Wallace Edwards

Wallace Edwards is a Canadian children’s illustrator who won the 2002 Governor General’s Award for his book Alphabeasts. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art. On October 16, 2007 Wallace Edwards was nominated for the Governor General’s Award (children’s book illustration) again, for his most recent book, The Painted Circus. To date, Edwards has published five books, of which three have been nominated for this Canada’s most prestigious literary award.
Wallace Edwards is working with the Augmented Reality Lab at York University in 2013 to realize augmented and immersive materials: “Thematically, Wally Edwards’ Baffling Cabinet of Generative and Disappearing Artefacts builds on some of my experiences and preoccupations in the book world – my books on circus, optical illusion (Painted Circus), visual experiences that weave together unusually coupled animals (Mixed Beasts) and animals who live, for example, in strange Victorian Houses (Alphabeasts). It is also indebted to my fascination with the Collyer brothers, strange and immense collections of all kinds and, of course, by the possibilities I see in the emerging medium of augmented reality itself: being able to ‘touch’ a virtual object and make it disappear, for example, or construct a miniature forest in an old shoe that can grow to inhabit an entire room. I am tremendously excited to explore the ways in which this emerging technology can challenge and extend my artistic practice.” — Wallace Edwards