A few weeks ago, Asta Kovanen rolled out a bolt of silk in a little park near St. Georges Avenue and East 10th Street and began pounding flower petals onto the fabric.
Some passersby cast curious glances at Kovanen's foray into performance art. Others stopped to watch the petals gradually release their vibrant pink and red dyes.
"It wasn't really an outlandish performance," she explains. "It was more placing yourself in an environment doing something that's unusual, shall we say, and seeing how or if people interact with you."
Kovanen's resulting work of textile art is now hanging inside CityScape Community Art Space in North Vancouver as part of the 2013 Capilano University Textile Arts Grad Show. The nine students graduating with two-year diplomas and one-year advanced certificates in textile arts all have work on display until June 8.
Kovanen, 34, completed the diploma program and is showing six pieces at the gallery. "I'm really inspired by recycling or upcycling materials, trying to use things that I have around me or things that I find," she says, noting she gathered the petals for her flower-pounding piece from the neighbourhood.
When someone gave her a 20-year-old collection of sea urchin spines, she fashioned them into a wearable neckpiece, also on display at CityScape.
"I'm really interested in what might be considered a castoff from someone, how it can be used in a creative way."
Kovanen, a North Vancouver resident and registered massage therapist, was drawn to the hands-on component of the textile arts program.
"I can make things, build things, I can use a loom, I can silkscreen and I can do it from the ground up," she says.
The future of the program is uncertain, though. Facing a budget shortfall, the university is considering axing a number of programs and courses, including textile arts. But, even if the cuts are approved, this 2013 grad show does not mark a final farewell.
"As it stands now we're under suspension, so we won't be taking new students in September, if the cuts happen," says program co-ordinator and instructor Mary Lou Trinkwon, "but the students who have just completed first year will be able to complete second year and then we'll have our grad show, which will be at the Ferry Building (Gallery) next year."
Trinkwon says this year's exhibit reflects a range of approaches and techniques revolving around two core disciplines: weaving and surface design.
"Within (surface design) there's natural dyes, there's chemical dyes, there's embroidery, there's appliqué, there's silk screen printing, hand embroidery, machine embroidery, and other techniques," she says.
As for weaving, students learn to use the traditional four-harness loom, as well as the more modern Jacquard loom, which allows the artist to weave a digitally created image into the cloth.
The 2013 grad show focuses on works that are transformative or tell personal stories.
"Students were really encouraged to think about narrative and how they might not only develop stories that are visually depicted, but to think about their own narrative stories they tell," Trinkwon explains.
She says textile arts is a discipline with many applications.
"You can go in the fashion stream, you can go industrial design stream, you can go visual art stream, you can go therapeutic, you can go recreational, you can go DIY."
One recent grad landed a job working on costumes in the film industry. Another is making crafts with patients at a rehabilitation facility, helping them engage artistically and recreationally. Others have gone on to become exhibiting artists, instructors or entrepreneurs, selling their creations online, in shops and at craft fairs.
Kovanen has been accepted as an artist-in-residence in Quebec this summer where she will be working on an installation project with an artist from France. As the recipient of the 2013 Circle Craft Co-operative Scholarship, she will also have the opportunity to participate in an art show on Granville Island in early winter.