Crafted Vancouver - Made From Scraps: Volume 1

Photos and writing by Dianna Drahanchuk

This first thing one sees upon entering SPACE, in place of honour, is a 12 foot long portrait of Art Paul woven from deconstructed wood and nylon cord, a creation by bead worker Angie Adair. Art’s business was to turn and prepare large scale logs for building construction and also for First Nations totem poles as an example. Some of the wood used in the show are offcuts from his projects. Other wood used in the exhibit came from the left overs reclaimed from deconstructed old Vancouver houses and salvaged from furniture projects.

Nearby is a beautiful black and white twin set of laser engraved spray painted 800 year old red cedar plaques by lettering artist Brother Jopa. For this work he invented his own script that was inspired by the Rosetta Stone. Playfully hanging overhead is an oversize mobile by jewelry maker Marie Foxall that incorporates abalone, spruce, lucite, brass and cord, a “supersized” adaptation of her typical craft. An 8 foot diameter circle of 900 year old Douglas fir, originally a block 4 feet thick, was retrieved from the Museum of Vancouver archives. By necessity, industrial designer Logan Gilday figured out a way to get it through the doors by prying open and leaving the natural cracks in the wood on display.

Patrick Christie, the exhibit’s producer and maker of the “Made from Scraps” sign, explained that the idea for the show was to bring together artists, designers and craftspeople who do not traditionally work with a certain material to collaborate across a variety of disciplines and to find practical and creative uses for a featured “scrap” material, in this case wood.  Seventy individuals were invited to participate, 40 responded within 24 hours. 

This is intended to be an ongoing series of events and with the enthusiasm shown by the contributors for this one, I can’t wait for the next micro challenge which will be to make something out of discarded “blue jeans”.