Clover Design Studio founder Andria Racich discovered her love for art and travel during childhood trips to Europe. She studied Interior Design and Art History at BCIT in Vancouver. In Carcavelos, Portugal, she drew inspiration from local colours and ceramics, leading her to draw lamps. Back on Salt Spring Island, she refined her clay artistry in workshops with Julie Mackinnon and Meg Hubert, using hand-building techniques to create unique lamps. Andria embraces imperfections in her hand-sculpting, adding a human touch, and considers lighting crucial in shaping mood and emotion in her designs.

Amanda Chudak moved to Salt Spring Island from Toronto, Ontario with her long-time partner, two beloved cats, and enough art supplies to occupy her for the next decade. She likes making things, especially with wool. Because she’s never quite sure of what she’s doing, the results vary widely. She rewards herself with chocolate regardless of the outcome. 

Lavender & Black founders Awatief Daniels and Ben Henzler established their organic lavender farm on Salt Spring Island in 2016 after careers in health care and manufacturing that took them to many parts of the world. Awatief and Ben longed to establish community roots, reconnect with nature and share this connection in a meaningful way. They chose Salt Spring Island as the perfect place that encompassed all their values, with its clean air, pure water and outstanding natural beauty. They hand-craft therapeutic essential oils and fragrances from home-grown botanical ingredients and other carefully selected, natural ingredients from around the world. They aim to create pure products that are touchstones for the wellness, tranquility and a connection to nature we all seek.

Celia Duthie was born in Toronto, grew up in Vancouver, studied at UBC, and travelled widely in North America and Europe. She managed the famous Vancouver-based chain Duthie Books for over 20 years. Celia and her family moved to Salt Spring Island In 2002, and opened a gallery of fine woodwork, sculpture, prints and paintings. After hosting printmaking workshops with well-known Vancouver printmaker, Richard Tetrault Celia found herself thoroughly entrenched in a new and enjoyable vocation as a printmaker. Her subjects are from her life – things she sees and wishes to preserve in a print such as birds, vegetables, flowers, landscape or buildings, and whatever catches her eye as to composition and colours. 

Wickedwax founder Dawn Larden has a creative spirit that has been enhanced by relocating to Salt Spring Island. She has been a chandler and soap maker for 10 years and loves working with her hands. Dawn likes to provide a unique product that can bring joy to one's space.

Denys James is s an award-winning artist who has taught ceramics, drawing and 3D design at Okanagan College, the Victoria College of Art and the Alberta College of Art, and has conducted over 50 workshops in ceramics. His recent work explores figurative elements within a context, suggesting dialogue or narrative.

Denys has exhibited his artwork in galleries from Vancouver and Banff to Turkey, London and New Orleans. His work appears in several publications, and in public and private collections including the Museum of Civilization, British Petroleum and Hacettepe University, Turkey. He conducts art travel learning experiences through his company Discovery Art Travel, and is a studio artist on Salt Spring Island.

“In recent and current work I am exploring figurative elements within a context. I am combining several figurative elements to suggest a dialogue. In some works there is a hint of lightly drawn or painted ghostly, dream-like figures in some sort of communion with the main relief face or figure. Perhaps a story is suggested by these connections, and my hope is that this narrative helps give power and meaning to the work.”

Don Hodgins originally learned to create art through osmosis from his father, who was an engraver, and returned to the practice after a career in business. He was elected to signature status in the Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA) in 2008 and is a long-time executive member of the Salt Spring Island Painters Guild. 

Salt Spring Island artist Gillian Smith was born and raised in Victoria in a boating family and developed her love of the sea at an early age. She has taken many trips with her camera around British Columbia’s West Coast; she is fascinated by the coastline edges where the land meets the sea and the ever-changing reflections in the water of islands and trees. Gillian makes fabric collage seascapes based on her photos, to make fabric and stitch look like fog in the channel and reflections in the sea — a realistic illusion. She often paints and dyes her own fabric to get the colour and effect she wants. She loves working with her sewing machine and pushing the edges of what it can do. 

Joanna Rogers lives and creates on Pender Island. Experimentation is a key element in all her work: she loves the thrill of working with, and exploring, the unknown. Joanna’s colour palette is inspired by the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets in the sky and reflected on the water around her home. She was a finalist for the Salt Spring National Art Prize in 2017 and 2021.

Originally in the retail business selling commercially-made fabrics on Salt Spring Island, Stitches Fibre Arts creator Karen Tottman began to explore the art of dyeing fabric for use in art quilting. She has now mastered the recipes to achieve consistent results. After years of production, she is drawn to experiment with the textures and techniques involved in using dry dyes on top of melting snow or ice.

Ferrous Fox Studio creator Kate Ford is a metal artist located on Salt Spring Island. Much of her work is inspired by the beauty of the ocean and forests of British Columbia. Katie found her love for metalworking when she acquired her welding ticket at Vancouver Island University in 2013. She then expanded her creative horizons, learning the arts of blacksmithing and bronze casting in the Sculptural Metal Program at Kootenay Studio Arts, Nelson, BC. She has since worked for many years as a professional welder/fabricator, both in industry and the arts.

Kate started Ferrous Fox Studio right out of art school. She now has a workspace on Salt Spring Island where she focuses on the creation of steel and bronze sculpture, along with custom creative fabrication and commissioned pieces.

Lara Gordon is the creator of The Wild Diamond artisanal jewelry line. Her offerings are patiently created with forged metals and preferred gemstones. Lara began her jewelry line as a hobby while she was a science teacher in her home state of Maryland, moving to Boston when that hobby transformed into a full-time business. Her home studio now overlooks her garden, nestled among tall cedar trees on Salt Spring Island.

Margarite Sánchez is a Salt Spring Island-based artist, activist, and agriculturalist. Sánchez, who is an enthusiastic gardener as well as an accomplished artist, looks close to her own garden for inspiration. Drawn to the luscious richness of oil paint, Sánchez’s use of dynamic bold lines and vivid colours pays artistic homage to the Mexican muralists and grounds her work in that fertile artistic tradition. 

Michael Levy's introduction to the photographic process took place when he was a young man living with his family in Belgium. He enrolled in a basic black and white darkroom course and processed and printed his first roll of film in 1984. He works in both digital and analog photography and has focused primarily on nature, wildlife and landscape photography, using only natural light. After publishing three successful coffee table books about Salt Spring, he is now redirecting his work to focus on fine art.

Seven Seas Studio creator Mimi Fujino grew up in Portland, Oregon, where she earned a BFA degree in drawing/painting and various printmaking techniques at PNW College of Art. She has worked in remote areas of the world over the past 25 years and has traveled extensively. Mimi moved to Pender Island, BC in 2008.

Patricia Gibson believes handmade items have a story to tell, and that using them brings pleasure to daily routines. Moving from a previous obsession with textiles, Patricia has been making pots for over 10 years and has studied the art of ceramics in Arizona, Vancouver Island, and Salt Spring Island. Her current pots are named “Cottage Pottery“ in honour of her maternal grandmother, Mae Belle McMorran, who shared a studio with Emily Carr. Her visits to their studio as a child created a lasting impact on Patricia’s own path as an artist and maker.

Patricia’s recent collections include a terra cotta clay, in which she allows the clay’s warm tones to be visible through the glaze. Other work is made from mid range stoneware and porcelain. She hand builds, coils and pinches, throws on a wheel, and makes her own glazes.

Originally from Montreal, Rhen LEvy (aka Barbara) enjoys sharing the subtle beauty of nature from her west coast island home through her captivating work as a photographer and poet. Her distinctively ethereal images are an invitation to step into the remarkable world she inhabits, where the air is filled with bird song and where the ever changing landscape reveals hidden gems. Rhen shoots with DSLR (Digital single-lens reflex) Nikon cameras. She is now working on her second book of poetic images and words, titled A Bridge Between Two Worlds.

Robert Wilman has been a woodworker for over 40 years. He turns using mostly salvage wood, often cuttings diverted from the path to the fireplace at his home on South Pender Island. His base material is usually native maple, ornamentals or fruit trees. He continues to be drawn to combinations of form, colour, and texture.

Rosie Schinners holds a Bachelor of Art from the University of Guelph as well as a Bachelor of Fine Art from NSCAD University in Halifax. She began her formal art education with a focus on painting, but has found her natural medium in collage art. 

Working primarily with vintage print material, Rosie combines hand-cut collage with vibrant splashes of colour to bring new life to old images. She looks to explore and express fleeting moments of magic, alchemy and the shifting nature of the internal landscape. Her recent work has celebrated and reflected traditions of folk magic and brujeria, as a nod to the empowered wise woman archetype.

Arco & Iris Design is Rosie’s handcrafted small-batch jewelry line. The collection takes its name from the Spanish word for rainbow, which is arcoiris, and is an extension of her love of all things paper.

Sibéal Foyle is an artist, educator,  creator and founder of Páipéar by Sibéal, a sustainable stationery dream inspired by nature. Reinventing her beautiful original paintings and drawings as cards and art prints, she is excited to share them in the hope motivating viewers to protect wild creatures and their habitats.

West Coasts are Sibéal’s happy places. She was born and raised in Ireland. Her ancient name originates from Inish Thiar, the smallest of the three wet and wild Aran Islands - a wind swept and culturally rich outpost off the West coast of Ireland. She  grew up in Galway, in a rambling 250 year old thatched roof house. After graduating from the Belfast College of Art & Design, at the University of Ulster, Sibéal emigrated to Western Canada where she studied for an MFA at the University of Calgary. This led her to a fulfilling 28 year teaching career in Fine Arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia.

Suzanne Prendergast has been an active member of the arts community on Salt Spring Island for almost five decades. Over that time, she has explored a number of art forms, including drawing and coloured pencil, watercolours, papermaking, jewelry making and, more recently, printmaking. Printmaking has been an especially rich medium for Suzanne. She finds it is varied and presents unique challenges and rewards, with many ways to work with colour and form. Her  work often reflects her love of nature. Salt Spring’s environment is a constant source of inspiration. 

Inspired by nature and ancient art, Tracy Cermak's jewelry design and fabrication process involves meticulously hand cutting, forming and texturing sheet and wire metals to create one of a kind works. Decorative accents of copper, gold, bronze and gemstones are combined with silver resulting in a delicately nostalgic yet modern feel. Tracy uses recycled metals and ethically sourced materials. All Tracy’s jewelry and art is handmade in her Salt Spring Island studio.