January 6, 2019
Well before the most recent wave of coverage of the crisis of plastic accumulating in our oceans, jeweler and artist Jesse Gray of Gray Metal started picking up beach plastic on Vancouver Island and casting some of it into jewelry.
January 18, 2016
I made this fur lifejacket partly in homage to Meret Oppenheim, one of the founders of surrealism and most famous for her “Object in Fur,” a fur teacup and spoon. Oppenheim is yet another woman artist who did not receive the credit or status she was due.
January 15, 2016
“Haste doesn’t live here,” says one sign on the door. Another inside says “Nothing in this room is for sale.” An Italian woman named Chiara Vigo is the last living master of the ancient textile tradition of spinning “baysuss” or silk produced from the fibres exuded by a giant mediterranean mollusc.
June 25, 2015
Once you start seeing something, it’s suddenly everywhere (and it doesn’t help that people keep sending me examples). After noticing that we seem culturally obsessed with our colonial settlement of this city/province/country/continent right now, and that this pioneer DIY craft style has spread as far afield as Brisbane and Berlin, based on what people have written me, I feel compelled to keep collecting it.
October 14, 2014
Men in British Columbia, 1859, one in a newly discovered collection of early photographs of white settlers and First Nations in B.C. Via Vancouver Sun © Royal British Columbia Museum, reprinted with permission
An abridged version of this essay has been published in the May/June 2015 issue of Briarpatch Magazine
I am probably as bored of casual hipster-slagging as you are.
May 23, 2014
This is for those who haven’t seen this decade-old segment which for some reason has been making the social media rounds again.
It is so nice to see a truly beautiful textile get this sort of attention (and from men too, which speaking as a textiles person rarely happens in North America, in contrast with other parts of the world).
April 13, 2014
I first noticed these cylindrical handwoven bags on a couple of delegates at the UN World Urban Forum in Medellín, Colombia. They looked unusually sturdy, very finely handwoven in wool, and all had unique and beautiful geometric patterns.
November 27, 2013
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
November 15, 2013
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
May 18, 2013
