Instructors – Past Seasons

"I have been a fiber artist since 1975. Using and adapting well-practiced basket-making skills, shaping vessels that contain and share space has always been a joy for me."

Mary has a Bachelor of Science degree in Education and a Certificate in Clay and Textiles (Capilano University). She was a weaving instructor in Fashion Design at Kwantlen College (1989-1991) and University-College of the Fraser Valley (1991-2000).

Verna Chan has been an avid knitter most of her life. She picked up a drop spindle over 5 years ago and has spun her own yarn ever since using drop spindles before graduating to a spinning wheel and electric wheel.

Jean Biccum Curry is a Canadian weaver and fibre artist, who, until recently, divided her time between living on the family buffalo (bison) ranch in Alberta and their coastal home in British Columbia.

"I am an artist whose work always starts with a piece of cloth. I work in two streams; translating remote landscapes using earth pigments (which could be described as representational abstraction) and meditative hand stitch."

Nell is an award-winning contemporary textile artist, specialising in free form machine embroidery.

Chantal Cardinal's foundation for the last 25 years has been as a Fashion Designer and Costumer in the film industry.

Margie Davidson is a quilt artist and surface designer. Her love of colour is joyfully expressed through the fabrics she creates.

I am an obsessive maker. I have been stitching and making things since I was a small child, and I cannot imagine a day without making some sort of art.

"My work springs from a love of printing fabric – be it recycled bedsheets, sheer curtains, worn linen table clothes or silk – and a love of all things botanical."

Nadine Flagel has engaged with reused text(ile)s in literature and textile art throughout her life. Early rugs reflect Art Nouveau influence and a commitment to sustainability.

Carol James has been playing with strings for a long time; she learned to embroider and to crochet before she entered kindergarten. Since the 1980s she has been exploring a wide, flat, braiding technique known in North America as fingerweaving.

Jennifer creates abstract paintings using collaged hand-painted and printed fabrics and papers. Layering – of colours, of patterns and textures, of fibres and stitches, of references gleaned from nature and human culture – this is at the core of her art practice. She is particularly interested in intersections, disruptions and reversals where positive and negative space, natural and man-made patterns, order and randomness have an opportunity to coexist and interact.

Catherine is a painter, writer, teacher and quilt-maker. Inspired by legends, stories and words in general her work is developed through drawing, painting and mixed media in sketchbooks.