Weavers are challenged by the popularity of low-priced items, said Barbara Heller, a tapestry weaver based on Granville Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t want to pay what things are worth,\u201d said Heller, 63, who stood behind a wooden counter at Fibre Art Studio on the island late Friday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re so used to mass produced items from Third World countries you know you go to The Bay and you can find something for five dollars and to pay\u00a050 or $100 for the scarf that\u2019s hand-woven, it\u2019s that we\u2019ve lost touch with how things are made,\u201d said Heller.<\/p>\n
Heller, who wore jeans and\u00a0a blue top and sweater,\u00a0is one of five weavers who share the studio.<\/p>\n
The studio is participating in Culture Days from Friday to Sunday. \u201cCulture Days is a collaborative movement to raise the awareness, accessibility, participation and engagement of all Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities,\u201d according to the Granville Island website.<\/p>\n
The weavers will demonstrate and talk about their work from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Heller said this isn’t a big change from what they\u00a0usually do, but the studio is\u00a0normally\u00a0closed Sundays.<\/p>\n
The studio resembled a 360-degree rainbow of mixed colours and textures. Yarn wound into balls filled baskets on the floor. A yellow and green scarf draped a mannequin neck on the counter.<\/p>\n
A loom across from the counter revealed Heller\u2019s work in progress\u2012 a large tapestry of a crumbling stone building.<\/p>\n
Apart from the\u00a0studio, Heller said she’s represented by Elliott Lewis Gallery.<\/p>\n
Heller, who\u2019s been weaving for around 35 years, said locals aren\u2019t coming to the island as much since the Olympics, which she said she attributes to Olympic parking bans. She said she thinks people started shopping elsewhere.<\/p>\n
She said a benefit of being located on Granville Island is that there are a lot of tourists who buy items such as yarn and scarves.<\/p>\n
A man and woman from Ontario popped into the studio. The woman, with white hair, looked for yarn and pulled a green sock out of her purse with knitting needles still attached.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the \u201870s and even into the \u201880s there was a real love of the handmade. You know the hippy generation, whatever, there was a return to it,\u201d said Heller.<\/p>\n
She said people started to shift their focus to fitness.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now people are back,\u201d said Heller.<\/p>\n
\u201cYoung people are knitting and learning to weave and spin and maybe we\u2019ll come back to the appreciation of the handmade.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Weavers are challenged by the popularity of low-priced items, said Barbara Heller, a tapestry weaver based on Granville Island. \u201cPeople don\u2019t want to pay what things are worth,\u201d said Heller, 63, who stood behind a wooden counter at Fibre Art Studio on the island late Friday morning. \u201cWe\u2019re so used to mass produced items from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37574],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-granville-island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1032"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1424,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions\/1424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}