board of directors
VESNA YANKOVICH
President
I am an artist, art teacher and textile designer and am best known for my work in metal weaving technique. I am a long term member of Circle Craft and have won several awards at the Circle Craft Christmas Market.
I am familiar with the problems and challenges facing the Vancouver arts community and would like to devote some of my time and skills in trying to make things better. I know many artists connected with Circle Craft, some of whom are my friends and colleagues. We share many common ideas and it would be a great creative challenge working together for the benefit of all.
PENNY BIRNAM
Vice-President
I've been doing my animal heads since I graduated from Emily Carr in 1996, and now am slowing down and reassessing my life and work. Analytical chemist, history student, wife, mother, kayaker, house renovator; now my garden is beginning to edge out my other interests. Even Circle Craft politics and policies. Circle Craft needs some kind of information loop between members, board and staff built into its process, and I'd like to work on that in the year I'm on the board, then perhaps members will know more about how Circle Craft works and will find it interesting to be involved.
SEAN GODDARD
Scholarships Chair
I have been a full time craftsperson for ten years and for the last few years, a member of Circle Craft. I previously lived in Tofino where for many years I was joint owner of a gallery retail space where I sold my own work as well as that of many other artists. I am currently living on Salt Spring Island, raising three kids and selling my work from my property as a member of the studio tour as well as well as selling at the Saturday market.
JASON MARLOW
Selections Chair
My background is woodworking. I gave up art college and silversmithing for cabinetmaking and boatbuilding. In the late seventies I came to Canada to do custom woodwork on jet airplanesin Quebec. In 1980 I decided to go fulltime and work for myself. This gave me the freedom to design my own work and I have been working for more than thirty years as a full time craftsman.
VANESSA CUNNINGHAM
Membership Chair
SUZANNE NAIRNE
Gallery Chair
JOHN SMITH
I have always enjoyed working with my hands, and after a few years in the workforce I soon realized I didn’t enjoy working for other people. Shortly after taking a course in 1977 at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College I started a career as a self employed blacksmith. Three years later, with a pick-up load of blacksmithing tools, we moved to the Kootenays, where Kootenay Forge was born, and I developed a line of functional and decorative ironwork, marketing it to stores and at craft fairs.
KATHERINE SOUCIE
Katherine Soucie is a textile artist and designer who studied Fashion Design in London and Toronto before furthering her education in Textiles and Visual Art in Vancouver, Canada.
Her experimentation with traditional artisanal clothing and textile techniques and textile industry waste has resulted in an extensive body of work for which she has received a numerous scholarships, grants and awards. Since 2003, she has designed for film, television, dance and theatre and has her own clothing line, Sans Soucie that has exhibited and sold throughout Canada, US and Japan.
She is the recipient of the BC Creative Achievement Award, 2006 shortlisted for the Niche Award 2007, recipient of the International Design Green Award for 2008 and is currently a graduate student in the Masters of Applied Art Program at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
BAA Fashion, Dip. Textiles, BFA Visual Art, MAA Visual Art (Candidate)
