Finding the answer to Y
Heidi Veldman was always an inquisitive child. She was someone who put her mind to the things that ignited her childhood senses. Like the muppet gunslinger on Sesame Street, she strode into the saloon of life wanting a box of crayons and demanding to know Y.
Her curious and creative mind led her on many mental excursions. She was the only child of a single mother, so she developed a special relationship with personal time and personal space. Solitary occupation is where art often develops, and it’s where she first whiled away the time with colours on paper, and it soon went well outside the lines of any colouring book.
“When I was a child, I use to write and illustrate ‘children’s books.’ Even when I couldn’t write, I’d get my aunt to write down my story and I’d illustrate it,” Veldman said. “In high school (she went to Duchess Park secondary school), I painted my first decent painting. It was a CD cover for a female heavy metal band. I was heavily influenced by heavy metal as well as gothic esthetics. A lot of my personal inspiration comes from music videos as well as film and video games. Goth-rock music videos are incredibly atmospheric and I’ve always loved that. As for actual people, I love (atmospheric film directors) Guillermo Del Toro and Tim Burton. My favorite artists are Megz Majewski and Angelina Wrona. After high school, I went to CNC for New Media Communications & Design. I originally went into it for web design and video editing but fell in love with illustration and desktop publishing. I quickly learned that graphic design is not an easy industry to get work in and went back to school to get my diploma in Marketing & Management. This landed me my cur- rent job at the library.” An inquisitive, creative mind, turned loose in a public library? What a dazzling opportunity for a young artist. She is the in-house graphic designer that whips up the imagery for posters, newsletters, displays, handbills, signs, whatever the library does to get their messages in front of the public eye. It is art with a mission. Not only is it the official storytelling for a public body, but it is also part of the library’s ongoing efforts to foster the city’s thirst for literacy, research skills, lateral thinking, data collection, understanding of culture, and the movement of ideas.
It is a busy job, an important job, and an all-too-rare job for an artist: that of being a paid full-time artist instead of one creating on the side, in time stolen from socializing or family duties, often late at night or early in the morning, and often as a sacrifice.
What Veldman does have to face, though, is balancing her capacities for the obligatory art done by day at work (she feels immensely grateful for this position and considers library work often her best work, even compared to personal creations) versus the fully free and self-generated art she could do in that personal time at home if she has the creative energy left over.
And she often does. Which is why she appreciated and acted on the encouragement of her former library colleague Neil Godbout, now the editor of The Citizen, about applying for the newspaper’s centennial initiative in partnership with the Community Arts Council, this 26-week serial feature called the Alphabet Project.
“As a graphic designer, my work is usually done for others,” she said. “I feel like, sometimes, it’s not as personal as other mediums. I try to stick to current design trends and work within the confines of client’s ideas and concepts. With that being said, I’d like to say I make dreams come true. There is a different sort of satisfaction to doing work for others as opposed to just myself.