I don’t know about you. But winning the 2011 Gold Kahuna Award for Animation in Honolulu strikes me as a pretty cool thing. Janna-Marynn Brunnen created the story of love lost, “Little Heart” at Quickdraw Animation.

It’s an organization that operates in a darkish, creaky space above a downtown Asian restaurant.

Quickdraw was started by a few Calgarians who liked cartoons. Over three decades, it’s blossomed into a centre for animation artists, and teens and aboriginal youth.

As Calgary adopts the plucky notion of becoming the  Cultural Capital of Canada in 2012, artists like Brunnen show what an arts life looks like. She is a graduate of the National Theatre School, worked in theatre for five years, but stumbled upon Quickdraw’s Giraf animation festival. “It blew me away; this is an art form that inspired me.” Brunnen, 29, is flower designer by day, and won a National Film Board scholarship to support her animation education.

You may know the super realistic animations of studios like Pixar, but Brunnen wanted something different.  She handdrew her images and layered paint on glass. “I work in textures and paints and I love the imperfections, I love the depth of field with the paint, the visuals you can’t get with computers alone.” Little Heart isn’t online yet, in order to qualify for festivals. And Brunnen hopes her style continues to resonate. “I think people always want to see something new, to see development.”

Hannah Arendt once defined arts as activities removed from everyday necessities. Roads, intersections, tunnels, bridges, traffic. The stuff we are usually occupied with in Calgary can get a bit tedious. The arts allow us a welcome reprieve and to imagine and to create – or admire those who do.

The Calgary Public Library has a ramped up arts offering this fall. Quickdraw is offering  free seminars (register via the library tomorrow at 10 a.m.) but there are Arts Days workshops and day long celebrations, too. Many programs are already full indicating the hunger for arts.

As we head into Calgary 2012, it’s a good time to celebrate our strengths. Brunnen sees Calgary as still very open to new artists.  “What I would love to see is mingling of the art forms. If there’s a theatre festival let’s have performers outside, and musicians, too.” 

– Contact Janice Pasky at calgaryurbancompass@metronews.ca