Visiting Artists
Every year, the studio invites a guest artist of national or international standing to lead an intensive summer workshop and to give a public lecture. Our global network of creative makers, thinkers and creators fosters intercultural dialogue through practice and an opportunity for our members and the public to experience new techniques, ideas and approaches to the textile arts.
Marjolein Dallinga
Netherlands/Canada
And as Long as There is Movement, There is Life: Wearable Felt Sculpture
This sold out workshop and lecture (Textile Museum of Canada) took place in 2018.
In this 3-day experimental discovery workshop, students will be challenged to play using sculptural felting techniques, deepening their awareness of the creative process with a focus on the journey and not the end result. We will explore different sculptural form ideas including folding and unfolding, building relief and adding shape to surface, while investigating colour, design and concept, all to become more aware of how, and why, we want to use this medium.
The first day, we will play with the processes of shortening, thickening, tightening and shrinking felted surfaces. Then, we will each work on our unique wearable designs. At the end of each day we will discuss creation to heighten awareness of color and design choices.
Marjolein Dallinga trained in graphic arts and painting at Minerva Academy, a fine arts institute in Groningen Holland. As her family grew, her focus gradually turned from painting to smaller objects, such as toys. During this time she encountered sheep's wool and took a course about working with wool and felting.
Felting is an ancient technique allowing unlimited freedom in the creative process. It demands very limited mechanical intervention (such as weaving in a loom). Marjolein found it to be a medium in which she could express herself, as she had done in her painting, but that also readily fit her lifestyle, while caring for a family.
Marjolein began creating handbags, hats, shawls and mittens, which interested enough people to start teaching felting. Through the contacts she made in her courses, she became involved in producing theatrical pieces and started to create work for Cirque du Soleil where she expanded the experimental aspects of her work.
Lecture:
The Textile Museum of Canada
Marjolein Dallinga will discuss the ancient art of felting and its reemergence within contemporary expression. This talk focuses on the history of the art of felting, on Marjolein Dallinga's artistic inspirations and the journey of her own work in felting. She will discuss her sculptural approach as well as her collaborations for theatre and performance, such as her costumes for the Cirque de Soleil and other theatre companies. She shapes, sculpts, folds and cuts this warm and woolly material through the process of felting, during which it metamorphoses from an array of loose colorful fibers to a strong and sturdy textile. "It is from the dance of conflicting emotions that creativity and art are born. Though sculpture is usually perceived as static, I see it more as movement, the movement of wool from fibers into felt. And as long as there is movement there is life.”
Sandra Brownlee
Canada
Tactile Notebooks + The Written Word
This workshop took place in 2018.
This 5-day workshop will help you to find your own living language through the creation of a vibrant notebook practice. Motivated by "haptic" considerations, we will use the sense of touch to stimulate and awaken perception, to guide the making process, and to revive sensitivity to the way we communicate both visually and verbally. We will create tactile pages, playing with materials, techniques, and words to make concrete the vital elements of our experience. The workshop encourages deceleration, allowing you to heighten your sensory experience, expand understanding in unexpected directions, and deepen your artistic vision.
Open to all levels, and former students as well as new are welcome.
Sandra Brownlee is an artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she pursues her ongoing interests in weaving, tactile notebook keeping, and teaching. She has exhibited her work extensively throughout North America in both solo and group exhibitions since the late 1970's. Recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition at the David Kaye Gallery in Toronto, GGVMA Award Exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, and Innovators and Legends, Generations in Textiles and Fibers, organized by the Muskegon Museum of Art.
Sandra Brownlee has earned her MFA in Fibers from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has received numerous awards including the 2014 Governor General Visual and Media Arts Saidye Bronfman Award, a Canada Council B Grant, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.
Throughout her career, Sandra has taught textile and interdisciplinary arts at numerous universities and art schools in Canada, the United States, and India. She has taught her Tactile Notebook & the Written Word workshop at many venues including Committed to Cloth and Bigcat Textiles (UK), Fibres West, Geelong Forum Textile Retreat, and Big Pond Studio (Australia), Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Contemporary Textile Studio, and MAIWA Textile Symposium (Canada), and Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Shakerag Workshop, and Long Ridge Farm (USA).
Aurore Thibout
France
Laurence Teillet
France/UK
"Keep Wearing" Textile Surface + Garment Workshop
This workshop and lecture (Textile Museum of Canada) took place in 2018.
This workshop is inspired by the spirit of the Japanese Mingei movement in the early 20th century, when ordinary people and craftsmen developed techniques to recycle fabrics in order to make new cloths. In this experimental workshop, we will recycle and rework two typical elements of the male wardrobe: the shirt and the jacket. The aim will be to reshape, shift and hybridize these codified and standardized elements into innovative new garment forms. We will play with processes of deconstruction and reconstruction, and explore transitioning between three-dimensional and two-dimensional forms. Creating relationships between surface and pattern, and texture and rhythms, we will use diverse sewing skills and the repetition of gestures along with simple methods for applying colour and graphic effects to cloth (e.g. screenprinting). Working with composition, scale, distortion, warping, mirroring and repetition we will create new patterns. In so doing, we will transform and digest industrial fashion products into new, original and one-of-a-kind pieces.
Aurore Thibout
Based in Paris, Aurore Thibout defines her practice in terms of both art and fashion. Her work blends various media and approaches. She studied fashion design in Paris at the Duperre Ecole Superieure des Arts Appliques and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs. Awards include The Public Grand Prix Award Hyeres Fashion Festival 2006, The Creation Grand Prix Award from the City of Paris 2013, Villa Kujoyama Art Residency Kyoto 2015. Aurore has worked in costume design in Paris for theatre and dance companies since 2004, and for the National Opera Bastille in 2016. Her work in fashion has been exhibited at venues such as Paris Fashion week, Roma FashionWeek, Designer's Days, Paris, Nuit Blanche, Kyoto, The workshop Residence, San Francisco, and Handwerk and Design, Berlin. A former designer with Martin Margiela, she regularly teaches workshops and gives lectures in France, US and Asia. Inspired by Memory and Traces, she has developed her own range of unique designs, the "Memory Clothes" series; a collection of one of a kind pieces at the intersection of clothes and textile art. Using up-cycling and rethinking traditional techniques with a contemporary approach, she develops collaborations with highly skilled artisans and artists in Taiwan and Japan for both exhibition and performance. Her exclusive clothing collection is based on natural dyes and slow made process. It is currently distributed in select high-end boutiques in Japan (Osaka, Kobe, Tokyo, Yokohama) and USA (San Francisco).
Laurence Teillet
Laurence Teillet is a French multi-disciplinary designer who works and lives in London with her partner and 3 children. She studied Fashion design at Duperre, Ecole Superieure des Arts Appliques in Paris, and Textile design in London where she developed a Design Manifesto to re-use second hand textiles for her MA at Central Saint Martins (UAL). Since then, she has continued to follow her philosophy of designing with a conscience; being aware of her impact in today's society by re-using waste materials to experiment, refine and redevelop new types of fabrics and possibilities for clothing. Laurence's work includes a range of re-used textile designs created through inventive printing techniques for Atom Design Studio in London. The Garment Party Happening, her conceptual and experimental work-in-progress about how to wear and use clothes in different ways, led to creative collaborations with Fashion Professionals and Art Institutions such as Selfridges in London, Upside down - Inside out Exhibition in Copenhagen, ELLE Magazine & Licence and Edelkoort Studio in Paris. In 1999, Laurence was appointed Head Fashion Designer for the Artisanal Collection at Maison Martin Margiela in Paris where she was responsible of sourcing and reworking vintage clothing and accessories, combining artistic and conceptual designs with traditional and innovative techniques. Back in London in 2003, she worked at Jessica Ogden Studio on the development and production of handmade limited editions and one off pieces; sourcing materials and antique fabrics, using diverse craft embellishment skills, dyeing, printing, quilting, patchworks and embroidery... In 2005, Laurence co-founded Elemental, a vintage furniture boutique in East London, also curating selected designer-makers specialising in up-cycled and handmade products. She is currently the Art Director working on branding, visual identity and product sourcing. Since 2009, she has been leading experimental master classes in art schools and museums in France and USA, to transmit her experience, share her creativity and the importance of responsible design in fashion and textiles.
Image: Yu-Chen Tsai from Shu Te Taiwan
Dorothy Caldwell
Canada
The Expressive Stitch Workshop
This sold out workshop and lecture (Textile Museum of Canada) took place in 2016.
In this workshop, participants examine "the stitch" based on the tradition of Indian Kantha embroidery. Kantha embroidered quilts utilize the running stitch to form patterns, textures, and narrative imagery reflecting the lives and experiences of the makers. Images, videos and textile examples will be used to bring this rich art form to life. Students will learn the techniques involved in this tradition and then move on to expand the use of the stitch to develop personal imagery and a unique vocabulary of marks.
Vanessa Mardirossian
Canada/France
Experimental Printing
This sold out workshop took place in 2016.
This 2-day workshop will focus on simple but innovative heat transfer printing techniques, highlighting experimental approaches to surface patterning on polyester fabrics using disperse dye printing papers. Participants will explore direct resist printing using found objects, thread, feathers and even salt to create images on cloth. Each student will create a set of their own experimental samples. Students are asked to bring a source of inspiration with them to the workshop that will act as a jumping off point for their sampling. Vanessa will also present her portfolio and discuss her career and experience working as a textile designer for haute couture.
Vanessa Mardirossian has nearly 20 years of experience as a textile designer within the fashion industry. Through her own studio, she has developed print collections for design houses such as Christian Lacroix Haute Couture, Givenchy by Alexander McQueen, Kenzo, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Prada. She has also consulted for trend forecasting companies such as Promostyl, Nelly Rodi and Peclers Trend Studios in Paris. She trained at Ecole Supérieure d’Arts Appliqués Duperré, Paris (Fashion) and at Central Saint Martin’s, University of the Arts, London (Textile Design). She currently lives in Montreal, Canada with her family.
Rebecca Burgess
USA
Colours of Our Land + Closed Loop Textile Creation
This sold out workshop and lecture (Textile Museum of Canada) took place in 2016.
Spend the day creating colour from locally harvested plant materials including black walnut, sumac and apple bark. We will explore the use of plant and animal fibres from both the Upper Canada Fibreshed and the Northern California Fibershed, and create a colour palette on this natural fibre canvas that reflects our bioregion and the plant diversity of our landscape. These natural textiles both come from and return to the land. All materials we will create in this class are part of what we call a ’soil-to-soil’ system, they are 100% compostable, and can return to the soils from which they came.
Rebecca Burgess is an internationally recognized educator and leader in the area of natural dyes, the founder of the Northern California Fibershed and the author of “Harvesting Color; how to find plants and make natural dyes”
Co-presented by The Contemporary Textile Studio Co-operative and the Upper Canada Fibreshed
Kate Blee
UK
Colour into Cloth: Order & Disorder
This sold out workshop and lecture (Textile Museum of Canada) took place in 2016.
The Contemporary Textile Studio welcomes the renowned UK artist Kate Blee for a 3-day public workshop at our studio and an artist's talk at the Textile Museum of Canada. Kate’s workshop will focus on discovering colour relationships through a spontaneous, reflective and playful process. Using dyes mixed to a variety of viscosities, and exploring unorthodox methods of applying dye or pigment to textile, students will discover a personal and experimental process of working, a greater understanding of the nature of cloth in relation to dye and an appreciation of imperfections and anomalies as they arise.
Michelle Lowe-Holder
UK
Innovative Accessories
This workshop took place in 2014.
In this 4-day workshop, London UK-based accessories designer Michelle Lowe-Holder will lead participants through creating a series of samples combining textiles like ribbon, tape, fabric and braid with solid materials such as metal and wood. Working through techniques including folding, looping, stacking and pleating, participants will develop a series of innovative samples, leading towards one more fully developed accessory piece. Students will receive instruction in specialized techniques and the artist will give a slide presentation. The class will also take a field trip to see Michelle’s work and that of other innovative accessories designers at “Rue Pigalle” on Queen St. W.
Michelle Lowe-Holder is known for her sustainable approach to design and her interest in heritage handcrafts and vintage detail, zero waste and upcycling. Her work has been featured in six books including Sass Brown’s “Re-Fashioned”, Sandy Black’s “Sustainable Handbook” and “The New Jewellers” by Olivier Dupont. Her collections have been featured during Paris Fashion Week and are sold internationally. She has been involved with projects at the Science Museum (UK), M&S Shop, and NIKE as well as working with craftspeople in a joint Norwegian/UK project, “Made in Osteroy”. She leads workshops internationally and lectures at Istituto Marangoni in Italy. View her work at: lowe-holder.com
Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada
USA/Japan
Memory on Cloth: Dialogue with Material
This sold out workshop and lecture (Textile Museum of Canada) took place in 2014.
Inspired by Japanese folk textile "boro," meaning castaway rag, participants in this class will learn how to reinterpret material, process, content and as artists make work which speaks from their own place. The practice of imprinting memories on surfaces and creating texture on material through marking and shaping the cloth/canvas will reveal conventional and unconventional forces. Sashiko stitching, shibori, the use of indigo and other transformative techniques will be examples of an alternative creative process,with such metaphors as: darning=healing; meditative action=marking time; reuse/repair=recording history.
Participants are urged to bring their own recycled, used, stained scraps or moth eaten woolens to incorporate into their project. (Having one's own sewing machine will be beneficial.)
Lecture:
Creative Impulses: Japanese Fashion & Textile
Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada
Since Japan's post-Industrial period, artistic craftsmanship and the use of "high tech" materials by Japanese fashion and textile designers have exhibited an imaginative approach to working with natural and synthetic materials, combining hand work with technology. In the early 1970s, the majority of those in Japan were exploring new forms of creative expression within a traditional context.
One notable aesthetic concern which is explored is material and texture. The concept of imprinting memory and movement on surfaces by shaping the cloth/canvas through various ways including traditional Japanese shibori techniques have created new exciting design and structure. Another important aspect of Japanese fashion designers' work is that of cut and construction of garments, a theme which will also be explored. By looking at various examples, we can contemplate the essential and universal aspects of the textile arts.
Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, renowned artist, author, curator, textile researcher, teacher and film producer has long been a proponent of traditional and sustainable practices in fashion and textile production. Wada is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, and is the author of Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing (14th printing); Memory on Cloth: Shibori Now (5th printing). She is the President of the World Shibori Network and founder of the Slow Fiber Studio in California. yoshikowada.com
Maxine Sutton
UK
HEART and HEARTH: The Things of Life
This workshop took place in 2013.
This three-day workshop will provide opportunities to develop your own creative approach to recording, embellishing and making. Working from still life objects, memory and narrative as starting points, we will explore the possibilities of merging and layering printed, stitched and appliqued forms, colour and line, to create either a simple textile series, an individual panel or object.
Using a mixture of new and reclaimed fabrics, textures and found prints, we will experiment with cut paper stencils. Creating screen printed silhouettes and forms on a variety of textile surfaces, we will progress through layering and building the surface and pictorial space, adding tension and interest through stitched details, line and appliquéd elements.
In this wide-ranging workshop, you will learn or develop skills in basic screen-printing, composition, colour, plus simple hand and machine embroidery techniques. You will benefit from practical demonstrations, one to one tuition and group discussion to develop practical skills, confidence and the ability to express your ideas via textiles.
Maxine Sutton is a UK-based textile artist whose work encapsulates a love of colour, embellishment and pattern. She combines illustrative, narrative and abstract prints with embroidered details and texture, using this personal visual language to explore domesticity, folklore, dreams and anatomy.
Dawn Dupree
UK
Internal Dialogues/External Process
This workshop took place in 2013.
UK-based textile Artist, Dawn Dupree will speak about her creative practice and her work. Through her printed textiles, she explores narrative elements, creating constructed landscapes through the use of hand drawn and photographic images. Her inspiration comes from a variety of sources including cinema, urban wastelands, abandoned domestic objects, photography and her own mark-making. Her loose, improvisatory approach to printmaking allows her to build up layers of images on the cloth, working with the idea of transitional space to create polarities within her work. Dawn also teaches at London Printworks Trust, and is a visiting lecturer at Goldsmith's College.
Jennifer Hambleton
Canada
Embroidered Potentiometers: Crafting Fabric Sensors Using Conductive Yarns
This workshop took place in 2011.
Participants were introduced to the burgeoning area of electroconductive textiles and explored the creative embellishment possibilities with conductive threads and the LilyPad. Images and videos of examples of both art and fashion that incorporate conductive materials were shown. Jennifer Hambleton demonstrated the LilyPad platform and taught the basics of circuitry necessary for creating conductive textiles. There was a discussion of further applications of the Lilypad technology to various textiles. Students had the opportunity to create a number of samples.
Mr. Hiroyuki Shindo
Japan
Indigo Specialist
This workshop took place in 2011.
The Contemporary Textile Studio Co-operative hosted an informal lecture and textile showing with Mr. Hiroyuki Shindo, an expert in indigo dyeing. Mr. Shindo was in Canada to attend the opening of the "Japan" exhibition in Ottawa, and we were lucky enough to be able to bring him to Toronto. He showed pieces from his extensive collection of traditional Japanese textiles, including examples of unique board clamp dyeing and rare indigo textiles.
India Flint
Australia
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost - Travels with a Dye Pot
This workshop took place in 2011.
Internationally renowned natural plant dyer India Flint will give a lecture outlining her unique approach to bioregional dyeing, as well as her practical research into innovative natural dye techniques. She will show images of her dye process and textiles, as well as providing samples for viewing and discussion. India Flint will also lead a hands-on workshop entitled “Mapping Country” at the Contemporary Textile Studio Co-op.
