B I O
 

Tyron James Thomas Bowney Semaka. Born in Estevan Saskatchewan in 1966. Family moved to Taber Alberta in 1969 where he lived until age 17. High School: Straight A's in Art, Chorus and Drama. Straight B's in all else except Math - straight C's - You get the picture. 1984 - Moved to Calgary to attend Alberta College of Art. Majored in Visual Communications (Commercial Art). Graduated with high marks and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1988. First job out of College was drawing clip-art for Image Club Graphics.  Thousands of award winning images.  Image Club was later sold to Adobe. Ty also designed the top selling typeface Lemonade - which he has seen all over the world on menus, trucks, signs etc. - for which he recieved $1400. Since then, Ty has pretty much been a one man ad agency. He did have one other "job" since Image Club. He was Art Director at an advertising agency in 2001 that he quit just before it went under. Ty started his band The Plaid Tongued Devils in 1990 with the brother of Image Club owner, Alan Kolodziejzyk.  The band has been together since. Touring Canada and Europe extensively. The band has released 4 albums, gets lots of airplay on CBC and CKUA, and has forged a great following in Canada and parts of Europe. Ty is married to dancer/choreographer/actor Anita Miotti.  Married since 2001, Anita and Ty met while performing together in One Yellow Rabbit's In Klezskavania, for which Ty wrote most of the script, and co-wrote the music with The Plaid Tongued Devils. The next year (1999) Anita and Ty formed The Berzerkrgang Collective with Director Ken Cameron and the PTD, to write and perform the play entitled I Think I'm A Wolf. SInce then, Ty has acted as Outside Eye on his wife's many projects under her company, Theatre of the Living Statue. In 2002 Ty got involved with OYR's Michael Green in forming a Frank Zappa tribute band called The Whip It Out Ensemble, in a theatre/music production called We're Only In It For The Money. which performs about 3 times a year in theatres and festivals. Ty's design clients are listed virtually everywhere on this site. One of his faves is OpenBSD, for which he designs and illustrates all CD covers, posters, t-shirts etc, but also gets commisioned to write and produce a song every 6 months (which appear on OpenBSD releases only). Another favourite client of Ty's is One Yellow Rabbit, whom he considers friends and for whom the work is always creatively satisfying. During 2002 and 2003, Ty's band has toured parts of Europe 4 times. Life is good...