Hello Everyone! Welcome to AT Art and Design. My name is Alex Tkachuk, I’m based in Montreal, and this is my first post on the new site. I thought it would be a good idea to give folks a little information about what I’m doing here and what folks can expect in the future. The raison d’être of the site, if you will. There are a lot of little things I could say about it, but I think the best answer is that it’s my attempt to consolidate all of my little projects. I feel like I’ve been working a bit aimlessly on a lot of things. I’ve made some stuff that I’m quite proud of, but the problem is that I never really know what to do once I’m finished. I feel like I just sit on all these little things, but never really move forward. It’s a problem that’s been zapping my motivation lately and I wanted to try to reframe it.
So now, I don’t have a bunch of scattered small projects. I have one big project and you’re looking at it! So here’s a little of what you can expect to see in the coming months.
Art
Not the foremost reason for the site, but definitely a catalyst. I started making collages after rescuing some old art books from a dead person’s house (…That’s a story for another day…) and collage has become something that I enjoy immensely. It has given me some confidence in my abilities with visual arts. Now, frequently I make a collage and post it to social media, then leave it at that. I mean that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few years… Until I had a vernissage last week. It was just a small event organized through the French language school I’ve been attending, but I wanted to have a place that I could send people after. So I figured this was as good an excuse as any to BUILD a spot to send them. I spend the weekend doing a little research on webhosting, then used that to whip up a little portfolio. At this moment it’s a underwhelming, but it’s something I can build on and I’m proud to have. I’m excited for you to see what it will eventually turn into, and I’m excited that it’s give me a springboard to scrape together some other things.
Writing
I’ve been writing for at at least 10 years now, and I feel like it’s another point in which I’ve been scattered. I’ve had a few poems published, and I’ve written a couple of articles for different websites. I even had a period where I wrote the closed Captioning for television programs. I believe in my writing abilities, but it’s another area of my life where I haven’t been disorganized. I write something and put it in a drawer, or I publish something and after it’s up it disappears into the ether. Well, I’m tired of that. I want to show off some of my writing projects, and I want to use this blog to write new things. I have a few major writing projects in the works, That I’ll write more about in the coming weeks. I’m also planning to tweak the body of this site to highlight some of my older writing.
Design
The main reason I’ve made this site is to work on my design abilities. I’ve had a minor role in the tech industry for the last two years, and I’ve enjoyed it, but I’ve also wanted to get back into my creative roots. Design feels like the happy middle ground between the creative and the technical. Towards that end, I started taking some UX design courses last year, And I found them interesting, but they also gave me a little bit of a peak at how multifaceted design can be. It encompasses everything from Typography, to functionality, to the more strictly visual. I enjoy the problem solving elements. I enjoy the challenge of making and remaking something until it works or looks perfect. This website, is a labor of love, and an opportunity to learn how to solve technical problems. Expect to see things change and grow as I work on new experiments. At the current moment, this website itself is an example of my web design abilities, and the print shop gives a little snap shot of my product design, both are things I will continue to revamp as I go along.
So, yeah, that’s basically it. I want to try to use this site to give myself opportunities with Art, Writing and Design. My goal is to spend more of my time making the things I want to make, but it’s easier to do that if folks want to have the things I make. So feel free to reach out if you’re looking for someone to design your website! If you’d like to license a collage! Or if you’re looking for a content writer! I’m always happy to help! Honestly My thought is every little paying project I can get is a little less time I have to spend at my day job and a little bit more time I can spend making interesting things for you guys! So I suppose this is step one!
