandra Box glass, metal, plaster, & wood • 2019
Hycroft China Factory in Medicine Hat, Alberta
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Lipton Tea with One Lemon Cube Ruby Pang • rubypang.com digital illustration • 2019
Taking a deeper look into my grandfather’s decades-old daily routine, our relationship, and our cultural background.
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Night Parade of A Hundred Creatures Dung Nguyen • @little_schwarz pen & ink, digital illustration • 2020
Every great escape happens at nightfall, all going to Bremen. “Things better than Death, we can find anywhere.”
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Aurora Quinlan • @perpetuallypainting mixed media • 2019
This is an exploration of light within dark, and colour where there shouldn’t be any; a search for something where nothing should be.
A Search for Something 39
Vessel Sophia Middleton • @sophiajoyart salvaged pallet strapping & steel clamps • 2019 Using the “ordinary” material of pallet strapping, these large basket forms intend to spark conversation on industrial labour and needless waste present in Vancouver, in dialogue with the repetitive tradition of weaving and basketry.
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Tiny Timothy the Summer Brachiosaurus
Amica Pasquale • @never.more pen & ink • 2019 Tiny Timothy is part of a collection of works depicting dinosaurs wearing various pieces of 19 th century clothing, each set in a different season.
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On Leaving Genki Ferguson
“Can I tell you a story about boats?” I glanced at the clock over his shoulder, subtle, so as not to depress him. It was only half past eight. “Sure,” I said. “We have time.” He leaned closer to me, elbows on the diner table, an unusual seriousness taking him over. Then again, so much had changed about him, perhaps this new attitude wasn’t that strange at all. “When I was sixteen, a friend of mine told me about a boat that comes to dock here, about once a year,” he began.
“Yes, yes,” I said, trying to affect an aura of nonchalance. I’m not sure why, in moments like this, I’m always so concerned with appearing aloof. “This ship,” he continued, “takes on many different forms. My friend had taken it the previous year, this tiny sailboat, a dinky little thing. He said it took him around the world, that he felt the sun against his face, tasted the seamist in the air. I was told that it was a transformative experience, that the child who had left the dock was wholly different than the adult who had returned. But, my friend told me, sailing by this boat comes with a price.” A waitress came to clear our table, asking if I was done with my long cold plate of fries. Outside, the wind continued to wail bitterly, pounding against misted windows. “Who was your friend?” I asked. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he was persuasive. That I took a ship of my own,” he said. “And?”
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“And it was beautiful, terrifying, and life affirming. My ship was different. Rather than a dinghy, it was a massive steam vessel. Think wood panel floors, peeling paint, stern paddle-wheels and steam stacks. It suited me just fine.” I took another look at the clock. 8:39. We were running out of time. “It took me to places I’ve never seen before,” he continued, “places I hope to never visit again. I was younger then, still wanting to explore, fascinated with the smallest peculiarities. I came across countries where I was beloved, countries where I was despised. Met people who smiled when they spoke the truth, people who smiled when they wanted to deceive you. I saw people dance like their bones were made of water, whose every move felt inevitable, as though the entire world demanded, in that moment, that
... it was beautiful, terrifying, and life affirming. the body move in time. The full splendor of creation was before me, and I spoke in languages which no longer exist, worshipped at temples which have since turned to dust.” 8:45. In the distance, I heard the station bell ringing. He heard this, and instinctively reached for my suitcase, as if preventing me from leaving. “And then what?” I asked. “Where did the boat end up taking you?” He looked at me, hurt, as though I’d missed the entire point of his story. “It took me back to you.”
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Floating Elaine Zhou • @_mameko_ pen & ink • 2019 This work was created based on the feelings I experienced when I listened to “Space Song” by Beach House. I was attempting to achieve the feeling of floating, of being in between falling and flying; neither in the sea, nor the sky.
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Kayla Drobot • @auntie_kay_ mixed media • 2020
I am interested in the way that visual culture is consumed in mainstream society and popular culture. The internet provides constant interaction with images and information, of not just art, but also advertising, design, photography, and the increasingly popular memes through excessive browsing and scrolling. The everyday has transformed into an idiosyncratic inundation of information that requires the subject to make meaning out of the experience of boundless streams of images.
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Raining in Pasadena
Vernacular Artist Morgan Martino • found photograph created circa 1940, found 2018
This small photograph of an unknown painter was found in 2018 among a bin of similarly discarded snapshots. Now severed from its original context and history, the viewer must create their own narrative of who sits at the easel. The shaky and out of focus nature of the photo further creates an air of mystery and banality, capturing the viewer in its ordinariness.
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Vance Wright • @vancewright embroidery & textiles • 2019
An embroidered image of a stairwell rendered in black embroidery thread and pearl decorative beading.
Silvery Steps
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Table Settings Sarah Doucette • @sardou_ pen & paper • 2020
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49 Feel free to use these pages for your own purposes! They are perforated so you can tear them out of the book.
Note Pages
Woo Challenges @woopublication
@facesofemilycarr
#woochallenge Woo Challenges are unique weekly prompts that
Faces of Emily Carr captures the stories,
encourage the Emily Carr community to exhibit
perspectives, and lives of the people at Emily Carr
and showcase their work, no matter the medium.
University. Interviewing students, faculty, and
This platform expresses the diversity, talent,
staff, FEC highlights the diverse backgrounds
and creativity that inhabits the school.
and cultures individuals come from and how their
Students can tag #woochallenge or @woopublication in their stories or posts to be featured on our Instagram page every Friday.
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practices have been formulated. The goal of this student-run project is to share people’s stories, familiarize faces, and help create a community in and outside the campus.
Colophon WOO is available at Emily Carr University and READ Books. The views expressed in this publication do not reflect those of Emily Carr University or the editors and publisher. Inquiries can be addressed to the Directors at woo@ecuad.ca © 2020 including all content by the artists, authors and editors. All images are reproduced with the permission of the artists. Woo assumes all work published here is original and the work is the property of the submitting students. All artwork titles
Printed with Hemlock Printers. The typefaces used in this publication are: Redaction · designed by Jeremy Mickel Output Sans · designed by David Jonathan Ross This issue is limited to 350 copies. WOO PUBLICATION 520 E 1st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T 0H2 2nd Floor
and student names are trademarked or copyrighted by their
EMAIL · woo@ecuad.ca
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Woo gratefully acknowledges the support of students, alumni, faculty, the Emily Carr Students’ Union, and the Administrative
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Board at Emily Carr University.
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