Meet the 'Walking Alongside Trauma' Artists
Rachael Ashe
Rachael Ashe is a graduate of the Creative Photography program at Humber College, and is a multidisciplinary artist self-taught in papercraft. Rachael credits her former position as a photographer at the Textile Museum of Canada, and through it an extensive exposure to handcrafted textiles, as a major influence on her work with paper to this day. In December 2013, Rachael was the featured monthly speaker at Creative Mornings in Vancouver, and she spoke on the topic of making by hand to a two-hundred-person audience. In 2017 she was the CCBC nominee for the Mayor’s Arts Award in the category of Craft and Design. She has exhibited across Canada, the US, and the UK, as well as been published in Uppercase Magazine, and the books Design Genius, and Paper Play.
Bridget Catchpole
Bridget Catchpole lives on the unceded territory of the K’ómoks First Nation of Hornby Island, British Columbia. She studied Fine Art at Concordia University (1998) in Montreal, QC and Jewellery Art and Design (1993) at Vancouver Community College in Vancouver, BC. Catchpole acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally, and she is represented by the Craft Council of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC and Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h, Montreal, QC.
Nevada Christianson
An interdisciplinary artist, Nevada’s work incorporates printmaking, sculpture and digital art. Formerly a fine art painter, Nevada’s creative practice explored specific themes (eastern philosophy, plant medicine, reverence for nature), but now her work is largely defined by a commitment to examine issues relating to social and climate justice. An activist at heart, Nevada evolves and leverages her practice to serve as a conduit for change.
Nevada (she/her) is Métis from her maternal line (descending from the historic Métis Tourond family) with mixed European ancestry. She is a citizen of the Métis Nation of British Columbia and a member of the North Fraser Valley Métis Association.
Deborah Dumka
Deborah Dumka is a textile artist who has worked with wool in one form or another for many decades. Her professional practice began after completing the Textile Studies diploma program of the Anna Templeton Centre, St. John’s NL. She has lived the major part of her life by one ocean or another and finds inspiration for her work in the intersections of water, land and sky and in the relationship between humankind and nature.
Deborah works from her home on the edge of a small island in the Salish Sea of British Columbia.
Hope Fortenzer
Hope Forstenzer lived most of her life in and around New York City, and is now living in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has been shown at D’Adamo Woltz Gallery in Seattle, and at both New-Small & Sterling and The Seymour Art Gallery in the Vancouver area, as well as being sold at Vancouver’s East Side Culture Crawl. She teaches and works out of Terminal City Glass Co-op.
Amy Gogarty
Amy Gogarty is an artist, educator, and writer with a special interest in issues relating to contemporary visual art and craft. She received her MFA in Painting from the University of Calgary and taught in Liberal Studies for 16 years at the Alberta College of Art & Design in Calgary. She has exhibited her paintings across Canada and contributed over 100 critical essays and papers to journals and symposia in Canada and abroad. In 2006, she relocated to Vancouver, where she has been active in the ceramics community, serving on the Board of the North-West Ceramics Foundation and writing frequently about ceramics, visual art, and craft. Her studio practice involves both functional and sculptural ceramics
Eleanor Hannan
Eleanor works in the textile arts field involved in sewing and embroidery for most of her life in some way or another, She says she actually thinks in cloth and thread combinations as they relate to drawing. For a number of years, Eleanor has been doing sewing machine embroidery. More recently she has been developing techniques in hand embroidery to create large-scale portraits.
She has a BFA from the University of Manitoba and has exhibited work both as a drawer, painter and an artist working in textiles in Canada and in the UK. Teaching is an essential part of her creative purpose.
Benjamin Kikkert
Benjamin Kikkert is an artist working in hot glass and mixed media sculpture. He is a graduate of the Sheridan College Craft & Design Program and recipient of the 2012 RBC Glass Award. After many years training from coast to Canadian coast and an extended artist residency at Toronto’s Harbourfront Center, he moved home to the west coast and his Vancouver Studio Glass on Granville Island.
Bettina Matzkuhn
Bettina Matzkuhn explores history, geography, and personal stories through a focus on embroidery and fabric collage. She exhibits, writes professionally on the arts, lectures, teaches and volunteers.
Sarah Montroy
Sarah Montry is a multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in Vancouver, BC on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her work integrates textile forms and textures with clay, engaging with themes of brokenness, generational
traumas and traces, and making as a method of mending and healing. After beginning her studies in Interior Design, she switched her focus to fine arts, completing a diploma at Langara College, followed by a BFA at Emily Carr University.
The foundation of her practise can be summed up in a desire to approach creativity and making as actions towards wholeness, as she explore what breaks us & holds us together, in conversation with her community.
Louise Perrone
Louise Perrone is a Canadian jewellery artist who works with materials from domestic and industrial waste, employing techniques that combine the traditions of goldsmithing and hand sewing to explore the values attributed to traditional women’s work. Born in London, England, Perrone holds a Bachelor of Art in Sculpture from the Nottingham Trent University and a Post Graduate Certificate in Art and Design Education from the University of Brighton. In 2002 she graduated from Alberta College of Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Jewellery and Metals. Her work has been exhibited across North America and Europe.
Debra Sloan
Debra Sloan has been engaged in a 50-year community-based practice, teaching clay sculpture, 1991-2013 at Shadbolt Centre, other community centres, MISSA & the Leach Pottery. Served and adjudicated for CCBC, Circle Craft, PGBC, NWCF Boards – currently president, & the Filbert, Sunshine Art Gallery, & Sydney Art Exhibition. She has many acclimations and publications locally, nationally and internationally, and is very interested in collaborative projects.
Married, and a parent of 4 children and now 5 grandchildren.
she draws upon human imagery, or various animals, to navigate the interconnectivity between the human and natural worlds.
