Please join us for an exciting evening with Jane Kenyon on May 6th 2009 at Van Dusen Gardens’ Floral Hall at 7:30pm.

Jane’s topic is Fibre: An Obsession.

Jane was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1953. She began her career as a medical doctor in 1979 and practiced in Saskatchewan for 11 years, however, she was always drawn to a career in the arts. After her two children were born, she made the decision to devote herself full-time to her family and her art.

For the past decade, Jane’s art medium has been focused on mixed media collage/assemblage on a hand dyed substrate textile (usually felt) and embroidery, both hand and machine, to create wall hangings and three-dimensional art. Currently, Kenyon is exploring the creation of cloth with stitch only, Thread Paintings.

Along with many years of study of weaving, painting, and printmaking, Jane earned an Art and Design for Embroidery Certificate from London, England.

This lecture is open to anyone interested in fibre art at no cost in our ongoing mandate to share our passion of fibre and textiles with the public.

Don’t miss this sure-to-be stimulating talk.

Visit Jane’s internet site at: www.janekenyon.com

The Vancouver Guild of Fibre Arts invites all interested fibre artists to: A Panel on Professional Fibre Practice.

Thursday, April 9, 2009 (Location: Holy Trinity Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral, 154 East 10th Avenue, Vancouver. Underground parkade will be opened at 6:00) $10 entry (refundable with guild membership) (free for current and past VGFA members). Seating is limited.

We are very pleased to welcome professional artists Jane Kenyon, Bettina Matzkuhn, and Katherine Soucis, who will talk about their area of expertise.

Biographies:

Jane Kenyon works in a wide variety of paint and mixed media techniques, but fiber is her passion, and she has explored weaving, dyeing, surface design, and all forms of stitching. Her current work is wall-hangings composed entirely of thread, created with free-motion machine embroidery, Thread Paintings.

Kenyon sells her artwork through commercial art galleries, and has been represented at SOFA Chicago and Palm Beach 3. Her work can be found in corporate and private collections in Canada and the U.S., the Canada Council Art Bank and Saskatchewan Art Bank collections, and in corporate collections at the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel in downtown Vancouver and Screening Mammography Centre in North Vancouver.

Bettina Matzkuhn has worked in fibre for 30 years with an emphasis on embroidery and fabric collage. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts and an MA in Liberal Studies from Simon Fraser University. In the 1980’s she animated and directed three award-winning films using textiles for the National Film Board of Canada and an interest in narrative continues to inform her work. She exhibits her work internationally, writes professionally on the arts, is a presenter at conferences and teaches as a sessional instructor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada.

Katherine Soucie is a fresh new clothing and textile artist/designer who studied Fashion Design in London and Toronto before furthering her education in Textiles at Capilano College. Her experimentation over the last few years with non traditional materials and eco friendly textile processes has resulted in an extensive body of work for which she has received a number of design awards. She has designed for film, television, dance and theatre and has her own clothing line, Sans Soucie, which is exhibited and sold through fine boutiques and galleries throughout Canada, US and Japan. Katherine is the recipient of the BC Creative Achievement Award, 2006 and was shortlisted for the Niche Award 2007. She most recently received the International Design Green Award for 2008.

These successful businesswomen offer their experiences on the topics described below:

Why write? It’s much more fun just to fiddle with textiles. Bettina will discuss several aspects of writing that are important to the craft disciplines. She will give you tips on how to get started, how to keep going, and how to tailor, share and enjoy writing! Perhaps even more than the quality of your work, it’s the most powerful promotional tool in your sewing basket.

Jane talks about how to research and approach galleries, how to know when you’re ready, how I work with an agent, what to expect from galleries and what they should expect from you.

Katherine presents on marketing for artists who produce wearables. how to create a press release, working with PR/media, submitting works to a gallery/boutique/tradeshow and how to maintain production and demand for one-of-a-kind pieces.

Following their presentations, the artists will be available to answer questions.

For further information: Gail Hunt, Program Chairperson, Vancouver Guild of Fibre Arts: 604-875-1276 (home), 604-684-6661 (studio), gailhunt@shaw.ca.