News « Lindsay Zier-Vogel

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Women on a mission

Friday, April 26th, 2013

Photo by Diana Nazareth Photography

I’m so excited to have been featured in Diana Nazareth’s photo series, “Women on a mission.” It’s such an honour to be included and it was so much fun to talk about the inception and future of The Love Lettering Project, what I plan on doing in the next five years (ulp!) and the name of Amelia Earhart’s childhood dog.

(And in Indiegogo campaign news, I sat on a train on Thursday and my inbox keeps dinging with donation emails!! I’m so thrilled!

Spread the word! Share the link! Donate if you can! Every little bit helps!)

Indiegogo campaign + The Love Lettering Project’s UK tour

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

I’ve just kicked off my very first Indiegogo campaign to take The Love Lettering Project across the pond for a 5-city UK tour this June!

2013 marks the 9^th incarnation of the project (!!) and I’m thrilled to have received a touring grant from the Canada Council for the Arts for this tour. For two-and-a-half weeks, I’ll be inviting people to write love letters to their cities in London, Brighton, Oxford, Nottingham and Bristol.* I will be partnering with not-for-profits and other arts organizations (including the incredible A Good Week!)

This tour has been partially funded by the Canada Council with the requirement that I fundraise the rest of the money for this ambitious expansion project. Ta-da, this is where you come in!

I’ve kicked off an Indiegogo campaign to raise the extra funds. (And there are perks! So many perks! Postcards! Hand-bound books! Personalized love letters! Head on over and take a look!)

Every little bit helps! And please share it however you can — Facebook, Twitter, blogs, telegrammes…

The countdown is on!

* cities might change as plans become concrete!

ps: My unending gratitude goes to Christa Couture who created this incredible video! And to Susan Kendal for donating her sewing skills in the perk department!

pps: the incredible embroidered wood map of Toronto behind me in the video is a Casey von Esteban original. A stunner!

April 25, 2013 7-9pm: Urban subversions: A public conversation

Friday, April 5th, 2013

I am so excited to be heading to Montreal to chat about The Love Lettering Project and urban subversion with the at University of the Streets Cafe, through Concordia University’s School of Extended Learning!

On April 25 from 7-9. c’mon by Le Milieu (1251 rue Robin, Montreal)

More here …and below:

Urban subversions: How do spontaneous artistic actions transform our city and our selves?

Imagine you’re walking down a city sidewalk, surrounded by crowds of strangers, submersed in a concrete landscape of buildings and streets. Out of the corner of your eye an unexpected something catches your attention. Maybe it’s the burst of colour of a yarn bomb, a modified slogan on a prominent billboard, or a hidden envelope tucked away for whoever stumbles upon it. How does this spontaneous artistic action make you feel? What impact does it have on your day? On your experience of the city?

Anonymous and diverse, urban interventions are subtle yet powerful means of reclaiming the urban commons. But the question remains: what’s the point? Who engages with these fleeting projects and how? Can we ever know?

For this public conversation, we invite those who create urban interventions and those who experience them, those who love them and those who are more critical, to join us in discussing what motivates these acts of street art and how their impact might be evaluated and understood.

Guests:
Allison Gonsalves is an educational consultant and teacher. She also sings in a choir and volunteers for Rock Camp for Girls. In her spare time, she enjoys making projects that generate interactions between strangers. She likes thinking about ways to create learning spaces for big ideas and paradigm shifting.

Lindsay Zier-Vogel is a Toronto-based writer, arts educator and love letterer. Lindsay is the creator of The Love Lettering Project, a community-arts engagement project that has brought nearly 3,000 love letters to strangers over the last eight years. The Love Lettering Project was deemed one of the top 50 reasons to love Toronto in Toronto Life. She is currently working on a novel. lindsayziervogel.com and loveletteringproject.com

Moderator:
Alex P. Megelas is into researching the power of DIY tek communities, doing sports-for-the-people and drawing water-colour maps of dungeons. He’s in a band called Best Friends. He bikes around town. He has cats.

April 8, 2013: Victoria College’s Graduate Banquet

Friday, April 5th, 2013

I’ve been lucky enough to meet a few Vic students this year. Damn, they are an inspiring bunch! And so, I’m so honoured to have been asked to speak with graduating University of Toronto students at this year’s Victoria College Graduate Banquet this spring! I can’t wait to chat about the post-university possibilities…!

Backbones and backup dancers

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

Our movie poster…for the eventual VV biopic

I have two extraordinary friends, and the three (four if you count our collectively imagined assistant, Dane!) of us make up the Veggie Vag – the slightly irreverent and wholly inappropriate name for our Virtual Editing Group.

After weeks (months?) of editing each other’s grants and resumes and potentially inflammatory correspondence, Christa Couture and Susan Kendal and I formalized this emailing process and became The Ladies of the VV. Two years ago April 1^st. (Susan wrote an ode to the VV last year, as did I, in celebration of our first anniversary).

It’s been the very best two years, bringing us together across far too many kilometres and countless projects and dreams and big ol’ life things.

We are each other’s backbones and backup dancers and I don’t think there’s a single word I send out that these two brilliant women haven’t read/edited/weighed in on.

And armed with our first year anniversary mugs and stationary, in its second year, the VV has seen countless triumphs – among them, two (!) cross-country tours, costumes designed and made and trapezed, a huge move to a new city, a manuscript completed, countless grants edited and sent off, grants received and celebrated…

But perhaps two greatest achievement of the VV this year: a Je m’apelle Steve birthday flash mob and getting matching tats.

Yup, the VV are badass now and “Operation: Love fullstop” is in full effect.

And even Dane, our collectively imagined assistant got a matching tat. (And yes, of COURSE he’s on twitter!)

And so, I lift my Dane-made almond milk latte (followed by a celebratory mimosa!) to my brilliant VV-ers. Happy, happy second anniversary to the most incredible collective I’ve ever known. You make me a better, more articulate artist and a happier and more grounded me.

Announcing The Love Lettering Project’s 2013 UK tour (!!)

Friday, March 29th, 2013

I am beyond thrilled to announce a 5-city UK Love Lettering Project tour this June! More details soon (including a lil fundraising campaign to supplement funding), but for now, a huge thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts!

The UK! Love lettering! Hellooooooo 2013!!

The light is returning. And her name is not Amelia

Friday, March 29th, 2013

The light is returning (though I did sleep in, so I wasn’t waking up to 6am dark the way I usually do during the week…). But the light, the light! It makes everything feel more possible. Especially this novel-writing thing, that can, at 6am feel more daunting than anything else I know). But the light! The light!

Some recent words from t his new project…

When Amelia was flying, she’d be too high up to make out individual people, but just in case anyone was looking up, hand shielding the sun from their eyes to see the metallic belly of her Avian Moth, she’d dip left, waving her wing hello. It was called a moth, though it did not beat its hairy wings around light bulbs or other imagined moons. Instead, it had two sets of wings, like a horizontal bookshelf, wings that were made out of painted canvas stretched so tight, it could have been metal.

“Latte, please,” I say when I get to the front of the line.

“Name?” the barista asks.

“Pardon?”

“Name.”

“Amelia,” I say, before realizing he meant my name. “Sorry,” I start, but he’s already written Amelia on the side of the cup, and underneath a big L for latte. It’s too late to tell him my name isn’t Amelia. Claire. It’s Claire.

Spring…ish

Thursday, March 21st, 2013

It’s almost here. Almost…alllllmooooooooost.

This year, spring is like trying to wake up before the sun rises (my every morning). Just one snooze button. Just one more. Just. one. more. Except it’s snow storms instead of snooze buttons…

But the sun shines for longer and longer and my home is filled with many mason jars of tulips these days.

And the light still falls in unexpected places. Even between the snowflakes…

And then I’m asked to chat about The Love Lettering Project with inspiring students at my alma mater, Victoria College at the University of Toronto, and the mitts and the winer boots and the permascarf don’t matter one bit…

(And how can you go wrong when walking in to speak feels like you’re walking into the set of Downton Abbey?)

Till the crocuses appear…

Alligator (pear) pie

Thursday, March 21st, 2013

“Give away the green grass, give away the sky, but don’t give away my alligator pie.” ~ Dennis Less

One fateful June afternoon some time ago now, time was tight and I realized I didn’t have any sweetened condensed milk to make my sister’s annual birthday key lime pie. The Internet promised avocados would work as a replacement, but with just four ingredients – avocados, maple syrup, coconut oil and key lime juice, I was skeptical.

Turns out the creaminess of the avocado was a perfect replacement for sweetened condensed milk and it also makes for a much more tart, less teeth achingly-sweet pie.

The coconut oil hardens it all up when it’s in the fridge, and the lime keeps the avocado from turning brown. It’s the easiest pie I’ve ever made – and with a kindergarten teacher for a mom, and Dennis Lee poetry as a childhood staple in our household, making Alligator (Pear) Pie was just too fitting.

In the last over the few years, I’ve discovered the brilliant combination of gingerbread and lime and switched from a store-bought graham cracker crust to a homemade gingersnap crust. It’s so easy – crushed gingerbread cookies with melted butter, pressed into a pie or tart tin. Ta-da!

Read more about my avocado key lime pie (with the recipe!) over on Gastropost!

Oh, February

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

Confession: February is not my favourite month. I love the cold, and I’ve got the world’s best parka, but I’m fully ready for it to be not-February.

I’ve done the embrace winter thing with a lot of cozy fires, mulled wine, cross country-skiing and I’ve been dreaming about summer — sitting on the edge of a dock, picnicking in the park, but the best antidote so far has been heading over to the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library and writing away under the towering books.

The Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library

Man, I love that place!

The other few thing that have helped February be as un-February-y as possible have been:

- these heaps of love letters all over the place

- Andrea’s heaps of colour and perfect Sundays

- Casey‘s hilarious Valentines (and of course her wood-embroidered maps — my single favourite possession!)

- The incredible music on Treme. (And Bunk playing the trombone! Ha!)

- Brunch. Because brunch makes everything more awesome.

- TYPE Book’s incredible windows by Kalpna Patel. She is a marvel, that one. Check out her most recent one!

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