The Arts Factory is a mixed-use arts facility located in a transformed art deco warehouse at 281 Industrial Avenue. Home to a vibrant mix of artists from a variety of styles and disciplines. Our artists work with everything from textiles to paint to photographs, on work that ranges from grand to tiny, with inspiration from nature, popular culture, childhood toys, imaginary magical animals and more.
No Public Washroom
Wheelchair Acessible
Ati Ahkami is an Iranian born sculptor based in Vancouver, Canada. Her terracotta sculptures mainly focus on an investigation of the beauty of the human form and the strength and resilience of the human spirit, especially that of the female body and whole being which has been the subject of much objectification and controversy throughout history. Ati graduated in 1976 from Tehran University with a degree in business administration. She studied sculpture in Vancouver starting in 2007, with Ms. Parvaneh Roodgar.
From wearable art to sound-absorbing wall hangings, exploring the textures and properties of wool and what it can shape into has become Chantal Cardinal's full time obsession under FELT à la main with LOVE. After a career as a Fashion Designer and Costumer in the film industry, she was introduced to wet felting techniques where she discovered the endless possibilities of painting with fibres and falling in love with nature's renewable gift. This opened her up to the breathtaking ways in which material could be molded and shaped to create endless possibilities of artifacts out of wool. An important part of her artistic practice is using local wool and processing it herself from a raw sheep's fleece that she gets to know by name. Chantal loves to share her love of wet felting with workshops at community events, online, on location like at Fibreworks Gallery & Studio or at her studio. She has exhibited in BC, the USA, as well as in the UK, and was awarded a Vancity public art commission for the Surrey City Center Branch. In this last challenging year, she was part of an AIC grant (Artist in Classroom) where she engaged 200+ kids K-7, over a six month period, in creating Living Walls:From Farm to Felt and connecting the kids to where the medium comes from by processing a raw sheep's fleece and turning it into art.
Laleh Javaheri is a fibre artist, garment designer, jewelry designer, and painter who has worked in a wide variety of media over the span of over 40 years. Her interest lies in producing objects of varied functionality and to cross the traditional boundaries of function and ornament. The materiality of her work intends to explore and re-express natural components, mainly fibres. She has worked in several disciplines and media from textiles to jewelry and sculptural forms to paintings and her work had been exhibited at several local and international exhibitions.
Megan Majewski’s narrative work tells stories from her dreams, experiences and memories. She focuses on capturing the shadows in her unconscious and bringing them to life through symbolism and the haunting figures in her paintings. Her recent work explores the fragile beauty of life and death while fixated by symbolism from cryptological communication through the use of flowers. She has had her art featured all over the world and has been a GOLDEN Artist Educator since 2016. With a background in animation, working on movies and TV shows, she now creates art full time from her art studio in Vancouver Canada.
“If you know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.” I try to embrace that sentiment and make each project an exploration. There’s a moment, early on, when a new project is materializing in an embarrassingly ugly fashion. For me, that stage is the most exciting. Everything else is just refinement.
Tristesse Seeliger is a Vancouver artist. Her multimedia works include collages, murals, paintings, and sculptures. She predominantly explores the ideas and metaphors around mapping as a tool of perception and orientation. In her newest abstract paintings, she explores shape, colour, and form influenced by the pathways water and creatures create on the land. These artworks are colour field paintings that explore movement, transparency, and opaque layers shifting across a plane. Tristesse hosts an Artist Talk and Assignment series on YouTube called Studio to Studio. In this series, she interviews talented artists who give us insights into their practice and then assigns a creative project. This series started during the pandemic and just kept going.
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