Toronto artist Margaret Flood contacted theGentries about her Shapetionary project a month ago, and we just couldn't stop talking about it... so much so, that I forgot to even publish my post about it. So, now, better late than never, let me explain:

The Shapetionary is a visual conpendium of objects. In Margaret's words, "It started from looking at a dictionary and wondering why some words are illustrated and others aren't, then thinking it would be interesting to illustrate a whole dictionary, or all the object nouns, then organize them by shape -- grenade, lemon, football together in pointy/oblong subset."

She extracted all (approx 9,500) of the object nouns from the dictionary and is now looking to get them illustrated by as many different artists as possible. While I'd love to participate, I'm a little rusty on the illustrative side of the arts spectrum. So then, that is where you come in.

If you'd like to try illustrating some of the words needed, contact Margaret at velvetbicycle [at] hotmail [dotcom]. She'll then provide you instructions and a handful of words to draw.

All contributors will be acknowledged in the complete index which so far includes over a thousand people from Belgium, France, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Mexico, Austria, Australia, Tazamnia, Germany, Brasil, Indonesia, Japan and Scotland.

For those sitting this one out, we'll keep you posted on the progression/completion of this project!

In the meanwhile, yes, the Shapetionary is on Facebook.