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Mergatroid Building

32 Artists

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Mergatroid Building

Building details

schuedule

Public Washroom

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Not Wheelchair Accessible

Mergatroid Building Artists

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Sorour Abdollahi

Sorour Abdollahi’s works deal with capturing societal change as reflected in the urban environment in relation to one’s internal landscape. She explores themes of continuous transformation and displacement of spaces, as experienced by individuals and communities, depicted through fading and emerging landscapes. The work also reflects personal memory of place and depictions of internal landscape, where she draws upon her own lived experience as an immigrant artist practicing in East Vancouver, coping with the changing environment of her past and present. Her works can be found in private and public collections in Canada, USA, UK, France, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and in the Art Rental and Sales Program of the Associates of the Vancouver Art Gallery.  

Joanne Andrighetti

Joanne Andrighetti is a glass artist, fabricator and educator who has been working in glass for 40 years. A graduate of Sheridan College’s Crafts and Design program, she operated a hot shop in Vancouver, has taught glassblowing and flameworking,  been a teaching assistant at the Pilchuck Glass School,  and a juror for the Canada Council for the Arts.  She is a founding member of Terminal City Glass Co-op in Vancouver, BC.

Brit Bachmann

forthcoming

Bronsino Designs

Denise Wilson is a Vancouver based maker and designer of leather bags belts and accessories.

Denise’s interest in working with reclaimed and recycled materials began while going to art school in the late 80’s and early 90’s. For many years she had made her own hand bound sketchbooks from off cuts of printmaker’s paper and discarded leather from a furniture factory. This was the beginning of the path that would later lead to her producing the line of handbags, belts and accessories that she is now known for. Her leather work is available through select boutiques in British Columbia as well as through her own studio in East Vancouver.

The Bronsino line pays homage to the 16th century Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino and her husband’s family home on Bronsino Street in Lima, Peru.

   

Amelia Butcher

Amelia Butcher makes illustrated, sculptural pots out of magic dirt. She looks for connections and makes narrative vessels where observations and questions about fiction, perception, natural history and character become crystallized into a human-scale artifact. A 2013 graduate of Emily Carr University, she is a founding member of the Dusty Babes Collective, a committed volunteer with the Potters Guild of BC community gas kiln project, an educator and technician.

Carol Schoenfeld

Carol Schoenfeld is a glass bead maker and jewelry designer.  She loves glass, especially transparent colors that reflect light.   She enjoys making floral beads which she incorporates into her jewelry and accessories creations. Her creations express the uniqueness and beauty of each individual bead.  

Clay Addiction Pottery

Cheryl Stapleton's focus is on atmospheric firings in a Soda or a Wood kiln. She likes the variations that happen and all the surprises that appear!

Julie Coster

Julie has been exploring glass as a medium for 11 years.  She works out of Terminal City Glass Co-op where she also teaches.

Dahlhaus

Heather Dahl founded Dahlhaus Studio in 2007 to bring her ceramic and painting practice under one roof, creating numerous collections to be cherished and used in the home. For many years under Dahlhaus Studios, Heather has made both one of a kind work and also produced multiples of her most popular designs for brands like Anthropologie, Nordstroms, West Elm and the Bay. Several years of working with smaller retailers (Walrus, Nineteen Ten Home, Room6 etc) was an effort to support fellow female-led businesses and smaller independent shops that had curated collections of local brands and makers. The past 2 years has brought about a creative shift, with a focus on more one of a kind work and paintings. At the start of the year, Heather launched a new website to bring to light all the many side-projects she had been working on. Heather Dahl Studio is an art practice, devoted to experimentation, innovation, research projects, custom work as well as paintings.

Donald's Innovations and Repairs

Donald Dawson is a restorer, fabricator, blacksmith, metal artist and teacher whose motto is "let's get rid of our throwaway society." Donald creates art from metal treasures - family heirlooms, vintage and heritage pieces and teaches fabrication and welding to people 6 to 90+ years old. For 22 years as an Electrical Engineering Technician at UBC in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Donald worked on research projects and taught faculty and students. He is a certified Red Seal Journeyman, trained in machining, blacksmithing, architectural model building, theatre props building, cabinet-making, and restoring the heritage steam towboat "SS Master."  

Enrique Morales (Madera Fina)

I'm a self-taught woodworker / furniture maker. I have been designing and crafting furniture for many years but it was not until 2005 when I finally opened a studio in Vancouver where to this date I keep on mastering my unique style featuring the combinations of rustic live-edge woods and the elegance of wood veneers. Most of my materials are environmentally friendly, reclaimed, salvaged; and all my finishing materials are fumes free. I had some of my work displayed at the Woodworkers Gallery in Seattle (now closed). I have been participating in the Eastside Culture Crawl in Vancouver and The Harmony of Arts in West Vancouver

Espiritu Design Studio

Diane is a multidiscipline industrial designer, during your visit you will find small batch hand finished ceramics available for purchase. As a child, I loved solving puzzles, cautiously exploring and observing my surroundings. I found myself thinking of ways in which I would make things better and like my father, I am resourceful and that gives us fodder for creative expression. This fascination of working with my hands only amplified as I grew older and developed into a career path when I pursued Industrial Design at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia and the West Coast became my home and inspiration. Now that I am a mother, I have a new appreciation of the wonders we encounter daily and the moments we create with the objects we choose to surround ourselves with. As a designer, I find joy and purpose in collaboration with others. Through my experience, the design process has been as valuable as the creation of small & sincere batches of ceramics. It is the method that as has allowed me to focus and meditate on my craft. The creative process is an opportunity to reflect on previous challenges, imagining new ways to explore and interpret problems. As I approach a solution, I delight in the refinement process. My design methodology is applied across multidisciplinary practices. I find satisfaction in working in the spaces of soft product design as well as ceramic design. In the making of ceramic ware, the process includes sculpting a master form as well as the use of found objects and materials that compliment the final slip cast form.  I appreciate the subtle ways light is absorbed by matte unglazed surfaces and I play with contrast with the application of glaze and lustre. The addition of mason stains to the porcelain slip produces the coloured bodies and I glaze the interior of vessels for food safety. I often highlight glaze drips with gold lustre to embody the idea that your cup is overflowing with abundance. Vessels with gold lustre must be hand washed with a non abrasive sponge. Each piece that emerges from Espiritu Design Studio is hand finished with thought and care, as a result there are unique qualities that define each form.  

Hope Forstenzer

Hope Forstenzer is a native New Yorker who worked extensively in film, theatre and ceramics before falling madly and irrevocably in love with glass in 2000. By 2003 she had moved to Seattle to study glass with as many glass artists as she could find. She slowly developed a feel and style of her own, finally becoming a teacher herself in 2008. She has been living in Vancouver since 2012, and is a proud member of Terminal City Glass Co-op, where she works and teaches. She has shown her sculptural work in juried shows at D’Adamo Waltz Gallery in Seattle, Seymour Art Gallery in North Vancouver, the Craft Council of British Columbia Gallery in Vancouver, PoMoArts in Port Moody, BC, The Art Gallery of Burlington in Burlington, Ontario, and as part of a group commission for the Vancouver Opera, among others.

Jackie Frioud

Jackie has been making salt glazed pottery for more than 20 years. The textures and colours and unexpected surprises that salt firing brings keeps her inspired and excited. She loves to make tableware with refined shapes and earthy tones for everyday visual and tactile pleasure. Jackie makes her work at the Mud Room, a shared studio at the Mergatroid Building in Vancouver, and fires her pottery at the Tidal Art Centre in Lund where she recently built her second salt kiln.

Heather Konschuh Glass

Internationally recognized, Canadian artist, Heather Konschuh has been making her glass work for over 18 years. This experienced glass artist is actively making her art and custom glass orders. She instructs glassblowing courses at Terminal City Glass Co-op in Vancouver. Notably, she was chosen by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's wife Laureen, in 2010, to design and create the G20 and G8 charger plates for the First Ladies. Her flowing forms and sense of design is demonstrated throughout her large body of glass work including sculptural Trees, Starfish, Hearts, Birds, Trees, Mountain Paperweights, Jellyfish Paperweights and Awards.  Some of her blown glass designs include modern Pendants, a variety of Ornaments, Bowls. Vases, Platters and Memorial Glass Art. Heather sells her work from her home studio in North Vancouver. She received her BFA in glass in 2005 from the Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary and also studied at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Tito Hinojosa

My current work is an exploratory deconstructing of imaginary landscapes through layers of colours and textures. Direct life experiences and my own personal background meld with the notion of being present and being silent.

Guy Hollington

Guy Hollington has been blowing glass since 2014.  He enjoys the vibrancy of the hot shop, the heat, the moving glass, and the physical exertion necessary to create the final pieces.  Guy continues to enjoy refining his technique focusing on the manual dexterity and visual judgements required to produce a stunning piece of blown glass. Guy often works with the medium after the initial blowing process to add sharp cut lines and intricate designs to the glass through masking and sandblasting.  These techniques produce sculptural pieces that can accent any home decor.

NikNaz Kahnamoui

Inspired by poetry and prose, I create layered paintings that aim to depict the ebbs and flows of life, the ongoing quest for meaning, and the longing for ‘safa’ and transcendence. My creative journey formally began while studying architecture in Iran. Close to a decade after immigrating to Canada, I started exploring mixed media and acrylics. My work is held in private collections in North America, Europe and the Middle East. My new collection, Where Beauty Starts, explores insignificance as an entry point to joy. I found inspiration for the series during a recent trip to Ireland, a country that bears the scars of colonial violence as visibly as it embraces humour, kinship and a ‘good craic.’ Standing at the edge of a rugged cliff, looking out into the endless ocean, I am at once deeply aware of my insignificance and the magnitude of the moment. The expansive Irish landscape and spirit is a reminder that life and its brutality does not require us to indulge in earnest self-seriousness, forgoing happiness to demonstrate our understanding of pain or resolve to address injustice. If we allow it to, however, life’s hardships and our feelings of insignificance urge us to embrace whatever beauty or joy presents itself. In the series, I’ve used different size canvases to capture the interplay between magnificence and insignificance. The small canvas reveals magnificence no less than the large; it cannot be diminished by the limitations of those who behold it. And the large canvas reminds the viewer of their place in the universe, inviting them to feel the liberation that ensues from feeling insignificant.

Krista Johnson

Krista Johnson is a Vancouver based artist. Her representational paintings allow her to explore the relationship between colour and light as it exists in the natural world. It is this constant need to seek out an abundance of nature that she continually examines in her art. Krista graduated with a Bachelor of Communication Design from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2000. She worked as a designer and illustrator until she began to focus on painting in 2015. Her work can be viewed online at www.kristajohnson.ca and at the Ian Tan Gallery and Once a Tree Furniture in Vancouver.

Sonya Labrie

Sonya Labrie is a graduate of the Craft & Design Program at Sheridan College with a major in Glass, Sonya Labrie has focused her career on designing and creating functional, wearable, and sculptural works in blown, kiln formed, and flameworked glass. Informed by a background in painting and drawing, Sonya explores surface design, texture, and colour as details of expression. From playful, organic interactions between colours in blown glass vessels, to crystalline surface textures in sculptural pâte de verre art pieces, Sonya’s work contains a spirit of free-form intention; a balance of precision and experimentation that culminates in joyful results. With consideration for form, texture, and colour, Sonya’s wearable glass jewelry elegantly encapsulates the cherished properties of glass and easily evokes a mood; from the soothing calm of subtle blues and greys, to the exuberant cheer of a brilliant jewel-toned rainbow.

Suzan Marczak

Suzan marczak  is a landscape painter whose art explores the vast landscapes of the backcountry. Her work expresses the joy she feels when hiking in the the mountains, forests and rivers of British columbia, and emphasizes the need to protect these untouched wild places.

Suzan also makes colourful, whimsical clay tableware under the name "Firebelly "Clayworks. Her line of functional work includes, mugs, platters, bowls, teapots and other ceramic items for the home.

Maria Ida Designs

Maria Ida Designs is a Vancouver-based blown glass production company. We make colourful objects for the home with a joyful, unpretentious feel. Every piece is hand-blown, melding creativity, danger, science and molten glass into one-of-a-kind pieces.

Founded by Maria Struk in 2015, Maria Ida Designs works out of Terminal City Glass Co-op, a member-owned artist space. We sell online and have stockists in Canada, the United States, Mexico, UK, Norway, Australia and New Zealand.

Bettina Matzkuhn

Bettina Matzkuhn creates stories about ecology, weather, and geography in her textile work. With an emphasis on hand embroidery, she values the versatile language of textiles. Matzkuhn holds a BFA and an MA from Simon Fraser University, and is the recipient of Canada Council and British Columbia Arts Council Grants. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, as well as in Korea and the United States. Her work is found in national public collections such as the Surrey Art Gallery, Cambridge Art Galleries and the Weldon Map Library at Western University. She lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Hitomi Mckenzie

Hitomi Mckenzie is a Porcelain Ceramic Artist, who makes functional shapes and individual pieces. Hitomi was born in Japan where she worked as a fashion designer move to London (UK) in 1996. Studied pottery doing a part time course before achieving BTEC PDD (Professional Development Diploma) in Fine Art Ceramics at South Thames College in the UK. Her intimate relationship with each individual piece of work becoming an extension of how she responds to movement of the wheel and the clay. It is important to her to create communication, a conversation between form and surface. Her works combine that lively tactile quality of hand thrown porcelain, which showing its amazing translucency and looking refreshingly different, contemporary and exciting. She has been living in Vancouver since 2011 and become part of the many Artists at the Mergatroid building in East Vancouver that has an annual open studio, "Eastside Culture Crawl".

Nora Vaillant - The Mudroom

Nora Vaillant makes salt glazed and wood fired functional pottery. For over 25 years she has worked in the field of ceramics as a potter, teacher, writer and curator. Nora was a resident artist in Oaxaca, Mexico and at Banff Centre for the Arts, and most recently at the Tidal Arts Centre in Lund, BC.   She's on the planning committee of the Canadian Clay Symposium (since 2007) and is a past board member of the Potters Guild of BC.

Her love for all things ceramic lead her to curate several exhibitions in Canada and the USA focused on the history of the studio pottery movement:  "John Reeve: Some Hidden Magic", "Warren MacKenzie+John Reeve: Kindred Spirits" and "High Fire Culture". Her writing is published in Studio Potter magazine and Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and Their Contemporaries.

Nora teaches pottery to adults at The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, The Richmond Centre for Art, and in Vancouver, at The Roundhouse and West Point Grey Community Centres.

Lisa Ochowycz

Lisa Ochowycz is a full time painter based in Vancouver. Her series are named after streets or neighbourhoods, near and far, that have played a role in her artistic explorations. She has exhibited internationally, most recently a solo show in Basel, Switzerland. She has taught abstract painting internationally and her work can be found in private and cooperate collections world wide. She has been awarded artist residencies in Hofsos, Iceland and Saskatchewan, Canada. Her work revolves around translation, the imprint of social and geographical experience on memory, and beauty. These themes intertwine in atmospheric abstract paintings, works on paper, or photo based work. lisaochowycz.ca

Marko Rnic

Marko Rnic is a woodworker focused on hand-made items that match beauty with practicality.  Featured this year are creations for those who love wine, sushi, boxes, and paper making.  Marko's designs are functional yet elegant. Made from domestic and exotic hardwoods, his collection is thoughtfully curated to cater to the needs of sophisticated townhouse and condo dwellers alike. His workshop is located in the Mergatroid Building, 975 Vernon Drive, Suite 205, Vancouver, BC.

Russell Hackney Ceramics

Russell Hackney is a ceramic artist working with the slip casting method.

Tanis Saxby

"Smooth and sensitive, Saxby's sculptures evoke sensuality, a burning desire, a flame, which will go on for eternity." Angie kordic, Widewalls. Shipped from her rooftop studio in Vancouver Canada, Tanis Saxby’s sensual, often feminine sculptures have reached a global audience and are displayed in both private and public collections world wide.

Kirsten Spouler

Kirsten has been working with glass since August 2019 and has taken the majority of her training from her local glass studio at Terminal City Glass Co-op. She has also attended classes at the Corning Museum of Glass in 2022 and 2023. Kirsten works primarily as a Registered Massage Therapist in Vancouver and takes her extensive knowledge and training in anatomy as an influence in her art and glass work. She is drawn to the use of bright opaque colours mixed with black glass. She has been exploring the use of murrini to develop pattern. Finding a passion and a creative outlet with the use of hot molten glass has allowed Kirsten to express herself in her art as well as create unique one of a kind pieces.  

Minori Takagi

Born in Shizuoka, Japan, glass artist Minori Takagi began studying Tombodama (glass beads created through ancient lampworking techniques) in 1997. Since moving to Vancouver, Canada in 2006, Takagi has been incorporating new elements into her ancient style. Her jewellery uses soft glass as well as borosilicate glass, a substance more durable than the typical soda-lime variety of glass. Takagi’s glass jewellery is widely acclaimed. It won Vancouver Magazine’s 2019 “Made in Vancouver” style category, and it is featured in articles by The Georgia Straight, the Canadian craft magazine Studio, and the book 1000 Beads by Lark Crafts.

Yi Wei Wang

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