Introduction

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hello there everyone thank you for joining me today my name is sarah huffman and i am the art rental

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and sales associate here at the art gallery of alberta we welcome you to our meet the artisan series sponsored by epcor’s heart and

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soul fund here at the gallery we embrace the teachings of tatewa a kree phrase meaning welcome there is room

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in our house even the virtual one everyone is welcome i am delighted to be your host for this

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hour joining me today is diana frost of coloring it forward before we dive into the subject i’d like

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to highlight that this is an interactive event and we’d like to hear from you you are welcome to use the chat window on the

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side screen to share your comments as we discuss with diana if a question gets unnoticed or

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unanswered at the time please know that we will review all unanswered questions before we wrap up today’s event originally from quebec

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diana spent her teenage years in western africa which was an early awakening to different cultures

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and the difficulties of living in a developing country following that experience she obtained a

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chemical engineering degree with the intention of helping people to improve their standard of living

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by working on water and sanitation projects after working as an environmental

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engineer and simulations engineer for six years at enbridge she left her job to work as a volunteer

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in peru for two years on optimizing existing water and sewer systems

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at the end of her contract she came back to alberta to work for the center for affordable water and sanitation

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technology a startup non-profit organization with whom she pioneered train the trainer programs on household

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water treatment projects throughout latin america and the caribbean diana then worked on water distribution

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and treatment systems for consulting engineer firms in calgary aside from being an engineer diana is

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also a nagokwin metis an artist and a musician in the spring of 2016

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one morning she woke up from a dream that had showed her the way to help indigenous people

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by founding the coloring it forward project to date she has published four coloring books

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that share elder’s teachings and indigenous artwork from the black foot den ojibwe and cree

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nations and created a social enterprise that supports indigenous artists elders and community development

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projects her accomplishments include publishing indigenous art and reconciliation calendars christmas cards

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journals and t-shirts as well as helping to paint large indigenous murals and has started

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a series of portraits of indigenous heroes what a fantastic introduction for

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this amazing person thank you so much we would love to give a warm welcome to

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diana frost hello

Dianas Journey

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hi everyone thank you so much for joining us today diana i hope the

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weather is nice where you are today i know it’s a little bit chilly up here in edmonton

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being beautiful sunny blue sky well not right now but i mean

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it’s right now but that was earlier a very nice last week um

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some very uh unseasonal temperatures right now yeah yeah yeah definitely

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awesome well after reading that whole wonderful uh biography little bio that we have for

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you i have so many wonderful questions and i’m sure the folks who are joining us this evening also have questions

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um so maybe let’s get started on um your journey and how you decided that

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you wanted to be an artist and you wanted to help in in engineering and all of those wonderful things

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okay uh well i mean um when i was a teenager and a child and

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all that stuff i i didn’t uh i wasn’t always building houses with legos and like

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taking stuff apart so i wasn’t doing engineering i what i actually loved to do was artwork and i

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loved reading uh i loved all the creative stuff but

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then uh you know i figured well you know i i don’t want to be a starving artist

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and so um i decided that i’d i’d go into a technology career and uh since i was

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good at math and um i uh i decided to go for engineering since there were a lot of

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women in engineering when i graduated or when i went went into university

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and my first intention was to work on the environment because i’m a bit of a tree hugger even on a book

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publisher which is kind of um you know a contradiction a little bit there but

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yeah i’m a tree hugger and and then while i was in university i discovered that what i wanted to work on was water

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and sanitation projects in latin america specifically and so um

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so that started my uh my journey toward uh you know working on water uh water

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projects absolutely that’s wonderful and we do have a presentation uh that we’ve prepared today so we have

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a couple of images that you’ve provided us um do you want to give a little bit of context about why these

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organizations and these images are important to your story sure so i participated in a lot of

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programs early on in my career and my life this was one of the first ones that i

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that i participated in engineers without borders i actually um was part of founding um

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the engineers without borders in my university we had never heard of engineers without borders at the time

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and uh we decided to to found one and uh we ended up going to china for two

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to three weeks sorry three weeks uh right in the middle of my engineering degree and it was part of that um experience

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that i met a professor whose specialty was water and sanitation in developing countries and that’s when

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the light bulb went off cool yeah so then when i by the time i

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graduated my chemical engineering degree i uh i was looking for a water a water

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job and i couldn’t find there’s no jobs it was like now there was nothing right so i joined another program

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called the international association for the exchange of students for technical experience and they offered me a six-month job in

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norway wow so this was totally unrelated to my

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engineering degree i was going to do technical translation from english to french

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of medical manuals it was boring as all heck but it was a job and it got my first

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um experience overseas living by myself in a different culture a different

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country [Music] and so i went six months and then i

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traveled around europe a little bit and uh yeah that so that was those two

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were some pretty good um experiences traveling on my own without my family

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mm-hmm absolutely and i bet that that helps make a lot of uh oh sorry go ahead now go ahead you go i

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was going to say i i bet that um allowed you to make a lot of different connections um with engineering and you know in

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norway you probably got some more context and some um some connections with folks that

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may have inspired you along the way and it was very interesting to just learn how people think

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like in china and norway it’s people have different culture there and a different way of

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seeing the world and so it was two two good experiences for that yeah absolutely wonderful and we also

Working in Peru

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have some some nostalgic images yes this is um i’m in bolivia in this

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picture in the highlands and i’m just having fun with one of the local ladies

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uh trying to pretend like i’m helping her even though i have no idea what i’m doing i’m stove i was uh there to attend a

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water ceremony because they had heard that i was uh that then one day i walked into my

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boss’s office and i quit my job and i went to live in peru for two years

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wow working as a volunteer on water and sanitation projects

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everyone thought it was crazy you know leaving a sure job with a

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really good salary to go work for free in a country that was a little bit insecure

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still like pretty a little dangerous still but um it’s what i wanted so i went there and i

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help people to optimize their water and sanitary voila absolutely so what kind of

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resources differ depending on like when you are in peru how is it different than um

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than other places that you visited what kind of resources do you mean um like for the sanitation um and

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optimizing their water um is there different ways that they went about it

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previous to you coming and giving them a little bit more knowledge

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it’s a lot of places in in latin america not everywhere but a lot of places

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the quality of the water coming out of the top is not dependable right and so in a lot of

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places the kids will get sick a lot sometimes die and you know the problem

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is the parents won’t have certainty that if they drink the water from the tap that

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they won’t get sick and so the sand filters that i was teaching people about in the ceramics

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they’d help people to um to treat the water themselves in their house so that they would know

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that when they’re drinking the water coming out of that filter it won’t make their kids sick and so it

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was like a big like they were so happy to have those yeah absolutely that is something that is a

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necessity as a human being so for you able to be able to provide that uh certainty for them

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i bet was really special yeah yeah it was really wonderful and because i developed the train the

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trainer approach uh by the time i left that job i think i

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had helped around three or four hundred thousand people wow to get water and get it for

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themselves not you know with no dependency and then it got the program got replicated to

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asia and africa and now i think cost is probably helped in the two or three million or more

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wow that is amazing diana yeah oh this is a fun experience i had

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this is a very short experience i had in rwanda where i went with water for people

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and i i was teaching people how to test their water from the back of a

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truck so using a portable water testing kit yeah i know this is weird i’m talking about water a lot but

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um i guess for people who might you know not have traveled a lot or

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might have interested in knowing um you know why why do i do such different things well

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it’s because i get bored a little adp

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i love trying new things and visiting new places and like in this case they’re like come and drum with us and i’m like

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sure that’s awesome oh and here’s a photo of

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me um teaching or with the people that were helping me organize the workshop to

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build these biosand filters you can see the concrete filter in the middle there it’s filled with sand

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and gravel and allows people to treat their water even water that’s brown would come out clear

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wow that’s amazing yeah this is in peru this one here but i also did it in did

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workshops in dominican haiti uh bolivia

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and was this these um the non-profit that had started

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yeah gotcha and now on to to your

Coloring It Forward

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my yes so um i’d love to hear um

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about coloring it forward from your perspective okay so uh in 2016 and in 2015 i was

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kind of bored i was working a regular engineering job i had left the cost and i was just doing uh water

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treatment plant design and wastewater treatment design and things like that so i was bored it was kind of

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it’s a little bit dry comfortable yeah you know in the evenings i go back to my artwork my music

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and just trying to look for something more fun more creative to do on the side right and so i looked into um i looked into

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book publishing for a little bit and uh i found that it was really tough to do

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because um and then and then one morning i woke up and i’d had that dream

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and it was right in the middle of the adult coloring book um phenomenon a couple years ago

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i remember not fondly i know right there was coloring books everywhere really yeah and i

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i woke up and i’d have this really clear dream that i needed to make a series of coloring

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books it didn’t say one book it said a series of coloring books with elders and artists from different

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nations and as you can imagine coming from an engineering background i was like

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okay you’re like no one else do that you know and at the time like i wasn’t

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super connected uh you know i i didn’t know any blackfoot artists

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and i was talking in discussion with some with a lady on vancouver island

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she said that really i needed to start in my home community because originally my first um my first

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artwork that i was drawn towards was the haida art that’s why i called her and she said

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well you should really start locally and i’m really actually grateful for that piece of advice because

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she was right i mean you know i live here i live in you know the blackfoot

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territory so it makes sense to do a first book on the blackfoot and um you know it did make me

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re-examine what is my home community because i’m from quebec originally and i’m algonquin

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so what did i did i consider home community right so that’s when i first had the dream my

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husband was also quite surprised and then

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trying to find artists because i figured that was the first step and uh and eventually i found uh ryan

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jason allen willard who’s from and uh black he’s blackfoot and uh and i went

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up to red deer drove up to red deer to meet him and we uh we had a chat which started out with

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him looking at me like what the heck who the heck and then by

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the end of the conversation when i explained to him that what i wanted was to help him share his artwork and

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to help him get better promoted and to you know find an elder who would write stories and share teachings and help people connect

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with all the beautiful things then he was then he was like oh that’s a great idea you know at the time there were no

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indigenous coloring books that i could find was a new idea and

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and then i decided that i wanted to make it a social enterprise and so at the beginning i only had the

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business it was not uh incorporated or anything it was just uh uh just a you know sole

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proprietorship and i was uh making donations from sales

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so even first year i made donations from sales right from the get-go later i learned business-wise that

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wasn’t maybe the best financial decision right but for me it

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just felt right because for indigenous people you know caring about your community and sharing

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what you receive is very important and that really hit a nerve for me i

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really wanted to to give back absolutely

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yeah so this is the uh first book that came out correct yes

First Book

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it is yeah it’s this one’s the french version we have them in english and in french

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the first three books are in french as well as in english the latest book i haven’t translated yet

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the ojibwe one but this book was quite successful i was we were so pleasantly surprised my

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husband and i uh you know i i made i had 2 500 books printed in october of 2016

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and we launched it in november and within six weeks we had sold all of them

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six weeks and that’s amazing yeah and then we had to get another

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order printed and then uh you know we got in the car and we drove everywhere we we went up to edmonton

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of course our gallery of alberta has been one of our supporters since almost the very beginning i think um

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and and you know the a lot of the businesses here around calgary also very supportive and and you know

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so so we’ve been very grateful for that and we’ve i’ve driven all the way up to yellowknife

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and winnipeg and vancouver yep that’s amazing yeah they’ve been

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some pretty good road trips i’ve had yeah wonderful

Ryan Willard

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well here’s the artist that started it all for me this is ryan ryan willard he’s one of the artists in

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the blackfoot book and this is us at a signing book signing in uh in the chapters here this is one of the

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first book signings that we went to and uh so that was very exciting for us

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to get our our books into chapters yeah absolutely

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yeah and it’s thanks to ryan actually that i have a business because he introduced me to the other artist and

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the elder in the blackfoot book both of which were willing to work with me wow

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if it wasn’t for him and them i wouldn’t have coloring forward

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so i’m very grateful to them yeah one of my other products this is our uh

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our journal yeah the artwork on the cover is by metis mama

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her real name’s shelley may and uh she’s she’s a very soulful uh

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artist i love the messaging a lot of times she collaborates with her husband on the wording and

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and the journal has lots of other artists represented on the inside as well from different nations this is a

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compilation it has uh like line pages and blank pages

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and it also on the bottom of some pages has some teachings from a cree elder that are helping

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people to guide them in their journey wow that’s really great

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i love that so diana how do artists um get to do they submit

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their artwork to you and then you decide who goes in or is it just connections through the

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community of of artists that you think would be a good fit

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well it happens all different ways usually when going out for for example the journal is

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a good example because um i like to i like to meet new artists and i like to see

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you know different people’s art um so that i’m helping people other people and some of the

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artists that i put in my journal had never been in a book before they’d never had anyone help to get them

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promoted and they were so excited and you know like i like to try and do that for more

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than just the you know small group of artists so i really do call for artists on facebook

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okay like a couple of months before i’ll will be doing the design and

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uh but people can also they can contact me pretty much at any time my uh

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i’ll put my email in the chat box oh awesome until you have it uh

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somewhere at the end of the presentation i didn’t think to us no i know i didn’t put it in i’m sorry

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yeah and then they can also uh find me on social media

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this is my usually my tag is coloring it forward and uh so

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i’m on facebook and instagram and twitter and linkedin you can just search for diana frost and

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you should probably see me and i visited uh the website that you folks have and

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it’s very beautiful i love how there’s a lot of different content on there with the blog

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and the shop and there’s also the projects that you’ve worked on um how is that going from being an

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engineer having that kind of a career being an artist and also a web designer

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[Laughter]

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well i i like um i like having lots of different jobs to do i get i don’t i don’t like

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just having the same work to do day in and day out and uh i did um hire

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some people to help me with the web web design i didn’t that wasn’t just me

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you know i’m i’m talented in some ways but web design not that it’s tough

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but the upkeep has been you know something that i’ve been doing more um and adding projects to it and uh

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you know adding adding things absolutely and oh here’s another product this one’s

All My Grandparents Flower

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the notebook one of the notebooks that i made this is a cree uh cree and scottish

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artist called madeline and this is uh called all my grandfather’s flower

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a grandmother’s flower is pardon me and uh so you can see her two

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grandmothers and then flowers there’s a there’s a nice big meaning about it

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uh it it represents healing uh from you know intergenerational trauma

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and all this so it’s a lot of meaning in it yeah absolutely

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it’s beautiful did i answer your question i think i’m i’m not sure if i did ah i don’t know

Overwhelm

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how i yeah but i think to some to sum it up my question would be um

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you wear a lot of hats and you do a lot of different jobs

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um does that at any time become a little bit overwhelming

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for you or are you just like do you just love it so much that you’re just like whatever

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i’ll just do them all or let me know

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i think for every job there’s always parts of that job that you don’t like right um and so um there are days where

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i feel overwhelmed like uh right now running um running the business and also

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my non-profit because i have a non-profit organization also that i run to organize the orange shirt day event

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in september and we’re very grateful that we were also awarded a grant from the aboriginal

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languages initiative from canada to uh to teach youth how to build apps in indigenous

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languages oh wow yeah we have to start uh programming

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next year so now we’re kind of trying to figure out when to start and whether to

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do it virtually or in person and it’s a bit difficult to figure that out so yes i do get overwhelmed a little bit

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sometimes especially with administrative stuff right like the accounting and you

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have to do ongoing sales and a lot of marketing those things i’m not so good at

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they’re kind of sneaky like you’re not really thinking about it all the time and then all of a sudden it’s month end

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and it’s like something’s on my mind oh yeah oh yeah i gotta scan my receipts that’s

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fun so there are parts of my business that i

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drop and little by little i am finding people that i can um asked to do those tasks

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but it’s always a monetary decision too right because like especially this year sales of being

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a bit down right because we haven’t had any powwows and no markets and that’s kind of

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impacted my array operations yeah yeah that human connection element is missing as well

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for sure yeah i miss that this is my book and then behind it’s the ojibwe

Ojibwe

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book and this was book number three um in this case once again it was an

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artist who introduced me to the other artist and there’s two artists in each of the books

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and uh and so um so this book came out in 2018.

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so so what was it like publishing the first book and the process of that

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and then how has it changed to the new books that you’re coming out

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with uh so the first the first three books

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it was finding one artist and sometimes uh like for example

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um caleb from the first book he’s the one that introduced me to delray who’s in the cree book right and then

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ellery introduced me to sam and john we’re the other artist and elder

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sometimes an artist from a totally different nation will introduce me to another artist so the first three books

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were kind of like that where it was i met one artist and they introduced me

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to the other people the latest book the ojibwe book i’m actually i was actually very honored

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that the the elder contacted me and said he had seen my den book and he liked the format so much

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that he wanted to ask me to publish his book oh lovely

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yeah and he had painted his like his whole life’s work

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of uh of doing ceremony doing sweat and then um and then being gifted a

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story and and then painting that story and writing the story down

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and he wanted me to basically publish his whole life work wow diana i know and the nice thing too

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is he’s fluent in anishinabe so we were able to get the stories translated and written down

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which is really hard to do right i bet yeah yeah because i wanted to do that with

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the cree book and the other two books and so far i haven’t been successful so

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right it’s it’s yeah it’s it’s tough because um the elder has to be comfortable with

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the translator and vice versa the translator has to be comfortable with the elders stories

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and sometimes they’re not right and that’s the hard way

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and then we also choose a program to donate to sometimes they’ll the

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artist and elder will help me and sometimes i find them on my own right or when people recommend organizations

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to me right and at what stage in the process does that happen um the donation

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process usually um usually i wait until i’ve i just

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received the prints and we start selling the books and then uh we can start donating maybe six months to a

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year after that so we start i start looking for an organization um you know to to publish to because

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there’s a lot of quality control like i i want to make sure the artists are happy with the artwork

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yeah how as it’s presented and that the elders happy as well with with how it’s laid out and all this

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and so there’s fair amount of back and forth yeah that goes into it so

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yeah absolutely ah this is at in

Orange Shirt Day Walk

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uh 20 when was that oh that was 20 uh 20

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sorry 19. 2019. this was the first orange shirt day walk that i organized with my board

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um there’s two people from my board in that picture tapas in the middle and ollie on the on the left

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and uh yeah we we organized our own shirt day walk which is a day where we honor the

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survivors of residential schools and their families and my mother is one of those

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she went to residential school in quebec and so i wanted to participate in an orange

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shirt day walk and i couldn’t find one that was open to the public so after a couple years of trying to

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find one i decided we’ll screw this i’m just going to do it myself yeah so i said i have a non-profit

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that’s just sitting there doing nothing so we organized the orange shirt day walk and then afterwards we fed everyone stu in

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bannock and we had art artist’s fair as well oh cool yeah and then we had a

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bunch of performances we had indigenous dancers and musicians

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and elders storytelling and we did it again this year but we did it virtually

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okay yep that was interesting right much more i like it much better in

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person we still did the walk in person which was great was terrific we had

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beautiful weather this year we had um um elders with smudge buckets so people

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could smudge and and you know cleanse themselves spiritually and then we also had a drumming group

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that was drumming and singing us oh nice walked along and then one of the my

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board members brought all of her drums her hand drums so the children and the crowd were all drumming

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so they were super happy right that’s lovely

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oh we do have a question in the chat from ashley um when there is a moment can you talk

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more about how the translation process worked with some of the elder stories in their own languages

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what makes a good translation relationship between elders and translators thank you ashley

31:41

do you want me to answer that now sure we’ve um

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so the ojibwe book was easy because the elder knew that the person

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who was going to write down the stories for him because he could speak it but he wasn’t comfortable with writing

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it down so there’s that too um with the cree book i’ll give the cree

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book example because that was actually something that happened where i was trying to get the cree book

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translated first of all with cree there’s various dialects so you have to make sure that

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the translator can understand and write down the dialect that the elder

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speaks right and that the elder wants his stories written in

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a good rel translation relationship well so the cree elder he he wanted to work

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with the translator that he knew and that he trusted to make sure that what the

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translator wrote down did actually reflect his words and so he already knew the

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translator that what happened was the translator wasn’t comfortable with the creation story version that the

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elder had that he wanted to share everyone learns different stories right

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and so that the translator asked to that i work with someone else and then

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and then we just kind of we got busy and we just never ended up finding another translator

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so um i don’t know if i’m answering your question very well here ashley it’s it’s a bit

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it’s a bit difficult to tell you the truth um because sometimes elders don’t know

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any translators and uh so i haven’t i haven’t sorted that out

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so if you have some suggestions for me i’m all ears

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well assuming it’s a very trusting space and you really have to allow that

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um that vulnerability in that in that space and if those two people don’t necessarily know each other that

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can be definitely challenging for sure but definitely for uh for most people

34:01

and i won’t general i won’t like pinpoint it in to just say indigenous people for most people what they need

34:07

is is to um is to meet each other and sit with each other for a bit and

34:14

hear each a few of each other’s stories a bit of the history get a feel for what

34:19

kind of person this is and then and then that usually helps i find with elders

34:25

one meeting isn’t always enough usually you need a few interactions and all this

34:33

and um but yeah so it is something that i still want to do because i love

34:39

languages i speak four of them myself so wow i wish i could i want to learn um

34:46

algonquin but it’s a bit difficult to learn algonquin out here in alberta

Walk in Calgary

34:56

awesome so here we have another photo of the walk um and i’m assuming this is

35:02

the 2019 uh walk in calgary yes it was quite a challenge because it was

35:08

the first day of the year that it snowed and it was september 24 i can’t remember which saturday was

35:15

sunday or something but yeah so then it was snowing it was slushy and the weather was awful we still got

35:22

40 people came out to to walk wonderful awesome

35:28

kind of surprising but awesome here we got about 150 to 200 or so oh wow well i can imagine

35:35

that having it virtually for a lot of the folks who can’t make it there physically having that virtual element

35:42

would would definitely help for wanting to be a part of the event in some capacity

35:48

but uh yeah it definitely takes away from that human connection and that direct storytelling that you

35:54

can have when you’re in person with someone as well definitely we’re gonna we did get a lot

36:00

of uh a good footage this year with the elders um storytelling and sharing

36:06

and with a lot of the musicians as well we are going to be sharing that footage bit by bit we just haven’t had a chance

36:13

yet to to organize that because you know it takes quite a bit of editing yeah and

36:20

we’re in a global pandemic so yeah there’s that too there’s that thing

36:26

too there’s also christmas sales and i’m actually

36:31

the chef the bottle maker the janitor like i do all of the jobs and so um you know

36:38

i don’t always have time to do extra and uh yeah my bird is kind of in the

36:44

same boat they have other jobs yes absolutely

Calendar

36:50

ah this is one of the latest yes what’s your next question i remember you had a question related to

36:56

this but i can’t remember what it is oh um let me just pull up my notes

37:05

oh uh yes it was just can you tell us more about uh the calendar that you publish

37:12

yes so um so in my coloring books i don’t put i don’t put anything about

37:18

the issues in the coloring books because the coloring books and the journals are intended to be healing and completely positive and

37:26

relaxing and all this and i don’t mean to say that the calendar is very controversial

37:32

and very annoying and negative no no but um the calendar i

37:38

i put i put information about the issues in the calendar so below the artwork there is a piece

37:46

that explains each page has a piece on what’s going on what what’s the issue and if i found if

37:53

i find a group that’s already working on it i do a shout out to them right and then the calendar also

38:00

includes uh shout out to two indigenous heroes on each month

38:05

because yeah i want people to see who are some people who are doing cool things to help change

38:13

um the situation and then also on each of the pages we have uh recommended acts of reconciliation

38:21

so we have little things people can do if they need ideas you know yeah and and there’s 13 pieces

38:28

of artwork from different artists from different nations around canada there’s inuk

38:34

there’s metis there’s cree there’s blackfoot there’s mohawk

38:40

mikma what else is there oh and this year one

38:46

different thing that i did is i included a workbook on the

38:51

the truth and reconciliation commission’s 94 calls to action okay yeah

38:57

i don’t know if people know about this but um basically um the truth and reconciliation

39:04

commission studied all of the issues and they came up with um actions that the government needs to do

39:10

to make positive change for indigenous people and it’s not small things it’s they’re

39:16

pretty big legislative changes that need to happen and changes in policy

39:21

and changes in you know methodology and right so the calendar is art is about

39:27

art and also about reconciliation it’s about help people bit by bit learn

39:34

about the issues and get ideas for how they can help

39:39

we can all make change yeah that’s a really great resource

39:45

thank you diana yes all right so that was all for

39:51

the uh images that we have so if anyone who’s watching uh has any more questions

39:56

please send them through the chat now so that we have enough time to answer them and i believe i have a

40:01

couple more uh questions for diana as well in my notes

40:07

um so one is what is the next book that you have

40:12

planned ah the next book that i have planned i

40:17

was approached to do a coloring book on beadwork oh neat yeah and it’s so just to

40:26

do a little sneak preview well not i’m not going to show you some of it right um so so the idea is we’re going to do a

40:33

call for artists we’re going to invite we’re going to collect 10 beadwork artisans we’re going to um

40:41

they’re going to share their pictures with us and those are going to be the coloring pieces we’re going to outline

40:48

the convert them into black and white so people can color them and we’re going to share the stories um

40:54

from the artisans of how they’ve been um what their life has been like or or

41:01

whatever they want to share and then i’m also going to be writing some pieces in there about the issues

41:07

so people can learn a bit about it and they can see what the real life stories are from

41:13

uh 10 artisans yeah so that’s the one of the next things in the works and

41:19

i have another book that i’m working on that’s i’m doing with a denny elder and a

41:26

children’s book this will be a book yeah and it’ll be blended a blend

41:33

of dene culture how did that people live and how they see

41:40

um how they see the world and layered with um

41:47

stories from alexander mckenzie’s journals when he was exploring down the mackenzie river

41:55

wow and just kind of yeah anyway yeah awesome

42:01

and uh where can i buy your books and where can i buy your products

42:08

uh well they’re on my online store that’s one way uh that people can

42:14

can purchase them they can purchase them at the at the art gallery’s gift shop

42:22

or we could drive up to yellowknife if anyone wants a road trip yeah

42:30

we have them in some staples not all of them and we have them as well in some other

42:36

smaller places like we have them in some museums

42:43

like the human rights museum okay uh the uh let’s see

42:50

where else um

42:55

uh pardon me royal alberta museum yes they’re there as well um

43:02

and instead of just drinking in uh they’re at western varieties and half

43:08

times yeah which are in edmonton yeah [Music]

43:13

i think those are the main ones in edmonton and around the country then they’re in a lot of different stores and

43:20

if people want to find uh find a book close to where they live they can always just email me or or send me a message and

43:28

i’ll try and help all right you can just go to my website

43:34

and i’ll put my website in the comments right and you just go on to the

43:40

shop and then it’s awesome we do have some that’s a nice comment yeah it is

43:48

and so do i do personally well i’ll show you

43:58

oh sorry for abandoning you there for a second okay one of the portraits i did oh

44:05

wow it’s a portrait of daphne ogig who is the grandmother of indigenous art

44:12

she’s amazing her artwork is incredible so that’s one of the portraits that i

44:18

did i was starting a series of indigenous

44:24

portraits this is another one

44:32

this is a an award-winning uh filmmaker so those are two of my

44:39

heroes yeah what’s up what media can you use

44:45

pardon what media do you typically use oh um so

44:51

so this one is um ink and watercolor the red is watercolor and uh

44:59

daphne’s is all watercolor huh just watercolor wonderful

45:07

thanks for the questions ashley i really appreciate it absolutely and i do have one last

45:14

question for you diana in your experience how has the vision

45:20

of coloring it forward grown since its beginnings

45:25

oh well i’ve been the best for last yeah um so when i first started

45:33

um just the idea of trying to publish a book was already a lot so i was just um

45:41

looking at that right series of coloring books that’s it and then um as i talked to stores and

45:48

and different artists and clients they kept saying well why don’t you make notebooks so why don’t you make calendars or what make

45:54

journals why don’t you make coffee mugs why don’t you make this and that and and so i started to think outside

46:00

the box of how often i promote this artwork and then um i started seeing calls for

46:08

artists to paint murals and in calgary at the time there was very few indigenous murals

46:15

and i thought well that’s a perfect opportunity for the artist to make a couple grand

46:21

pre-promotion and so i worked with caleb dan and we put

46:27

his singing warrior on a huge building right on 17th avenue so right in the

46:33

walking district and that got start got him quite a lot of attention

46:39

that’s amazing um and then and then from there i think i started to realize you

46:44

know that the artists they needed more than just someone to help them promote their artwork um in a book or

46:51

something right and so a couple weeks ago i uh i founded a an artist cooperative

46:59

with a few other friends of mine who are also indigenous artists and so uh i will be talking to the art

47:07

gallery about that because our plan is to help a lot of indigenous artists to get their artwork

47:16

out there much better and you know everyone needs some help absolutely yeah

47:21

everyone needs a little bit of uh of uplifting support from from others who

47:29

can who can offer it yeah absolutely wonderful well thank you so much for

47:36

joining us tonight i’m so so pleased i got the chance to chat with you today diana

47:42

um and it’s it’s nice to see someone without a mask on virtually and we can be silly

47:52

and thank you all so much for joining us uh this evening if you do have any questions about um where you can purchase

48:00

coloring it forward we do have some available at the shop at the art gallery of alberta so you can give us a shout and we will

48:08

contact you and we can arrange a curbside pickup if that’s something that is interesting

48:13

is interest of you or you can also check online on diana’s website

48:18

as well awesome and we’re very excited to see what comes next

48:24

diana but we totally understand if it might take a little bit

48:29

there’s a lot going on obviously and we are here to support you in your journey because

48:35

we really believe in what you’re doing for this community thank you so much i appreciate the

48:40

opportunity wonderful well have a safe night everybody and

48:46

um we will see you next time

48:54

bye

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