Last month we took a hiatus for hosts Taylor and Moss to go on vacation to Scotland. This month on We’re Gonna Make It!, they’re back with proof of their adventure. In a land of craftspeople, poets, and artists, talent was not difficult to find. But rather than finding October’s interviewee in a studio or gallery, Moss and Taylor actually found their guests just outside of one.

Right outside of the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh is a lovely viewpoint of Prince’s Street Gardens. It’s sandwiched between the metropolitan glamour of Edinburgh’s new town, and the incredible wealth of history held in its old town. This spot, it seems, is a favourite haunt of The Spinning Blowfish.

The Spinning Blowfish are three men. Dave, who plays the bagpipes, Ram, who plays the electric guitar, and Javipatillas, who plays the drums. Through the summer months, they busk together outside the gallery, combining time-honoured bagpipe melodies with exciting, funkadelic new rhythms from the drum and guitar. The fusion of their music echoes the fusion in the city around them, and makes them quite a remarkable act to see. Have a listen to the show for a sample of their music.

The Spinning Blowfish can be seen in Edinburgh outside the Scottish National Gallery on summer evenings, and they can be followed through their Facebook page or their Twitter feed.

The two primary tracks played on the podcast are both by The Spinning Blowfish. The first is called Rumbadelick, and the second, more traditional song is, of course, Scotland The Brave.

This month on We’re Gonna Make It! our focus is less on medium and more on method. Our guest is most prominently a comic artist, but she is also an illustrator, a writer, a feltcrafter, a soapmaker, a chef, a sculptor, and an aspiring organic farmer. But above all these other titles to choose from, our guest, Sydney More, prefers to identify with this little fellow: If you’re like Taylor, you’ll need to listen to the episode to really understand the reference.

Sydney More’s work can be seen through her tumblr at sydmore.tumblr.com. Her Homo Erectus comic series can be found at The Paltry Sapien, and she usually can be spotted at a variety of comic art festivals.

Keeping in line with the diverse nature of Sydney’s portfolio, this month Taylor and Moss embarked on a rather lengthy exploration of many different artistic mediums. After thirty days of experimentation, each host selected five of their finished pieces to lay at Sydney’s feet for the inevitable judgement.

Competition Pieces

Taylor’s Artwork

Moss’ Artwork

This episode’s soundtrack includes tracks from Final Fantasy, composed by Nobuo Uematsu.

Download Episode 6 (right click and choose Save Link As…)

I hope you liked our previous episode on illustration (See Episode 4 with Renee Nault) because this month we dig that freshly buried horse right back up and beat it until flies come out.

Our guest this month is the mildly sinister Laura Bifano, who took better use of our “explicit” rating than any of our previous guests – even the chefs, which I find quite surprising. It also appears that Taylor and I have met Laura before, but none of us remembered it until part-way through the interview when we discovered a previously unrealized link between our lives. Fateful!

Laura bobs between Victoria and Vancouver as she pursues her work as a freelance illustrator, and routinely provides work for magazines, studios, and art shows across North America. Her portfolio can be found at http://www.laurabifano.com/

“Badger” from the Menagerie Series

“Encounters at the Edge of the Multiverse”

The contest Laura subjected to us in this episode had a rather psychological slant to it and once again forced us to contend with an unfamiliar medium.

I won’t spoil the episode any further, but I will say that the contest had a great deal to do with this oddity that Laura painted for a 2012 art show at the AGGV.

“Alain” from the Cube Portrait Series

As always, we will post our competition pieces below, but do yourself a favour and listen to the episode before you look at them!

Competition Pieces

Moss’ Painting

(Turns out that a picture drawn in pastel is still called a painting. Huh.)

Taylor’s Painting

This episode’s soundtrack includes the following tracks by OLAV:

(Laura’s Theme)

(Encounters at the Edge of the Multiverse Ambiance)

Download Episode 5 (right click and choose Save Link As…)

This month we bring you a very special episode of We’re Gonna Make It. The perfectly aligned celestial bodies of “there’s a big event in our future” and “oh my god we have no time to make a podcast this month” have conspired to bring you this, our first (and I’m guessing only)…

We’re Gonna Make It

Wedding Spectacular

I’m marrying my co-host tomorrow, on June 2nd. And as such, neither of us had any time to put a proper episode of this show together. You think we just roll this garbage out in a day?

We realized though, that over the course of our 15-month engagement, we had ourselves become experts in a very exclusive niche field. That is to say, the planning and preparation of our own wedding.

So this month, we talk about the myriad crafts and artistic endeavours we undertook to create our wedding decorations, invitations, and more. As much as possible, we DIY-ed wherever we could, partially to save money but mostly to make our wedding a singular event that reflected our own personalities as closely as possible.

To hear all about our handmade nuptual garnishes, have a listen to the episode. Or have a look below for a few select images of our crafts.

Save The Dates

Showcasing our exuberant use of fonts inspired by both Zelda and The Lord of the Rings.

Invitations

This was the background Moss drew for the invites, inspired by a map of Quadra Island drawn by Hilary Stewart. The faded sections are where words were to be overlaid.

Table Decorations

From left to right: Douglas Fir tray, candle holder w/sand, flower vase, inukshuk pie toppers, favour boxes with washi tape, escort stones for place settings. Not shown are the pie server and the larger inukshuks.

This episode’s soundtrack features the Marriage of Figaro Overture by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:

Download Episode 4 (right click and choose Save Link As…)

This month, we focus our sights and speak to a solitary artist about an artistic form that began in paleolithic caves, was refined in the high days of the Rennaissance, and persists in Elementary schools throughout the world.

It’s watercolour painting, and to guide us in our exploration, we have contacted one of its brightest young pupils.

Renee Nault is a Canadian artist who operates out of Victoria, BC. She works primarily in watercolour and ink, using crisp lines to reign in the dynamic nature of the paint. Her art has appeared in magazines, advertisements, books, and periodicals such as The Los Angeles Times.

Her current focus is on an original graphic novel called Witchling, which she is both writing and illustrating.

More of her work can be found at reneenault.com

On the contest front, it turns out that watercolours are a merciless and unforgiving medium that require a great deal of foresight and planning to use properly. Hooray.

Neither host had ever used watercolours outside of grade school art class, so this was a tricky test of skill. Overcoming adversity though, Moss and Taylor each produced a work of art using paint and ink to be judged by Renee. The illustrations are shown below, but Renee’s verdict is locked away in the depths of the audio file that you can conveniently hear or download at the top of this page.

Taylor’s Painting

Moss’ Painting

This episode’s soundtrack includes the following track by OLAV:

(Renee’s theme)

Download Episode 3 (right click and choose Save Link As…)

In this, the third episode of We’re Gonna Make It, we tackle one of the most prolific hobbies in the world. With the dawn of digital cameras and the rise of interactive Web 2.0 culture, photography has become a medium in which anybody with a cell phone and a Flickr account can become an artist.

But has this inundation of the form weakened its merits? Today, to reflect the huge audience for this medium, we go broad and talk to five different artists, some professional and some amateur, and we try to learn what it is about photography that makes them passionate.

Andrew Dodd Clippingdale is an event and promotional photographer in Victoria, BC, who also juggles the life of a filmmaker, graphic designer, and DJ.

His company, Dodd’s Eye Media, can be found at facebook.com/doddseyemedia and you can see some of his choice pieces at flickr.com/photos/doddseyemedia/

He takes pictures using a Canon EOS 7D. He describes it as “pretty okay.”

Kristy Westendorp is a lifestyle photographer who operates out of the greater Victoria area. She dabbled in the field of boudoir photography before moving on to more family-oriented work.

She is on maternity leave right now with her second child, so she doesn’t have a current website of her work, but you can find her by searching for Kristy Westendorp Photography, and we’ll be sure to update her profile here.

She uses a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, typically with lenses ranging from a 50mm 1.4 to an 85mm 1.8 (I don’t know what these numbers mean.)

Ally Butler works for the provincial government in Vancouver, BC. Her most fond memories of photography are from its unseen technical side, from when she worked as a photo technician.

She uses a Nikon D90, but also has her old film cameras: a Nikon F80, and the Canon AE-1 her dad gave her to get her interested in photography.

Justin Holmes is a Vancouver-based programmer with an education in photography. He takes pictures as a way to simply document life, without artistic ambitions.

He uses a Nikon something-or-other, a broken Canon SD600, and his phone, which is actually his best camera.

Jennifer Cook is still an artist in Victoria, BC. (Nothing’s changed there since our first episode.) She believes in a creative approach to photography, staging elaborate scenes with an air of theatricality.

She uses a Nikon D5000 these days, which she prizes for its swivel screen. She also has a toybox full of cruddy old film cameras, including her prized Holga.

This pantheon of artists gave the hosts, Moss and Taylor, a series of photo tasks that harrowed their very souls and drove them extremely close to the edge of reasonable sanity. To see the pictures they took, and to get a detailed breakdown of how the judges voted, follow the link (Warning: Major Spoilers for Episode 3.)

The We’re Gonna Make It Episode 3 Photographic Portfolio
With Judging Scores!!

This episode’s soundtrack includes the following tracks by OLAV:

(Andrew and Kristy’s theme)

(Ally and Justin’s theme)

(Jennifer’s theme)

Download Episode 2 (right click and choose Save Link As…)

For our second episode, we promptly defy expectation and jump this audio-train right off its tracks. With which medium should we best be studying independent art? Would that be painting? Music? Film? Nope. We chose cooking.

Our two guests today are both culinary artists within the Okanagan Valley: one is a student, the other a self-taught master. Together, they make a sort of socially awkward but thoroughly amusing episode.

Liam McNulty is the head chef at Nk’Mip Cellars in Osoyoos, BC, providing amazing patio meals during the summer months. He has worked at several other winery restaurants, and such venues as BiBO in Nelson before settling in the desert.

Colton Vieau is a culinary student in Kelowna, BC by day, working at Earls by night. He’s like, 18.

One of the great advantages to having these supremely talented foodsmiths on our show was that they were able to advise us in our first great cookoff. With the guests serving as coaches, Moss and Taylor engaged in a ferocious test of creativity and skill.

Mistakes were made, wine was drunk, expired cheese was purchased, inappropriate flours were substituted for their superior counterparts, and in the end our gladiators presented their meals for the scrutiny of the professionals.

Both dishes are shown below, but to find out what’s in them and who won in the end, you’ll have to listen to the show!

Taylor’s Meal

Moss’ Meal

This episode’s soundtrack features the following track by OLAV:

(Colton’s Theme)

Download Episode 1 (right click and choose Save Link As…)

Welcome to We’re Gonna Make It, a podcast about art, artists, and the fierce creative rivalry between a newly engaged couple. In our inaugural episode, we try to simplify all the artistic monuments of the world into two simple categories: things you can look at, and things you can hear.

While we may have failed in our gross attempts at categorization, we did get a few interesting conversations out of it.

Jennifer Cook is a visual artist and designer from Victoria, BC. She works at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and keeps a sporadically updated selection of her work at yourstrulydesign.wordpress.com

Colin Liseth is better known as OLAV. A DJ and electronic music producer, OLAV can also be seen in Victoria on a monthly basis playing at Lucky Bar. His music can also be found online at olav.bandcamp.com

One of the reasons we pulled a designer and a musician onto our first episode was to have them do our dirty work for us. We needed a logo and a theme song to accompany this show, so Jenn and Colin each competed against the hosts for the honour of having their work represent We’re Gonna’ Make It.

The contestant pieces are all below after the break, but to find out which ones won the contest, you’re just going to have to listen to the show!

…or look at the top of the website.

Moss’ Theme Song: listen

Moss’ Logo:

Taylor’s Theme Song: listen (and please don’t tell RCA records)

Taylor’s Logo:

Colin’s Theme Song: listen

Jennifer’s Logo:

This episode’s soundtrack featured the following tracks by OLAV:

Sands (Jenn’s Intro)

It’s Whales (Jenn’s Complication)

Reflecting His Changing Spirits in Sonance (Jenn’s Outro)

More Than I Can Handle (Colin’s Intro)

Error Arp (Colin’s Featured Track)

Us (Colin’s Outro)