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Letting go and getting on it

by | Mar 22, 2025 | Abject, Abstract Painting, Acrylic, Art Discourse, Artist, Crochet, Doilies, ECUAD MFA, Fiber Artist, Fiber Arts, Fibre Arts, Found Materials, Hand Stitching, Handmade, Handwork, Imagination, Joyful Making In Perilous Times, MakingIsConnecting, MFA, Personalispolitical, Re-use, Reimagine, Stitching, Tactility, Textile Art, Upcycle, Vancouver

Our job as artists is to imagine different futures (Originally published Feb. 23, 2025 on Substack)I made a bit of a scene when Friedrich Irrgang confirmed that he was retiring after 62 short years in the timepiece-repair business. And just what will become of my...

VIDEO tour: ‘Joyful Making in Perilous Times’

by | Apr 21, 2021 | Activism, Art Discourse, Art School, Art Show, Artist Statement, Braided Rug, Braiding, Collaboration, Community, Conceptual Art, Conceptual Craft, Construction, Craftivism, Craftsmanship, Creative Process, Critique, Crochet, Denim, Domestic, ECUAD, Emily Carr University, Exhibit, Exhibition, Experimentation, Exploration, Fabric, Fiber, Fiber Artist, Film, Found Materials, Found Objects, Free Store, Handmaking, Handwork, Hearth, Homelessness, Installation, Joyful Making In Perilous Times, MFA, Pattern, Project, Quilt, Quilt Block, Research, Resurge, Scaffolds, Scraps, Slow Craft, Soft Sculpture, Tapestry, Trash Art, Tyvek, Video, Video Tour, Zero-waste Art

Click HERE for a 10-minute journey through the methods and motivations behind this MFA thesis. (Film made by Ana Valine, Rodeo Queen Pictures, August 2020)

Hoping for heat in this log cabin

by | Nov 5, 2019 | Activism, Challenge, Collaboration, Colonialism, Construction, Craftivism, Emily Carr University, Experimentation, Fabricating, Fiber, Fiber Arts, Fibre, Fibre Arts, Found Materials, Gentrification, Grid, Handwork, Health, Hearth, Homelessness, Log Cabin, Making, MFA, Quilt, Quilt Block, Quilting, Safe Supply, Stitching, Subversive Stitch, Vancouver

I have this idea for building healthy community in this pretty/cold city through hand-making. It’s a process of making peace with ourselves and connecting with others, transforming individualized desires (thanks, capitalism) into shared desires for a sustainable life...

Finding new Space in Old Craft of Smocking

by | Sep 22, 2019 | Craft, Creative Process, Crochet, ECUAD, ECUAD MFA, Emily Carr University, Exploration, Fabricating, Fibre Arts, Found Materials, Hybrid Thinking, LOoW, Material Exploration, Mathematics, MFA, Origami, Paper Sculpture, Process, Smocking, Space Craft, Tyvek

Material research using found spun polyester fibre, for an artwork resulting from a year’s conversation with scientists and scholars. (Carlyn Yandle photos) About a decade ago I stumbled across Latvian-American mathematician Daina Taimina’s curious crochet...

‘Foundlings’: Kids’ works of terrible beauty

by | Jul 2, 2019 | Children, Collaboration, Community, Construction, Emily Carr University, Exhibit, Exhibition, Exploration, Fabricating, Fiber, Fiber Arts, Fibre, Found Materials, Found Objects, Foundlings, Judith Scott, Knotting, Making, MFA, Mixed Media, Nature, Playing, Recycle, Trash, Trash Art, Upcycling

Clockwise from top left: “This Little Lump”, Sylva and Shyla; “Garbage Catcher”, Coco; “Little Worker”, Kahlio, Basha and Ari. Everyone is feeling that relentless creep of plastic that is threatening to consume us, the consumers. I...