Posted June 11th, 2025
Gabriola’s Spinners, Weavers, and Makers Guild
This long-time active and extremely collaborative group includes spinners, weavers, needle felters, wet felters, dyers, knitters, crocheters, finger weavers, and surface designers of all sorts. They meet each week to share ideas, create joint projects, and explore different techniques. Guild members demonstrate methods and sell their creations at various events, fairs, and galleries around Gabriola Island and beyond. The group has been invited to talk about their collaborative large-scale group installation projects. They will bring their latest creation to show … the Noh Coat.
Posted May 10th, 2025
Learn and Shop with Iron Oxide Art Supplies
FAN welcomes Willow Friday, the knowledgeable and creative proprietress of Iron Oxide Art Supplies in downtown Nanaimo. In June of 2023, a devastating flood destroyed the old store in the Firehall Building. With the help of amazing staff, generous volunteers, and over five months of working twelve hour days, Willow has successfully rebuilt Iron Oxide into a bigger, brighter, and better stocked destination shop at 11 Cliff Street. Willow will be on -site with us at the Coast Bastion offering a pop-up shop, creative try-me workshops, and introductions to new products. Or take a 15-minute walk from the hotel to the location and browse the shelves. Check out more at https://www.ironoxideartsupplies.com/
Posted April 3rd, 2025
Gathering Light – Feature Speakers – Karen Selk – In Search of Wild silk
All things silk have provided Karen Selk with a thread that binds together travel, research, writing, artwork, educating and managing Treenway Silks, a merchant of yarns and fibres for 30 years. She has shared her love for silk worldwide through workshops, lectures and many published articles in textile magazines. Her passion to learn about everything silk has led her throughout Asia and the wild silk forests of India in particular, for more than 35 years. The culmination of her field research has been published in a book: In Search of Wild Silk: Exploring a Village Industry in the Jungles of India. She lives in the Salish Sea on Salt Spring Island, Canada where the serenity and beauty of island life inspire many hours in the studio and garden creating art, writing and growing organic food.
In Search of Wild Silk
Wild silk is much more than the miraculous journey of metamorphosis from caterpillar to silken luxury. It is tightly woven to an ancient living culture raising tasar, muga and eri silkworms in remote forests of central and eastern India. Raising wild silkworms, reeling cocoons, spinning fiber and weaving silk cloth provides sustainable work and a regular income, while protecting the environment, lifting the status of women and maintaining a traditional lifestyle. Photos and stories captured from weavers, spinners, and silkworm farmers over thirty years of field research will transport you into their homes and villages to witness the love and dedication involved in each part of the process from soil to cloth.
Posted February17th, 2025
Gathering Light – Feature Speakers – Margaret Murphy – Storyteller
Margaret Murphy shares many passions: storytelling, writing and teaching. As a tribute to the women who traveled before us, preparing The Way, Margaret celebrates the stories of women of courage and grace. She has created and presented stories about Canadian peace activist Muriel Duckworth, Vancouver Island pioneer women, Cougar Annie and Sylvia Stark, poet/recitalist E. Pauline Johnson and the founder of modern hospice, Dame Cicely Saunders. A founding member of Nanaimo’s Around Town Tellers, Margaret coaches and offers courses in the art and craft of storytelling. Recently, Margaret launched her new story: Behold the Light: Stories of Hildegard of Bingen. Luminous 12th Century Mystic. Story remains the connecting thread in her work as community builder (www.Margaretmurphystory.com).
Join professional storyteller Margaret Murphy in The Wideness and Wonder of Georgia O’Keeffe, a 60-minute celebration of the life and times of the innovative artist. Murphy presents O’Keeffe’s story as a personal narrative. O’Keeffe reflects on her life and art work, from birth through her late eighties, when she was living in her beloved New Mexico. Born in 1887, Georgia O’Keeffe found traditional art classes repressive. In 1911, she decided to “dive into my own unknown”. By 1929, O’Keeffe had discovered the stark, rugged beauty of the southwest and was compelled to make it her home. Murphy explores the challenges and struggles of the artist in her professional and personal life, including her relationship with her husband and manager, Alfred Stieglitz.
Murphy has presented the story at festivals and concerts in both British Columbia and Ontario. The Wideness and Wonder of Georgia O’Keeffe was voted Best of the Nanaimo Fringe Festival in 2016.
Read the full article about Margaret Murphy in our February 2025 Newsletter!
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