Welcome and a Little About Me
Hi Fibre Friends!
I've really been putting off getting this blog going, due to a combination of busy-ness and nervousness, but here we go! I'm so glad you've found me in this vast expanse of the internet and I hope you stay awhile.
I'm Brooke and I'm a fibre artist. Or textile artist. Or mixed media artist. Labels can be hard. But whatever I get called, my passion is all about making beautiful things out of fibre and fabric. I'm been stitching since I could safely hold a needle without poking myself in the eye. My grandmother taught me to embroider when I was 5 years old and boy did it take! I moved on to knitting, sewing, crochet, spinning, weaving, and dyeing. But it wasn't until Covid that I ever thought I could make a serious profession out of it.
For the last 10 years I've been a professional genealogist. When covid hit, and the financial fall-out that soon followed, I lost all my clients. I homeschooled my kids for that first year, but when they went back to school I felt rudderless. When a yarn store opened down the street from my house, I went and offered myself as a knitting and weaving instructor. After a decade of focusing on my kids and my freelance work, I was finally getting paid to work in the fibre arts community! My short-lived Etsy store aside, I'd never really took that possibility seriously before. Soon I started thinking about what else I could do to make a living with my passion.
On a whim, I started looking up open-call submissions for art shows. I found one with the theme of masking during Covid. I created a piece of art, "History Repeating" where I embroidered newspaper headlines, posters, and ads from the 1918 flu pandemic onto N95 masks and submitted it to the jury. It was one of only 20 pieces accepted internationally and was shown at St. Vincent Gallery in Pennsylvania! Later that same year, I participated in an exhibit at Show Gallery 978, a small gallery on Queen St. West, where I shared the space with several other talented Toronto artists. And now here I am, making art using fabric and stitches and fibre and doing what 5-year-old me never dared to dream of. Since then, I've made custom art pieces for a few private collectors and participated in a few small craft shows.
I hope you join me on this journey of art and discovery and fibre. I'd love to hear about your own fibre practices and to build a supportive community of fibre friends.