Over 1,000 years ago, in Japan’s Heian (which translates to “peace and tranquility”) Court, a lady-in-waiting to the retired Empress received a gift of paper… The story goes that the Empress had no need of this “bundle of notebooks” and asked this lady-in-waiting what she should do with them. Her response? “This should be a pillow, then…” Historians have dismissed literal translations of “makura” as “pillow” – at least in the way we know a pillow to be. But Japanese head rest

The other morning I was lingering in my bed in my Airbnb in Maine and noticed something stunning on the white paneled wall…the light danced enticingly, almost teasingly. Juxtaposed with the leaves and window blinds it was an overwhelmingly poignant sight that succeeded in captivating me for a good few minutes. I was working out an accompanying audio track in my head when I got the idea to archive this fleeting moment on camera (iPhone6 to be exact), and marry it to some music

This weekend I had the supreme privilege of doing a #53takeover of the Instagram account of my favourite app – Paper, by Fifty-Three (@fiftythree). The folks at Fifty-Three have been nothing but lovely in all respects and the app has veritably changed my life and how I work – both professionally and creatively – so needless to say I was tickled. I approached the takeover from a teaching perspective – to me it wasn’t about showcasing my art but rather a few thematic “lessons”,

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. My favourite drawing app, Paper by 53 , just released a cool new set of tools called Think. They promise to “recognize and correct objects in real time”, plus include a “fill” feature…that is, you can draw an imperfect circle and the app with make it perfect. I’ve been debating whether to use it or not. You see, I really love the look of haphazard strokes…of hand-drawn sketchiness…of things being off kilter just a little (you know,

An Instagram Perspective Story I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with hashtags and social media lately, particularly because: 1. Finding stories with data intrigues me 2. I like the serendipity aspect 3. I want to further explore McLuhan’s “medium is the message/massage” concept One blog post I’d recommend is this one by Clive Thompson: “The Tag Is the Soul of the Internet” He addresses the McLuhan/Innis notion of bias in communication: “That how a medium functions is fa