Design Exchange Guest Speaker

A short and sweet update. I know I mentioned in my previous post that I'll be a guest speaker at the Design Exchange, so now here are the details. I'll be a guest speaker at the Design Exchange's 'Drama + Design' workshop from July 19th to July 23rd. There are some other really great Toronto designers that'll also be speaking all throughout July and August. Click the link below for lots more details:
Design Exchange Design Camp
Also, new updates on the website.. New content in the costume / illustration sections. I got an e-mail today from the owner of the Sleeping Giant gallery in Toronto where a bunch of my illustrator friends have had work on display and I've been accepted into an art show for October 1st. Should be fun!

Starting my new job this week.. I'm excited!
P.S. Check out the side bar for my link on IMDB.. I have credits on IMDB! HOW RAD IS THAT. SUPER RAD.

Finally!

A couple of months ago, my friend Joshua Von Garber agreed to shoot the costumes from my thesis collection. This has been ongoing for quite a while - Trying to schedule time between our conflicting commitments and ALSO trying to sort things out with the 2 models. In the end, we only ended up using one model, Noemi. But she was absolutely perfect and looked beautiful in all the outfits and photographs. Josh also did a really amazing job with the location selection, lighting, posing, EVERYTHING. So now I can finally post them all up on my blog. Whoooo!





I`ve got a lot of work to catch up on, phone calls to make.. I`m waiting on some news right now. Hopefully, it will be positive! Maybe I`ll have something exciting to post soon.

Frantic

The craziness of the G8/G20 is over. So that means I can share my work with the people of the interwebs. I was hired by Oxfam Canada to be the costume designer for their protest stunts to draw attention to certain issues during the summit. Pregnant stomaches and nude suits were created and used to bring attention to the maternal health of women across the Globe. Oxfam was gracious enough to send me all the media coverage they could find, which is linked below:

The Star
The Toronto Sun
The Vancouver Sun
Calgary Herald
The Edmonton Sun
Global TV
CBC

I loved working on this project for a variety of reasons. The G8/G20 summit was something I was adamently against, so to have the chance to work with Oxfam to stage a public protest stunt was the perfect way to balance my costume designer work with my own political beliefs and activism. I feel the G20 summit was a defining moment for Toronto. I do not wish to paint all protesters or police officers with the same brush - But from what I've read, what I've seen and from close friends who were actually THERE during the protests, I think a lot of people saw the police force in a way they had never seen them before. The injustice of the conduct of these individuals is unacceptable. A public inquiry into the incident is important and necessary. We must exercise our rights as citizens and demand an investigation into the events of that weekend. Linked below is Amnesty International's Appeal to the Government of Canada to have an independent inquiry into the G20.
Amnesty International - G20 Inquiry
I just finished interning with Nina Okens, a costume designer working in Toronto. She was designing costumes for a play of 'Taming by the Shrew' by Shakespeare. I learned so much from her and really enjoyed the work. She was quite the inspirational lady to spend time with. It also proved to me that not ALL industrial machines are evil. So now I am definetely going to save up for one. She is also trying to introduce me to a friend of hers who works in film and television, which would be great! We'll see if it leads to a wonderous work opportunity.
I just finished my entry for the Hand & Locke embroidery competition a week ago or so.

OH YEAH - Other exciting news. I've been asked to be a guest speaker at the Design Exchange in Toronto. Very exciting!! So today I have to take a photograph of myself NOT looking silly (very hard to do) and send off a short bio. Something like, "Jenn Woodall is a sleep-deprived and anxiety-ridden basket case." YES THAT SOUNDS ACCURATE.

I got a job interview for a costume shop on Friday.. ALSO cross your fingers for me. Me and Trevor are plotting on how we can go to Fantasia for 2 days to see the premiere of the Scott Pilgrim movie AND a play with Jeffrey Combs played EDGAR ALLEN POE. Yeah, it IS the coolest ever. Yes, I WILL be poor. Poorer.
The photoshoot for my thesis collection is also finished - and hopefully I'll have some images to upload very soon. STAY TUNED - Same bat time, same bat channel.