Artisan PEI "The Joy of Watercolor Painting" Workshop

Artisan PEI "Bead Making" Workshop

Artisan PEI "Create An Ocean Gem" Workshop

Handmade necklaces recognized as best new product at P.E.I. Craft & Giftware Buyers' Market Awards

SAMANTHA MACKINNON
As published by The Guardian

Of Marcella Rosenberg’s six years on Prince Edward Island, her best moment came a week ago. During the 10th annual P.E.I. Craft & Giftware Buyers’ Market Awards, Rosenberg’s handmade necklaces were recognized as the best new product.

She lived in Argentina all of her life until moving to the Island.

“It’s a tiny place, with big, big heart,” she said in describing Prince Edward Island.

The necklace is part of her Princess collection. It has a sterling silver chain and frame around a piece of aqua, turquoise, blue and lime green glass. She said the colours depict the ocean and it captures the essence of her entire collection.

She said most people tell her that the necklace reflects serenity.

Jewelry is something she has worked on with all of her passion.

“This is really the launching point for my collection,” Rosenberg said.

She said a necklace can mean a lot.

“A woman can wear the same black dress and with a change of necklace, the dress is different.”

Rosenberg began making jewelry after a trip to a craft show in Halifax.

“I had background in making jewelry and just thought, ‘why am I not doing this?’ ”

The recent P.E.I. buyers’ market was filled with great people, she said.

“I met wonderful people, including the artists, who I had fun with, and the kind buyers.”

Back in November 2008, Rosenberg attended the P.E.I. Craft Council and met Cynthia Ryder from New Brunswick. Together, they collaborated and developed the necklaces Rosenberg now sells.

Much thanks from Rosenberg is directed to Marie Walsh, the craft co-ordinator with P.E.I. Business Development.

“She’s been so helpful, and much like a mentor.”

Rosenberg said she’s lucky to live in a place where she feels such
a strong sense of community.

“I’m a privileged woman to live in a place where everyone is friendly.”

Rosenberg’s collection can be purchased at the P.E.I. Company Store as well as her studio and gallery in Stratford.

Another winner at the recent show was Darlyn and Cindy Lentz, who walked away from the Buyers’ Market with a prize for Best Booth of 2010.

The couple owns a pottery company, Right Off The Batt Pottery, and have wanted to create a booth for a few years.

It included three carts that allowed the products to be stored inside as well as a room where buyers could watch the pottery being made.

“It may not seem like a lot, but it was a huge achievement to us to win,” Cindy said.

Gaudreau Celebration Box Goes to Korea

as published in the Buzz July, 2009
Gaudreau Celebration Box Goes to Korea

Celebration Box, a birdseye maple and walnut box crafted by Diane Gaudreau, has been accepted in the Unity and Diversity Exhibition at the Canadian Pavilion of the Cheoungju International Biennale in South Korea (September 23- November 1, 2009). The Cheongju Internationl Craft Biennale is the largest of many visual arts events taking place in South Korea. It has been described as the “Cannes Film Festival of Craft” with over half a million visitors attending each year. Celebration Box has also been accepted into the National Crafts Exhibition. This exhibition will travel across Canada and the US for up to the next two years. It will be hosted at the Museum of Vancouver, Vancouver, BC as part of the 2010 Crafts Exhibition during the 2010 Olympic Games. The design of the Celebration Box was inspired by the rising sun and the beauty of Confederation Bridge connecting PEI to mainland Canada. Diane Gaudreau is a gradute of the Holland College School of Visual Arts and co-owner/operator Gaudreau Fine Woodworking in Rustico. www.woodmagic.ca <> Next >

Gaudreau Fine Woodworking -finalistes Lauriers provinceaux 2009

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RDÉE Î.-P.-É. reconnaît ses finalistes Lauriers provinciaux 2009

SUMMERSIDE – le 14 mars 2009 - RDÉE Île-du-Prince-Édouard a rendu hommage aux quatre finalistes provinciaux du concours national Lauriers de la PME 2009 lors du Banquet des entrepreneurs 2009, les remerciant et les félicitant pour leurs énormes contributions au développement économique des communautés acadiennes et francophones de l’Île.

Lors de l’événement annuel, tenu à Summerside le samedi 14 mars dernier, chaque entreprise gagnante a reçu, comme prix, une belle peinture de Lucie Bernadette Bellemare de la firme Créactif. Chaque œuvre d’art avait été conçue spécifiquement pour son récipiendaire et reflétait fidèlement les travaux ou les intérêts du lauréat en question. Tous furent impressionnés.

Les gagnants sont, de la gauche, Italo Marzari de Sirenella Ristorante (catégorie « Entreprise de services commerciaux »), Jacques et Diane Gaudreau de Tourbillon Design Inc./Gaudreau Fine Woodworking (catégorie « Entreprise de transformation »), Denis Robert de îmages @ p.e.inc. (catégorie « Micro-entreprise »), et les frères Alphonse et John Arsenault de J.C. Drilling (catégorie « Entreprise de services spécialisés »).

Ceux-ci s’en iront maintenant à Ottawa au mois de novembre pour faire compétition au niveau national.

Pour la sirène sereine

Italo Marzari, au centre, propriétaire du Sirenella Ristorante (dont le nom veut dire « sirène »), accepte le prix de la catégorie « Entreprise de services généraux » du concours provincial Lauriers de la PME 2009. Geoff Allen, à la gauche, agent de développement de l’Agence de promotion économique du Canada atlantique, commanditaire du prix, et Mathieu Arsenault, agent de développement de RDÉE Île-du-Prince-Édouard, ont participé à la remise du prix.

Travailleurs de bois

Diane et Jacques Gaudreau, au centre, propriétaires de Tourbillon Design Inc. (Gaudreau Fine Woodworking) à Rustico, acceptent le prix de la catégorie « Entreprise de transformation » du concours provincial Lauriers de la PME 2009. Tania Maddix, à la gauche, agente de la CBDC Central PEI, a participé à la remise du prix puisque l’organisme était commanditaire du prix. Nicole Drouin, agente de développement du RDÉE, a lu le discours du prix.

Un réalisateur récompensé

Denis Robert, au centre, propriétaire de la firme de production de films îmages @ p.e.inc. de Mont-Carmel, est gagnant du prix provincial « Micro-entreprise » du concours Lauriers de la PME 2009. Christine Arsenault, agente de développement de RDÉE Île-du-Prince-Édouard, a lu le discours du prix au cours du Banquet des entrepreneurs 2009 le 14 mars dernier à Summerside. Le Collège Acadie Î.-P.-É. a commandité ce prix donc le directeur-général de l’institution, Claude Blaquière, a participé à la remise de la peinture du prix.

Récompense bien méritée

La firme de creusage horizontal, J.C. Drilling, de St-Raphaël, a remporté le prix provincial de la catégorie « Entreprise de services spécialisés » au sein du concours Lauriers de la PME 2009. On voit Sonny Gallant, à la gauche, Membre de l’Assemblée législative pour Évangéline-Miscouche, qui remet le prix aux gagnants au nom de la Province de l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard, commanditaire du prix. Les propriétaires John et Alphonse Arsenault, ont accepté le prix. C’est Louise Comeau, directrice générale de la Société de développement de la Baie acadienne, qui a lu le discours du prix.

Window on the art

The medieval art of stained glass painting is seeing some new light in some Prince Edward Island churches lately, thanks to one local artisan who practises this skill of old

BY MARY MACKAY as published in The Guardian, March 14, 2009

Susana Rutherford is in for the long haul.

This Charlottetown artist’s work is the most recent addition to the stained glass spectrum at a new United Church in Murray Harbour. And like the windows created by artisans before her, she hopes her work will provide decades more of spiritual inspiration.

Her uplifting piece joins two 1960s works by New Brunswick glass artist Paul Blaney and a 1990s panel by Island artist John Burden that were carefully saved from two of three now decommissioned churches in Murray Harbour, Murray River and Little Sands and that have now become part of this United Church congregation’s future.

“It’s nice to be a part of something that is going to be around for a hundred years. People don’t make anything that is going to last that amount of time these days,” says Rutherford, who through her Firehorse Studios in Charlottetown has also restored and repaired a multitude of historic windows in Island churches.

“When you work on the restoration of these old windows, you’re part of a legacy. Most people who have done restoration and do painted glass say that more than anything they’ve learned from the repairs and restorations that they did . . . .

“You take it all apart and you see things. You see a thumbprint of a painter from where they picked the piece up to put it in the kiln or you’ll see a spot where they splashed (paint) on the back and so you feel this connection with someone who was doing that work a hundred years ago. And that’s a pretty special feeling.”

Craftspersons specializing in architectural stained glass and glass painting are a pretty special sector of artisans. Rutherford is one of only a few in the Maritimes active in this rarified field. She is now teaching beginner traditional stained glass painting.

And when it comes to painted stained glass pieces for a spiritual setting, the number of individual artists who do this refined art is even smaller due to the fact that about 75 per cent of stained glass windows in Canadian churches have been done by the historic McCausland Studios in Toronto, Ont.

Rutherford comes by her artistic nature naturally. Her parents, Ambika Gail Rutherford and the late Erica Rutherford, have made art in its various forms their life’s work.

Born in Spain, Rutherford came to P.E.I. from the midwest with her parents when she was five.

“There’s a family story that my mother likes to tell: we went back to Europe to pick up some belongings (that year) . . . and they went to visit Chartres (Cathedral in France to see) all its stained glass windows,”

Rutherford remembers.

“My mother said I was absolutely entranced. They couldn’t get me out of there. I kept going and dancing around the light from the glass on the floor and staring at the glass . . . . I think some of the windows there are 1,000 years old. Big huge, huge pieces — that was my first exposure to seeing glass on that scale.”

Years later when she was in her second year in the theatre tech program at Ryerson University in Toronto, she got an apprentice position at a stained glass studio.?She had been secretly vying for it for more than a year

.“Actually, much to the consternation of my parents I dropped out of college. It was something that I really wanted to do so I took the job. I don’t know whether that was the best financial decision of my life, but I did it,”

she laughs.

That was the true start of her love affair with glass art in all its forms.

“I had taken a six-week night course type of thing at somebody’s studio and learned a little bit (before that) but I really got thrown in there. It was an architectural stained glass firm so we did all high-end homes. We also did big architectural projects. That first year I was there we did the windows for the lobby for the Eaton’s Centre building that was going in then.”

Rutherford worked there for 10 years doing large-scale home, church, school and business projects but did eventually enrol in and graduate from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1995.

With a small inheritance from her grandmother, she headed north.

“I thought if I do something really quiet and don’t do anything, I can afford to paint for a few years and work on my glass craft,” s

he smiles.

There she met Gary Torlone who became her husband and they started a family which now includes Isabella, nine, and Willow, six. They moved to the Rutherford homestead in Pinette when their first daughter was just eight months old. She set up a studio there.

She formed Firehorse Studios in 2004 where she works in all types of glass, including the restoration of antique stained glass windows.

“We try with those old windows to do as little as possible, not in the sense that you don’t want to do any work but you don’t want to change the artistic integrity of them,”

she says.

Some of these windows are focal points in heritage churches, such as those designed by the renowned P.E.I. architect William Critchlow Harris.

St. Malachy’s in Kinkora and St. John’s Anglican Church in Milton are two examples.

“Classically designed churches are designed with all those gothic arches and everything that intentionally lead the eye upward. Everything about the interior of the church is designed to make us look up and think about what’s above us. In a traditional church design, you’re not looking out at your day-to-day life at your ordinary level; you’re looking at these representations from the Bible stories around you (in the stained glass windows),”

Rutherford says.

“And there’s a huge psychological impact behind the colour, to have all that colour around you. So most people feel uplifted when they are surrounded by colour and light. And then the windows themselves are designed to draw the eye upward and remind us that we’re in a sacred place. So there are lots of things at work there. It’s not just an accident.”

Historically, traditional glass painting in Europe was a closely guarded secret within specially formed stained glass guilds who would do the work.

“(That stained glass painter) would pick an apprentice and pass the information on to him. But what’s happened through the 1970s and 1980s since stained glass has become a hobby and has been picked up by the masses, the (art of) traditional stained glass painting has not been passed along,”

Rutherford says.

Fortunately there are a number of avenues open to those who want to learn. So in her 25 years of working with glass, Rutherford had studied this fine art and put her techniques into practise. In recent years, she has taken advanced glass painting courses and has recently received an invitation to study at The Antrim School in New Hampshire.

The consolidation of the Little Sands, Murray Harbour and Murray River churches into one as-yet-to-be-named spiritual space marked the end of one era and the beginning of the next.

“There is nothing that has probably affected our congregation more than the closure of the other churches,”

says Linda MacNeill, who is a member of the church building committee.

However, the reinstallation of the three windows — the two Blaneys from the Murray Harbour church and the Burden from the Murray River church, Little Sands had no stained glass — and other significant objects from the former churches has made the transition a bit easier.

“We’re very pleased that we stumbled upon Susana,” says Elmer MacNeill, who is head of the building committee.

“Because there’s just nobody left on the Island much that does anything like this. So we were very fortunate,”

his wife, Linda, adds.

The concept for Rutherford’s new piece for the church came from the MacNeills’ daughter, Kimberly Dudley, which the stained glass artist then adapted to the church committee’s requirements.

The octagonal window features the three decommissioned churches with a dove above to represent the Holy Spirit.

“We wanted to bring the three together in some way,”

Linda says.

Rutherford used some of the colours and other elements in the Burden and Blaney windows to tie all the windows together.

“It’s a feeling of being part of a heritage and a legacy that you can go back and work on restoring windows that were made about the time that I was born. I learned a lot from doing those restorations and having a chance to look at those artisans as well and then to be part of that,"

says Rutherford, who did some restoration work on the other windows before they were put in the new church.

“Also, part of it is that it’s in a sacred place, a special place. It’s more important than (just) the everyday. It’s nice to know that the work is not only being appreciated for its esthetic but there is also a spiritual element to it, too.”

Fast facts

• 
  
• At Firehorse Studios in Charlottetown on April 18 there will be a one-day workshop with Laura Cole of Random Pieces, www.randompieces.ca, with her glass-on-glass mosaic class.
• On April 25, there will be a one-day workshop introduction to glass fusing with Susana Rutherford.
• This stained glass artist will also have a booth at the P.E.I. Home Show, April 3-5.
• Rutherford’s next session of classes for traditional stained glass painting starts in November 2009.
• For more information, visit www.firehorsestudios.ca.
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