Olympic Truce flag brings hope
There is one man who single-handedly gives Edmonton the right to call itself The City of Champions.
He is graphic designer Wei Yew, whose Olympic Truce flag will fly throughout the Sochi Winter Olympics, as it does at every Summer and Winter Olympic Games.
“The Olympic Truce symbol was inspired by the ancient Greek tradition of Ekecheiria, when fighting stopped to allow warriors to compete against one another in athletic events,” says Yew.
Yew created the truce logo after being one of 200 individuals and companies from 75 countries invited by the International Olympic Committee to design a symbol marking the 1996 Olympic Centennial.
He was one of three finalists, and while he didn’t win, he was later told his work was “particularly intriguing,” and was invited to create a “Truce” work that would be used not just once, but at all future Olympics.
“The logo features a dove of peace against the traditional Olympic flame, made up of festive, effervescent confetti to suggest celebration of the human spirit,” says Yew.
To celebrate 2014’s Year of the Horse, as well as the 25th Olympic Arts Festival in Calgary during the 1988 Winter Olympics and his own company’s 33 years of design practice in Canada, Yew is staging a Feb. 12 fundraiser for CKUA in the radio station’s building on Jasper Avenue.
Between Feb. 13 and 27, a multi-disciplinary exhibition of Yew’s work will also be featured in the CKUA foyer.
The exhibition will display creations that have propelled the Singapore-born designer to international fame since his arrival in Canada in 1976.
Some of my favourite highlights of Yew’s career include the 1985 Communications Arts magazine design award for his Edmonton Valley Zoo logo, which features its elephant mascot. That year, only six logos were chosen from more than 10,000 submissions from around the world.
Yew later snatched from under the noses of Calgary designers a $2-million design contract to showcase the 1988 Calgary Olympics Art Festival. (He opened an ‘office’ in Calgary “to take the heat off” and brought the project home $200,000 under budget.)
In 1991, he was invited by the IOC to produce a book, The Olympic Image — The First 100 Years, to mark the Olympic centenary. The book took five years of research.
Yew, who has taught at the University of Alberta and MacEwan University and has lectured extensively, also designed multimedia displays that won Edmonton both the 2001 ITU World Triathlon Championships and the IAAF World Athletics Championships.
Yew wins design competitions and awards every year. But 2012 was a special year for him. “I was delighted to be recognized with a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal,” he says.
Many Edmonton charities have benefited from the designer’s talents, but the CKUA fundraiser will receive a special gift. “I have the only Olympic Truce flag existing outside the Olympic family,” says Yew. “We will auction it.”
Yew hopes his Olympic Truce flag might bring about a break in the Syrian conflict. “For the past 20 years, the Olympic Truce has celebrated humanity by bringing adversaries together, such as in the 2000 Sydney Games when South Korea and North Korea paraded into the stadium together under a single flag representing the Korean Peninsula,” he says.
“The 2004 Athens Games witnessed the participation of Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries bloodied by conflict, demonstrating the unifying, reconstructive power of sport.
“I hope the Syrian Olympic Committee will remind its government about its signatory pledge to the Olympics. I am keeping my fingers crossed as this is the beginning of the first week of the truce before the opening of the Games.”
WARM, WOOLLY STORY
Jennifer Mikula and Jan Wallace decided they’d make mittens from upcycled wool to raise the $5,000 each bike rider must contribute to take part in our Haida Gwaii Totem Tour.
“We raised funds in six weeks to cover our cost of helping bring a Haida totem pole 1,760 kilometres back to Edmonton in June, for the Stollery Children’s Hospital,” says Mikula, a retired accountant. “Now we are forming a company, jjwool, and plan to partner with iHuman. Half the monies raised will go to the charity and the balance will help us acquire more materials.”
The iHuman Youth Society is a non-profit organization with a mission to work with traumatized youth with high-risk lifestyles, using outreach programs such as crisis prevention, arts mentorship and life-skills development. The mitten making idea came from Wallace, a teacher, who returned from Quebec with a pair of upcycled wool mittens.
Mikula made a pattern and they went to work with wool sweaters collected mainly at thrift stores.
Since early December, the duo has sold more than 300 pairs of mittens at $45 each and is now buying sewing machines, setting up a web page and organizing banking. “Our goal is to teach youngsters to help us,” says Mikula. “They will be more interested in the work if they can learn a skill and make money.”
The duo’s hope is to expand their good’s range to include such items as slippers and hats. “We are having a blast and sewing like crazy,” says Mikula.
“Check out our work Feb. 8 and 9 at a Pop Up Craft Fair being held at the Boyle Street Plaza.”