Leisa Rich Fibre Arts Residency Award Recipient: Diana Fox-Revett
Shannon Smith, March 2024
The Contemporary Textile Studio Cooperative is pleased to introduce our first of three recipients of the Leisa Rich Fibre Artist Residency Award 2023/2024 in collaboration with Craft Ontario.
We’re also thrilled to announce that Diana has joined us as a full-time member as of March 2024!
Q + A with Diana Fox-Revett, modern quilting artist and teacher.
You are CTSC’s first recipient of the Leisa Rich Fibre Artist Residency Award, what stands out for you so far?
I started at the studio in November. So far I have especially enjoyed the community of artists that work here: that has been my biggest joy of being in the space. Connecting with others and having impromptu conversations and talking about our work in a casual sympathetic way feeds my creativity and pushes me forward.
And have the studio facilities provided you with any new opportunities for experimentation?
I am enjoying the print table. I studied surface printing in school many years ago but really have done very little since. I am enjoying learning new skills from others, some ideas/techniques that I could possibly use in my college teaching. In addition to textile dyeing and stitch work, I have been a volunteer, helping with workshops.
Can you tell us a bit about what you have been working on in the studio?
My recent work involves slow hand stitched quilt works using up-cycled textiles that I have dyed with natural dyes to create a harmonious colour palette. Slowly piecing with no plan for the outcome. My work is laborious and time consuming. I don't want to put out a huge volume of work. I prefer to work slowly and carefully to make items that will last.
Mostly, I just love to play with colour. One small piece of fabric at a time.
You can see more of Diana’s work and process:
Members at
DesignTO 2024
Shannon Smith + Ganaele Langlois / January 2024
The DesignTO Festival is back from January 19 - 28 all over the city and features several textile craft, design and fashion installations, including some of our members.
Gitte Hansen has a solo exhibition - Forest Underwater inspired by the life-giving force of photosynthesis from plant life that inhabits both land and sea. Gitte’s current practice focuses on working with natural dyes from local plants and minerals from the earth that have been used for thousands of years to produce colour onto intricately designed hand-painted and silkscreened works.
Forest Underwater includes both work in the retail space, Leaves of Trees (177 Queen St. East), viewable during venue hours) and a window installation (viewable 24/7 from outdoors).
Over at 99 Frames (527 Parliament St.), the exhibition Embroidery as Contemporary Expression explores the diasporic experience and the challenges of maintaining and adapting one’s cultural heritage in the face of profound life changes. Members Rachel MacHenry, Munira Amin, Ganaele Langlois and former member Ana Galindo, as part of the Drawing into Threads Collective, are presenting a creative process where women embroiderers from Toronto’s Regent Park community were guided through a back-and-forth between drawing and embroidery to foster new forms of expression.
Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for their support.
Spotlight: Oliva Mae Sinclair
Ganaele Langlois / February 2023
I first met Olivia Mae Sinclair at the 2022 Toronto Comics Arts Festival, where she exhibited her silkscreened cloth diaries, books and poems. Olivia work is unique and singular, using cloth to make books, leaving seams and threads visible to challenge and complexify the book format, developing a seemingly simple black and white esthetics to create complex layers of visuals and texts. We met in early 2023 to talk about the versatility of silk-screening as a creative medium.
Hi Olivia, where does this idea of cloth books come from?
I did my undergraduate degree at Sheridan College, and for a long time I felt like I didn’t have an artist identity. Then, two things happened: first, I read Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, which combines autobiographic poetry and drawings to address the many facets of pain. And then, I received an assignment in my Printing class to make anything I wanted. So I put two things together: the autobiography/memoir genre and cloth. I looked through all the printed pieces I had and developed some new one to create my first cloth book. And I realized that this is what I wanted to do forever.
When did you decide on silk-screening as your main form of expression?
Around the same time as I started creating cloth books, in undergrad. I can’t draw the way I want to, so I turned to photography transferred on cloth as a way to work with visuals. I also worked at a screenprinting facility for a year and loved the experience. Being able to see production from an industry standpoint really helped me streamline my own production process.
What’s your creative process? Do you imagine a finished book or does an idea take shape as you go?
I have two types of creative processes. The first type is for my sculptural and conceptual art. This is when I let myself be guided by my creative intuition and skills and get into a conversation with my materials. I use pieces that I have already made and combine them with new work, in a sloppy and unstructured kind of way. I like to focus on executing ideas as fast as possible, aiming to finish a project in one week.
My other process is for my book production line: here I am more thoughtful and methodical. I first define the title and content and then I spend time with the images and text. I spend a lot of time with manual collaging as well as working with a design software. I really pay attention to the formatting and to the appropriate way to cut and assemble pages. This takes a longer time than my sculptural and conceptual art.
Olivia will be teaching a Storytelling Through Screen Printing workshop on March 18 + 19, 2023.
Screen Printing Fundamentals
Shannon Smith / December 2022
We recently hosted an Screen Printing Fundamentals workshop for a group of grade 12 students from Holy Trinity School. Led by our Studio Coordinator Erin MacKeen and Member Shannon Smith, students engaged in a full day of preparing their own artwork, learning how to expose a screen, and the fundamentals of printing techniques.
For our morning session, we explored the many different methods of creating artwork for screen printing, from direct drawing on transparent mediums to cut-outs with black paper and creating hand-cut stencils with vinyl. Students got to see our studio darkroom where we showed them how to expose their artwork on a screen in our UV exposure unit. We took a lunch break where students went out to explore the many different restaurants and cafes around 401 Richmond (there was a lot of bubble tea consumed).
In the afternoon we dove into printing on fabric samples and paper, and students designed their own bandanas and large canvas pouches for holding art materials. Some students also brought their own tote bags and t-shirts to print their designs on. They explored layering and multi-colour techniques and produced some incredible work.
Safflower Dyeing
Ganaele Langlois / October 2022
Japanese Shifu (paper) weaver and natural dyer Hiroko Karuno spent a few days at the studio this October doing Benibana (Safflower, Carthamus tinctorius) dyeing. Depending on the nature of textile fibres and the number of dye layers, safflower ranges from oranges and light pink to hot pink and crimson.
The process to extract the red dye from safflower petals is exacting and takes place over three days. First, petals are kneaded under water for several hours to extract a first yellow dye. Our focus, however, was on extracting the second, red dye. To do so, petals are covered with lye water and further kneaded for several hours to extract their red dye. The PH of red liquid is then neutralized with the addition of rice vinegar, and the dye bath is ready. Safflower red dye is self-mordanting, and follows the same logic as indigo as repeat dipping of fifteen minutes lead to deeper and brighter colours. We obtained a range of pinks on cotton and hemp, and coral on silk.
Hiroko Karuno shared her collection of safflower-dyed samples, including a deep crimson obi that took fifteen dips to achieve.
The next steps will include extracting red pigment to paint on paper.
Let us know if you are interested in a workshop on safflower dyeing!
Image above: final results of safflower dyeing on hemp, cotton, silk, cotton khadi, and light cotton voile.
Hiroko’s collection of safflower-dyed textiles and papers
Process: extracting the yellow dye (1 and 2)
and red dye (3 and 4)
Exhausted petals and final extraction of the red dye
Preparation of the dye bath with the addition of rice wine vinegar
and dyeing