What does Uppercase Publishing Inc.
encompass?
We publish
Uppercase magazine, a magazine inspired by design-illustration type craft. The books we
publish are also on related topics, so about illustration, craft, illustrated storybook, some directories of
illustration.
When did you begin
Uppercase Publishing Inc.?
Uppercase started
as a retail venue in downtown Calgary at the Arts Central building, which [includes] three levels of artist
studios and galleries. When I first moved [into the building] my main goal was to have my design studio and
the public aspect would be Uppercase Gallery where I could display works of design and illustration and
products that have a design slant to them. So that’s how Uppercase as a name started, but I always intended
to publish my own books and magazines at some point, it just happened a lot quicker than I thought. So, 2009
is when the magazine launched, and I went full force into publishing and closed the retailing of other
people’s goods and just concentrated on my own thing.
What’s in the
magazine?
It celebrates
other people’s work — the creative process, so designers, illustrators, photographers, bloggers; crafts
people.
How is the
magazine distributed?
I do the
distribution. It’s by subscription and available through our website, and we have a small group of sponsors
who carry it across Canada and the U.S., in Europe and Australia.
How did Dottie
Angel come to be?
Dottie Angel is a
pseudonym, the alter ego of Tif Fussell, who is a British woman living in the suburbs of Seattle. She’s a
crafter, and her blog is all about her crafts and her creative life and her family, so she sort blogs as her
alter ego, Dottie Angel. So that’s Tif’s project and that’s existed for many years. As far as the book goes,
it’s volume two in a series. The series is called the “Suitcase Series” in which I get to know an artist in
their home, in their city, and get to know every aspect of their home, their interior, their lifestyle, their
culture and the work that they do. So the first one was Camilla Engman who was a Swedish artist, and that was
from 2009, and the second in the series is Tiff Fussell, also known as Dottie
Angel.
What was the
reason for the pseudonym?
Well she didn’t
feel comfortable with just presenting herself out there as Tif Fussell, and the Dottie Angle persona is a
fantasy alter ego, so through the Dottie Angel fantasy she can indulge in her love of vintage fabrics and her
love of thrifting and it’s within an imaginary world where all of that is accepted and part of daily life,
and it kind of omits the difficult, the “nitty gritty” of real life. So even though she talks about real life
on her blog and in the book, Dottie Angle is the idealized lifestyle.
So, the books
document the person’s creations, but not necessarily their life?
In Tif’s case, it
is about how they live. For her, her creative output is very much time for homemaking, keeping her home
environment fresh and creative for her and for her family, so the book does touch on that a little bit. Her
blog goes in greater detail about her day-to-day life; the book is more intended to getting to know her
beyond what she posts on her blogs, and there are some how-to’s about a few crafts that she shared with us
that sort of complements the different sections of the book.
How is it
distributed?
It’s sold on my
website, and through some small booksellers, but mostly on my website right now. We sold 40 per cent of the
print run that way.
Do you do the
writing?
In this case, Tif
did the writing; it’s from her voice. I did the editing. My role in addition to designing the book is kind of
a producer — well, publisher of the book, guiding her in her writing and kind of organizing it into chapters
and giving it some structure. She calls her website the “ramblings of Dottie Angel”, so she’s quite verbose —
she can go off on a tangent — so my biggest role is really to corral her in and hone her skills so the book
has some focus [and] structure that’s more suitable to a book as opposed to a blog.
The book looks as
though it’s sewn — is it?
Yes, it is. I can
thank my mom and my friend Paige… I did a few. My mother sewed 2,200 of the cards that are sewn onto the
cover. Technically you can’t actually sew it together, but we did stitch the postcards by machine, and the
printer glued them on for us. And then the other special details of the book on the inside there is a
glassine envelope and it has some vintage sheets or other fabrics, and a little paper bobbin of thread, and
some vintage buttons and some other doilies and goodies, and those I collected and purchased on eBay and
through flea markets and stuff. And then my friends and I cut them all up and assembled all the little
envelopes.
With the extra
“goodies,” were you attempting to add some sort of artistic flair to the book?
That’s definitely
part of the aesthetic and the ethos of the “Suitcase Series” is that there are these kinds of artifacts of
real things that relate to the person, which the book is about. So, Tif does a lot of thrifting and her
sewing is mostly done with vintage fabrics, so it was important to incorporate that somehow into the book
project.
With Camilla, what
“goodies” were included with that volume?
With her we made
a series of little postcards with her shapes and drawings on it, and you can cut them out and make collages
in a similar way that Camilla herself works, and then also with Camilla’s book there’s a little 16-page
booklet about her dog; a picture adventure book about her dog.
What are your
personal thoughts on Etsy?
It’s a great
platform. When I did make handmade notebooks, I did sell them through Etsy for a brief time… Tif sells her
wares on Etsy and that’s how she makes her money as Dottie Angel… and it’s very successful for her. A
lot of the content I feature in the magazine for example, I’ll find them by just searching through Etsy, or
I’ll look at people’s blogs and they’ll have links to their own Etsy shops and I’ll see what they do and
that’s often how I find people that I want to work with for the magazine. So for me, Etsy is a real tool, and
I also buy from there all the time, too. It’s a big component of Uppercase’s creativity, certainly. I feel
like it’s a part of an extended community.
Do you sense a
return to handmade goods and handmade arts? Have people gone back to that mode of
creation?
Yes, definitely.
In my little circle of inspiration, it’s not a new thing; it’s been going on for at least five years or
before. It’s almost commonplace now. My background is as a graphic designer so for me, creating books whether
or not they have the handmade element in them, that’s the way I’m expressing myself as a graphic designer.
For a lot of other graphic designers that I know and that I’ve featured in the magazine for example, they
want to express themselves in ways that client work won’t allow, so they’ll sew something, or they’ll sell
posters of their designs and illustrations, or they’ll do photography and sell [the photographs] on Etsy. If
you’re a creative person, it’s a way of just getting yourself out there and I don’t know if actually selling
and making a living is always the intention, it’s just a way of getting recognized for what you’re working
on.
uppercasegallery.ca
dottieangel.blogspot.com •
Photo Courtesy: Dottie Angel
Ltd.
