Despite the crazy snowfall on the weekend, Boris and I made the long trip across town to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. We went to see Layers of Influence: Unfolding Cloth Across Cultures, which is an exhibition of textiles taken from the museum’s permanent collection. The focus is on textiles from a cross section of cultures to explore “clothing’s inherent evidence of human ingenuity, creativity and skill, drawing from MOA’s textile collection — the largest collection in Western Canada — to display a global range of materials, production techniques and adornments across different cultures and time frames”.

It’s a beautiful show full of inspiring pieces of work. I love this idea that people wear clothing as an external expression of their spiritual belief system, social status and political identity in many cultures, but feels less evident in our own. The show motivated me to continue embellishing my own clothes, to personalize them, and make them an expression of who I am. I mostly dress for comfort these days, and not so much for style. I wonder when that changed…

Layers of Influence: Unfolding Cloth Across Cultures continues until April 9, 2017. Read more about the exhibition here.

I have visited this exhibition at Grunt Gallery twice since it opened a week and a half ago, because I love it so much. Three Cities: Prayer and Protest is an interactive paper cut installation made by the artist team at Mere Phantoms, which is Maya Ersan & Jaimie Robson. They created pared down miniature sets of Vancouver, Montreal, and Istanbul from white paper. Visitors to the gallery listen to soundscapes while using LED lights to project and play with shadows along the work and walls.

There are so many details to look at, and using the provided lights to project shadows on the walls helps visitors notice more of these.

The Monteal and Istanbul sets have beautiful churches, while the Vancouver set is filled with wild animals. They’ve captured important details about each city, like the Woodward’s W, and the tree that lives atop a building in English Bay.

The show continues on at Grunt Gallery until February 18th. Learn more about it here.

I came across the beautiful work of Sarah Pike a few months ago on instagram. When I recently learned she’d be having a show in Vancouver I jumped at the chance to purchase one of her pieces. The mug is what I came away with after doing a super quick drive-by visit to her opening last week. Many pieces were sold within five minutes of the start of the show, which is amazing.

I love to have handmade things in my home as much as possible, and mugs are at the top of that list. This Japanese textile pattern is a favourite of mine and use it in my own work – paper and stitching both – so it’s pretty special to have this mug.

Sarah’s teapots are also pretty spectacular pieces of art with their hand stamped patterns and elegant shapes. One day I hope to acquire one of her teapots to go along with my lovely mug.

Visit Sarah Pike‘s show at the BC Gallery of Ceramics on Granville Island until November 26th.