New Semi-Regular Series for The Edmonton Journal: Made In Edmonton

Often people get in touch with Sam Cupelli because they want a steel gate.  After they leave this craftsman's studio, called Simply Steel Metal Art Studio, they  have ideas for a whole lot more ways steel might fit in their home. In Cupelli's well-trained and creative hands, the options are endless: back splashes, wall finishes, chairs, table legs, spider webs, back lit bars and wall art...

Sam Cupelli at his art studio. Photo by John Lucas; Edmonton Journal photo credit.

This article is the start of a semi-regular series in the Edmonton Journal Homes Section, intended to excite our collective creative juices. There are so many ways to personalize our homes with art and function (often limited only by our imaginations). The series is also intended to feature the many amazing designer-makers in this city. They are creating beautiful things. With more buyers and collaborators like you and I, I hope they might stay in Edmonton and keep creating.

As William Morris so aptly said: “Let nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Avenue Edmonton: Style Q & A with Tyler Olafson

One of my favourite Avenue Edmonton covers.

Tyler Olafson is classic Alberta: bringing together Cows and Prada for a photo shoot that I really wish I'd been to. When I interviewed Tyler, it took me a half-minute to figure out that the guy sliding into the booth across from me (at Dadeo's) was there for an interview. On Style.  It wasn't that he didn't look nice enough, but his mustache was bushy and long.  And Avenue rarely seems to 'do' mustaches.

The 'stash cleaned up pretty good.  This is a Q & A with a guy a lot like the cowboys of old (not the new settled ones, but the Go West Young Man kind). He's an electrician and biker and rancher... he also wears Hugo Boss.

Edmonton Journal: Garden Art

Agile Lady by Ritchie Velthuis

For many years, I have passed, and paused at, and smelled this garden just three blocks from my home in the Alberta Avenue community.  While the plants are stunning, its vegetation isn't the main thing what makes me stop. Subtly scattered throughout is a menagerie of clay-fired and cement sculpture.

Homeowners, Ritchie Velthuis and his partner, Stuart Ballah, can often be found sculpting ice at our local winter festivals. In summer time, however, they turn their skillful, design eyes to their yard. Ritchie does mostly figurative art and he gracefully gave me a tour of their yard. See it here: A Yen for Yard Art

If his sculpture excites you, enroll in one of his classes at the City Arts Centre, and make one for yourself.

BEdition: U of A Education Faculty Alumnus

Kieran Block and I met at Transcend Coffee House in Edmonton for this profile. When he walked into the cafe, I'd never have guessed his journey of hospitalization to recovery. Only a year after the former Western Hockey Leaguer set his sights on an Education degree at the University of Alberta, a cliff jump went terribly wrong. He was told he may never play hockey again. He proved the docs wrong thanks to his determination and a different kind of game. Read his full profile here.

Avenue Edmonton: Work of Art

When Wendy Turner was 20 years old, she bought her first original pieces of art. Wandering in an Edmonton gallery in the late ’70s, she fell in love with two drawings by Victoria, B.C.’s Myfanwy Pavelic. The nude drawings, studies of Bill Brandt photos, are in black ink against a pale blue and cream backdrop. From afar, the bodies could be landscape form. “I saw them and I thought: ‘I want them,’” says Wendy, co-owner of The Artworks. 

This was one of my favourite homes to visit. So many things to look at, so many stories to tell- the piece could have been twice as long! Click here for the rest of the Article and further photos.

Couples in Business Together: Making it Work in Avenue Edmonton

The idea of starting a business with my husband has always held an allure. Lululemon and EventBrite were started and continue to be run by couples. So are successful Edmonton businesses the Duchess Bake Shop and Beacon Hill Properties.

When I imagine our life in business together, I see soft focus images of flexible schedules, days full of shared adventure, and a common purpose that draws us closer. 

Illustration by Dennis Orb; printed Feb. 2014 in Avenue Edmonton

My parents worked together for most of my childhood, and- for the most part- I loved that our whole family was incorporated into their work. It was only as I grew older that I became aware of the strain the business put on my parent’s relationship. The romance of the positives became more nuanced in my teens when my parents sought a totally different work- life balance.  Mom found a 9-5 job. Dad started a new company and many of the particulars of his business remained bound between the four walls of his office.

They both seemed to exhale with relief. Business together had been good, but it had been hard. 

Just as no one business is the same, so every couple in business has a unique story. I set out to speak to three couples that have adapted their relationships and businesses to suit their lives. Sometimes the business strengthened the relationship. Other times something- either the business or the relationship- had to “give”. In every case, these couples created something that was only possible because they were in it together.

Read the Avenue Edmonton article, Making it Work, here.

LINK Magazine: Darryl Cox Profile

Darryl Cox, Flood disaster relief lead for Brookfield Homes. Photo Credit: SAIT Polytechnic

Darryl Cox has been to most of the world's major distaters over the last fifteen years: the Indoniesian Tsunami, New Orleans' Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake in Haiti. He's gone as a team leader for Samaritan's Purse. Using his skills as a building contractor and carpenter, he's helped rebuild homes and communities, as well as supported imporant mitigation efforts that included sharing best practices on everything from cement mixes and building structure.

Then in June 2013, with Calgary overwhelmed with flood waters from the Bow and Elbow Rivers, his employer Brookfield Homes called him to lead a disaster relief team in his own city.    This was the first of a number of stories I have done on the Southern Alberta Flood Recovery.

Avenue Edmonton: A Modern Home

Photo Credit:  www.iangrantphotography.ca

When I arrived for this interview with Andrew and Viji Nataraj, their landscaping was still a mess of front-end loaders and workers. Even then, I could see the vision in that front yard.

It has only been the last few years that modern homes like this one, featured in Avenue Edmonton, have been sought after and built in this city. In fact, when I drove away from the home through the Glenora community, I counted three new, modern builds withing two blocks of them. Thank God- perhaps in twenty years it means that there will be more than bungalows for families searching for a larger homes in this city.

My three hours with the Nataraj's was largely spent on the main floor of their home- under soaring ceilings and surrounded by September light.  I spent another few hours writing this decor feature, beautifully photographed by Ian Grant.

The Edmonton Journal: Embracing the Golden Stain of Time"

Photograph by: John Lucas, Edmonton Journal

My time with Ruth Glancy was an afternoon filled with discussion of English literature, architectural and political theory.

I've always respected the Arts and Crafts movement- much of the theory's ideas of quality over quantity and beauty before utility resonate in my own interior design.

Meet Ruth Glancy and view her lovely home here. 

The Edmonton Journal: Highwood Distillers' Flood Recovery

Barry Wilde, President of Highwood Distillers.

The staff at Highwood Distillers had about six minutes to get out of the distillery. Still, on their exit two feet of water had flooded 1st Street in High River. Many were later stranded in their cars on the surreal drive home.

The Highwood River often floods the deck of the centre street bridge, but this year on June 20th, it did the unimaginable: it flooded most of the town.

Much of the distillery's spirits ready for shipping were destroyed, however, their whisky stocks were saved. When I toured their facility, 40 days after the flood, staff had worked 30,000 hours for 30 days. 300 trips had been made to the dump. While their losses were yet to be tallied, Barry Wilde, President of Highwood Distillers, said with a hint of resignation, "It represents millions of dollars of lost product and revenue." They still do not know if their bottling line can be repaired: and store stocks dwindle.

This Spotlight on Small Business feature was was printed in the Edmonton Journal on August 23, 2013 and the Calgary Herald on August 24, 2013.

E-Trail Alumni Newsletter: Tom Yonge Profile

High school is a critical season of life. It’s hard, funny, filled with ennui and other unnamed, uncomfortable emotions. For Tom Yonge, teacher at Scona High in Edmonton, AB, these critical three years represent an opportunity to expand kids’ sense of possibility. For his leadership students, he is working to build a community that will be a model of what can be.

This profile was for the digital, monthly newsletter directed to University of Alberta Alumni (of which I am one: grad '03, baby).

Todd Babiak Profile: U of A Alumni Newsletter E-trail

This profile "The Making of a Storyteller" was based on a conversation over a fantastic lunch at Highlevel Diner with writer and Story Engine founder, Todd Babiak.  I'd read his book, The Garneau Block, when it was first published in serialized form in The Edmonton Journal. In preparation for our interview, I read it all in one shot over the weekend.

There were so many things that resonated in that book (printed a decade ago), with the life and times of Edmonton today. Story Engine is facilitating a unique 'branding' process for the city, and Todd is right in the middle of helping form the narrative that he hopes Edmontonians will tell and re-tell to their visiting relatives and on their travels in far away nations.  Coincidentally, it is a narrative that  regularly pops up in The Garneau Block: Edmonton is a good place to make things. And, Edmontonians are exceptional "makers". While our conversation wandered like a jack rabbit trail in Kinnard Ravine, we kept coming back to this idea about what makes us who we are: as writers, as parents, as neighbours and as Edmontonians.

As I walked to my van through the muck of the spring slush (of course, I decided to wear my lovely yet impossibly slippery Fluvog heels) I fiddled with the recording app on my phone. Todd's interview  was there. It registered 0:00 minutes of recording. "F^#*ing f#&$..."

Thankfully, Todd is a compelling storyteller and our talk stayed with me long enough to write this piece.

(PS. I was a little disappointed he did not wear the purple suit to our lunch.)