Cold Brew - March 3rd @ Citizen
In his latest solo exhibition, “Cold Brew,” Birling’s own creative director: Tomas Pajdlhauser showcases 100 watercolour sketches on our paper coffee cups that capture the understated beauty of Ottawa’s cold, overcast winter streets and sidewalks. While most Ottawa residents huddled inside, Tom sketched on location to document the mood of our city as its pace slows under the weight of a polar vortex.
The sketches on Birling coffee cups encourage Ottawa residents to notice both iconic and overlooked details of our snowy urban landscape as we trudge our way to our own favourite coffee shops. Each cup is a small snapshot of winter in Ottawa, with its muted light, rising exhaust steam, and continuous veil of falling snow. They are drawn and painted on location using carbon ink and watercolour, varnished for preservation and topped with a stained, baltic birch lid.
Interested in the tactile and physical process of design work, Tom’s personal and commercial projects frequently highlight a love of travel and adventure and develop from lived experiences captured on-the-go in sketchbooks. The “Cold Brew” coffee cup series involved many hours of outdoor sketching on Ottawa’s cold winter streets. The exhibition opens with a vernissage on Sunday, March 3rd at Citizen, a local restaurant owned and run by former Wall Space Gallery manager Lori Wojcik, and will remain on display until April 1st.