The Creators

Drawn to their unique grain pattern, carver gravitates to trees’ ungainly outgrowths

There’s more to a burl than meets the eye. On the surface the flawed wood is a gnarly, lumpy mess. But beneath the scars hides something rather special.

“Burls are an unappealing wart-like growth on a tree,” artist Gary Foidart, 69, explains.

“They are horrific looking on the outside. Some of them look terrible. You never know what you are going to hit when you cut a burl open but the wood inside is the most beautiful wood there is. Each one is totally unique.”

Bulbous and rough, a wood burl forms when a tree experiences stress or disruption to its growth. Burls can also develop from insect infestation, bacterial or fungi growth, and environmental injuries.

Where there’s wool there’s a way for inventive fibre artist

Christie Peters works swiftly, stretching and folding colourful pieces of wet wool.

Akin to sculpting, but with fibre instead of clay, her fingers pinch and pull and press and crimp and pluck and ruffle to create the poppy-petal shape of her felt flowers.

She’s just finished making a batch of 30 elegant paper-wrapped wire stems topped with blooms in neon shades of pink, yellow and red, bright peach, emerald green, royal blue and chartreuse.

On a table, approximately two dozen circles of merino wool fibres with the texture of cotton candy are neatly laid out. Also known as roving, the puffy shapes await their transformation from fluff to felt to flower.

For mural artist, blank space is her happy place

Rachel Lancaster has a thing for blank walls — she can’t drive past one without wanting to leave her mark on it.

The mural artist is always on the search for the perfect canvas and, when she sees a wall she likes, she doesn’t think twice before offering her painting services.

“That happens all the time. I’ve driven past a wall and wanted to paint it…. I will find the company and contact them. I always do it; why not? When you run your own small business you do whatever,” she says, laughing.

There’s one in particular she can’t get out of her mind — an exterior wall belonging to Local Public Eatery, a downtown restaurant/bar on Garry Street.

Digital doyen Leslie Born conjures a cadre of distinctive droids

Leslie Born had no intention of drawing robots when she first picked up her stylus and yet here she is with nearly 200 digital portraits of them.

Born’s first robot arrived more than three years ago, announcing its presence with just one word — curious — that popped into her head, niggling away at her until she began to draw.

Today Born’s Supermurgitroid Robot Friends, all 193 of them, form the biggest branch on the artist’s robot family tree. Each arrival is heralded by a random word — tinkerer, cosy, moon, scared — prompting Born to reach out for her tablet and start sketching.

She already knows No. 194 is on its way, hovering at the edge of the “portal” to our world.

Authentically Indigenous creations play vital role in cultural reclamation

The Creators is a series that examines ideas, images and inspiration and the people behind them.

Ryleigh Todd-Moore has been very busy lately.

The 19-year-old, who uses they/them pronouns, is in their first year of an anthropology degree at the University of Winnipeg and has been occupied with exam prep the last few weeks.

Calligrapher Janet Murata flips the script from humdrum digital to exquisite analogue

Every time Janet Murata puts pen to paper she is taking part in her own form of resistance.

The calligrapher’s practice is a “gentle act of rebellion against technology and the addictions of smartphones, email and social media.”

Murata weaves her art into her daily routine.

“My calligraphy shows up everywhere, whether I am writing a letter to a friend, a note to a teacher or my grocery list. My pen comes with me everywhere I go, although you can do calligraphy with pretty much everything — you could use a carrot, a feather or a stick — it doesn’t have to be a pen,” she says.

World through a pinhole

The images Brenda Stuart makes with her pinhole cameras are, unlike conventional photographs, the opposite of a snapshot in time.

The artist captures the path of the sun with solargraphy, a technique where the arc of the sun’s trails are recorded straight onto photographic paper as its position in the sky changes.

Each picture contains many moments layered in one continuous exposure.

“Solargraphy is a way for me to make images that are unexpected and experimental. Images that help us ask questions on how we define a moment of time. Images that can express something alternative to the decisive moment that photography is mostly known for,” Stuart says.

Artist supercharged about melding traditional techniques and technological skill

David Russell paints with electricity.

Using a tool modelled on a paintbrush that is connected to a low-voltage power supply, he applies 24-carat gold to the pincers and stinging tail of his scorpion sculpture.

It’s a form of electroplating, called brush plating, and is just one of the many methods he employs to make art.

Russell has had a hectic week preparing for his first market of the year. He went to bed at a quarter past one and was up at six in the morning, taking the children to school before heading back to The Crypt (a.k.a. his basement workshop) to continue “hustling and juggling.”

Animal portraits come to life in subtle detail, one stitch at a time

Zena van de Poel’s animal portraits are created from hundreds upon thousands of tiny, layered stitches.

Weaving work bonded Manitoba artist with late grandmother

When she first started weaving four years ago, Cristal Brooks was in the throes of grief after experiencing a significant loss.

Making art became a route to process her profound sadness after her grandmother, Doreen Florence Brooks, passed away.

She’d never worked with textiles before, but felt compelled to create, utilizing a medium her grandmother, an accomplished seamstress, was familiar with.

Using scrap material her grandmother had saved from her own sewing projects, Brooks weaved through her pain, manipulating cotton, cord, wool, lace and yarn into textured artworks.

Artist’s work draws viewers in beyond the surface of the canvas

When you look at an Efe Ogboru piece, chances are you’ll be staring at a canvas with more than just paint on it.

The artist, currently in her final year of a fine arts degree at the U of M, incorporates beads, glitter, stones, chains and sometimes even hair to add texture to her paintings.

“It’s not human hair,” she swiftly says, anticipating the next question.

“I always have to explain that any time I talk about my paintings. It’s synthetic hair. Someone once confronted me; ‘did you take my hair and put it in your painting?’”

‘Happy accident’ sparks creative pipe-carving venture

Jeff Nelson describes his foray into pipe making as a “happy accident.”

Nelson, 69, creates hand-carved hardwood pipes, designed to smoke cannabis, out of wood sourced from all over the world as well as from Manitoba.

The “home handyman” has worked with wood for years but had never considered carving pipes until four years ago when, after an unsatisfactory smoking experience from a store-bought pipe, he decided to make a better one for himself.

“I wasn’t looking for a new hobby,” he says. “But some of my friends saw it, and they wanted one of their own. I made a couple more and it grew from there.”

Architectural background informs artist’s drawings

The artist behind Kirsch Street Studio, Kris Kuzdub’s background in architecture informs her art.

Known for her city landscapes of places she’s been to and lived in, Kuzdub, with a master’s degree in architecture, launched the studio in 2020, as a route for her to find a way back to her art.

Kuzdub started with a challenge of drawing the 30 places she had been to before she turned 30. Never short on ideas, she found herself getting into a rhythm, slipping into a meditative state as she sketched.

Her work, she says, has given her a reason to draw and has helped her enjoy the process even more.

Traditional Indigenous plant-medicine sources inspire handmade personal-care products

Ten years ago Dana Connolly started going to medicine workshops to learn about therapeutic qualities of Manitoba’s plants and to establish a deeper connection with the land.

Wood carver goes with the grain to craft his one-of-a-kind creations

Where others see waste, Sean Philips sees only possibilities.

Whether it’s a diseased tree destined for the chop or storm-battered trunks blown down by wind or logs laying discarded in ditches, as long as it’s wood, it’s rescued and taken to his workshop where it’s given a second lease of life.

Transformed into vessels and one-of-a-kind sculptures, Philips has a vision of what he wants to achieve when he starts carving, but more often than not, he finds himself being led by the colour, shape and texture.

“I have 100 pieces laid out in my garage in such a way I can see every piece of wood I have available. When I go in there I put a chair in the middle, look at the wood and see which one stands out. I put that one on the workbench, walk around it to see what shape it wants to be and then I carve into it,” he says.

Artist transforms imaginative visions of everyday urban scenes into vibrant, detailed ink-and-wash canvases

Tim Toews has a knack for spotting beauty in the mundane. His paintings of Winnipeg, line drawings in black waterproof ink with watercolour washes in soft pinks, hazy yellows and moody blues, imbue the city with an air of romance. Motivated by a desire to be surprised by the familiar, traffic lights, road signs, graffitied walls, fire hydrants and lamp posts are all given the Toews treatment, transformed into sublime vignettes under his deft pen and brush skills. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Artist (and art teacher by day) Tim Toews in his backyard studio. There’s a dreamy quality to […]

After Meghan Greenlay’s first introductory class, pottery got her

When Meghan Greenlay signed up for a pottery class on a whim, little did she know that nine years later she would be selling her work far and wide. The artistically inclined Greenlay had worked with wood and metal before but never considered clay until a friend invited her to join a class at the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Meghan Greenlay has dedicated hours at the potter’s wheel honing her craft. She was immediately taken with the medium but admits her skill on the potter’s wheel didn’t come easy. Hours of practice and note-taking ensued as […]

Imaginative play inspires dollmaker’s handmade creations

As a child Melanie Wesley was obsessed with dolls.

Growing up in a creative household, Wesley’s mother was a firm believer in the power of imaginative play and encouraged both her and her sister to develop hobbies that would stimulate and challenge them.

The siblings played with paper dolls they made themselves, creating tiny make-believe worlds in dresser drawers pasted with pictures from old Sears catalogues.

Today the 51-year-old still continues to “play” with handmade dolls, albeit ones which are made with rather more robust materials.

Creative printmaker turns her talents to textiles

Sitting at her thrifted 1934 Singer treadle sewing machine, printmaker and artist Amanda Fyfe guides a piece of repurposed fabric, on which she has printed her original artwork, towards the needle. Fyfe, 37, often visits local thrift stores in Steinbach where she sources vintage and secondhand fabrics on which she prints and repurposes into household items such as quilts and pillowcases. When she first started mastering her craft, Fyfe only used paper. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Printmaker/artist Amanda Fyfe works on a print at her home in Richer. “Once I got more accustomed to paper I began printing my […]