Makers Artists United calendar cover by Elisa Yon.
Six local artists and makers are teaming up to create a calendar that celebrates Vancouver’s Chinatown, and they are looking to UBC Library’s Open Collections for inspiration. The calendar is the brainchild of local visual artist Elisa Yon, who came up with the idea after moving into affordable studio space in the BC Artscape in Chinatown. “When I decided to take a studio there, I wanted to start a project that responded to the context, to the neighbourhood, and one of the things that always fascinated me were all the Chinatown souvenirs,” she explains. “So I started Makers, Artists United (MAU) and my intent with the project is to create and reimagine souvenirs from Chinatown.”
Yon made a call out to local artists who had connections to Chinatown in some way. Several local artists and makers responded, and soon Janet Wang, Hillary Webb, Clare Yow and Marlene Yuen were involved, each with a unique artistic practice and a unique connection to Chinatown. Each artist was assigned a full season of the calendar, and some of the resulting original artwork draws on UBC Library’s Open Collections. Webb’s pieces, for example, feature embroidery work combined with iconic photographs of Chinatown from the Library’s notable Chung Collection, while Yow and Yuen looked to the collection for ideas and inspiration. “I was looking through the Chung collection for a different project I was working on about Chinese-Canadian labour,” shares Yuen, whose work will be featured in months January, February and March. “And I got really immersed in the research —the collection has been really helpful in providing ideas, fact-checking and imagery.”
January by Marlene Yuen.
With the twelve months of the year covered, Yon took on the front cover design herself and planned the limited edition of 200 calendars with Erica Wilk of Moniker Press, a local publishing studio specializing in Risograph printing.
“Risograph printing is quite unique,” explains Wilk. “The printer looks like a photocopier, but there are two ink drums inside the machine that function more like screenprinting. There’s a stencil with tiny little holes wrapped around the ink drums and the ink gets pushed through the stencil. You can only do two colours at a time, so if you want to use more colours, you have to run the paper through twice.”
June by Hillary Webb.
In addition to bringing artists and makers together, the calendar has truly been a collaborative community effort. Yon brought on members of the Chinatown community to consult on content and contribute food recipes, major neighborhood event listings and highlights of local histories and individuals whose contributions have shaped the neighbourhood.
“I see this project as a portrait of a community, an artists’ book, and a calendar,” explains Yon. “I like the idea that it can be read in many ways and that through this one object I can create a community around it.”
The 2019 MAU Calendar will be launched at this year’s Eastside Cultural Crawl.
Explore more than 210,000 digital objects in UBC’s Open Collections.
Are you using materials from our Open Collections in your work, research or art? Let us know! Get in touch at library.communications@ubc.ca.