East End Arts is pleased to introduce, TAPESTRY, a 6-month, at-home art program for seniors! Please note that registration for this program has now passed, and the program is underway!
TAPESTRY
August 2022 – March 2023
Taking Place Online through Zoom, and in-person for an exhibition!
ABOUT THE PROGRAM, TAPESTRY
TAPESTRY is an at-home art program that takes place online via Zoom for up to 25 seniors. The goal is for participants to learn different textile arts skills, increase digital literacy skills, and contribute to a a series of collaborative tapestries, inspired by the famous Names Project AIDS quilt conceived in 1985 by Cleve Jones. Each tapestry piece will celebrate a loved one or neighbour, an abstract concept, or even a local beloved business lost during this contemporary pandemic.
The program will take place over the course of six months – August 2022 to February 2023, and will feature different textile workshops each month, all led by different textile artists. At the start of the program, participating seniors will receive a kit of materials including fabrics, patterns, and the necessary materials to create textile art, as well as a journal in which to write about and share their insights into the themes explored in each monthly textile workshop. During the course of the program, participating seniors will also receive a combination of creative prompts to help keep inspiration and creativity high to contribute to their collaborative quilt, as well as other textile creations to keep themselves.
This program will culminate with an in-person exhibition at St. Matthew’s Clubhouse to share these phenomenal textile creations with community, and seniors will also be given a chance to share their writing about the topic of loss & their relationship with community in the pandemic.
ABOUT THE ARTIST FACILITATORS
Camila Salcedo
Sustainability and Mending – August 5th
Camila Salcedo (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and facilitator born in Venezuela and based in Tkaronto, working primarily in textiles, digital art and community art practices. There are a few threads that run through their work including: camouflage as a way to blur lines and break down social assumptions, memory as an empowering tool for time travel and creating new speculative realities, and upcycling and recycling to piece-together patchworks both materially by reusing and mending textiles, and digitally by appropriating found audio and video footage.
They have taught a number of textile workshops through Workman Arts, Lakeshore Arts, NSCAD University’s Extended Studies, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and independently through a Canada Council-funded project. They have participated in a few textile residencies including Harbourfront Centre’s Craft and Design Textile Studio Residency, Arquetopia’s Backstrap Loom Weaving (Mexico) and Arquetopia’s Independent Residency (Peru). They are currently the Education Coordinator at Textile Museum of Canada, and previously worked as the Community Makers Program Coordinator at the Museum, bringing together local textile artists and social agencies serving diverse groups in engaging virtual workshops.
Sarah Aranha
Meditative Stitching – September 2nd
Sarah Aranha (she/her) is an artist and maker whose work draws from the patterns, interactions and routines of the everyday. She has a background in painting and drawing, and works primarily with gouache, watercolour and textiles. Sarah is also a skilled arts facilitator, and hosts Still Life Social, a monthly virtual drawing night co-presented with the Parkdale Free School. First offered in January 2021 as a way to keep up her own creative practice, Still Life Social has since grown into a community of folks from around the world with a shared interest in drawing and in connecting with others.
Khadija Aziz
Floral Hoop Art – October 7th
Khadija Aziz (she/her) is a textile and digital artist, and an arts educator. Her work is a culmination of ongoing play with patterns, materials, and processes. She marries slow textile-making techniques and tools with spontaneous digital manipulation methods to create digital images, GIFs, installations, and Augmented Reality experiences. Her process-based practice bridges the gaps between slow craft techniques and digital technologies to generate unplanned possibilities.
Khadija is currently pursuing an MFA at Concordia University’s Fibre & Material Practices program. She has taught several textile courses at the Textile Museum of Canada, Arts Etobicoke, Workman Arts, and Neilson Park Creative Centre. Her textile and digital art has been exhibited in Toronto and Hamilton in Ontario; Montréal and Sherbrooke in Québec; Victoria, Australia; and Vienna, Austria. In recognition of her creative practice, Khadija received the Shanks Memorial Award in Textiles from Craft Ontario and the Creative Promise Award from Surface Design Association in 2020.
Fatima Kadkhodazadeh
Linocut Printing on Fabric – November 4th
My name is Fatima Kadkhodazadeh. I am a fine artist and designer with a bachelor’s degree in textile design from Tehran University of Art and I recently graduated from Centennial college, in the field of Fine Arts. After years of working and studying in the field of art and design in my country, I decided to immigrate to Canada to further pursue my studies and to broaden my horizons in the field of fine art, visual art, and design. My art is an ongoing search for the most effective approach to express and communicate the ideas I have about my inner self, my experiences, and the world in which I live in.
denirée isabel
Textile Collage – December 6th
denirée isabel is an artist, poet, and dreamer. Using her textile background to employ large scale installation, performance, and participatory/community art. Navigating the sticky terrains of emotionality and presence, she creates spaces (physically and symbolically) that prioritizes sharing and healing. While upholding an ethos of experimentation, curiosity, and care.
Much of her recent practice centers around the uplifting of underrepresented communities through means of sharing art, teaching, and creating opportunities to connect these communities with the arts. Integral in this work is having a non-hierarchical, anti-oppressive, and people first approach.
She holds a BFA in Textiles with a minor in Art History from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, an advanced diploma in Textiles from Sheridan College. She has completed art residencies and mentorships at NSCAD’s community arts residency in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Harbourfront Center and Sur Gallery in Toronto, Ontario. She has been a recipient of Ontario and Toronto Arts Council grants. She exhibits regularly in Toronto and Halifax.
Julia Lee
Crochet – January 6th
Julia Lee is a dyer, spinner, knitter, teacher, mender, and weaver who has lived and worked in Riverdale, Toronto, since 1986. She graduated from the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners’ Spinning Certificate course in 2000, and is now a coordinator and instructor for that program in Haliburton.
Founder of Provenance Yarns and Textiles and a member of Upper Canada Fibreshed, Julia currently the Executive Chair of Toronto Guild of Spinners and Weavers and the Spinning Education Chair for Ontario Handweavers and Spinners.
Dedicated to encouraging fellow fibre artists to keep their carbon footprint small, Julia promotes and uses Ontario-grown fibres in her work and in Provenance’s monthly Fibre Club subscriptions. She teaches spinning (on a spinning wheel) at her home studio and spins on commission – often turning clients’ pet fur into beautiful custom yarns to create lasting mementos. Julia knits or weaves her natural-fibre yarn into elegant or whimsical creations: garments, home textiles, and knitted tapestries. She also accepts commissions to mend knitwear, patch jeans, and otherwise extend the lives of much-loved garments.
Angela Walcott
Printmaking and Collage – February 3rd
Angela Walcott is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist who combines environmental awareness with found objects to create ECO-Art. Her attempt to provide solutions for waste management, allows her to reevaluate artist approaches that promotes recycling, upcycling and reuse. She uses text as a form of poetry and typography as design to engage audiences in her process. Much of her practice includes collage work as well as the use of textile manipulation. She is currently an artist-in-residence with Ontario Culture Days where she is examining the role of botanicals as it relates to visual art.
SOME ARTWORK FROM OUR SENIOR ARTISTS
FUNDER OF TAPESTRY
