The Carleton University Art Gallery recently welcomed students with an interest in fibre arts – knitting, crochet, visible mending and more – to come together to create and celebrate its new exhibition, Material Journeys.
The gallery held a third installment of its “Art + Friends” series Feb. 8, this time with a focus on textiles. Around 50 students sat around folding tables covered in Kraft paper to chat and work on arts and crafts projects.
Besides the worktables, there was a table covered in supplies for participants. The gallery’s reception counter was converted into a snack bar with hot beverages provided by the university. Organizers also set up a free item exchange on the counter.
The first Art + Friends took place in November and featured an “art speed social” where participants met in brief conversations around an art piece. The next event, in early December, featured stamp and card making activities. But CUAG academic and public program specialist Cara Tierney says a an impromptu crochet and knitting circle sprung up.
CUAG leaned into this enthusiasm for fibre arts for the latest Art + Friends, aligning with the opening of the Material Journeys exhibit on Jan. 25. The show runs until May 3.
According to the gallery website, the exhibition “brings together the work of three artists who engage with textiles as a medium for the discovery, recovery and creation of culture, history and spirit.”
The featured artists are Canadian-born Filipina sculptor Marisa Gallemit, Zoe Kreye, a Vancouver-based artist “working in installation, performance and social practice,” and Sukaina Kubba, a Toronto-based Iraqi artist who “explores rugs and textiles as traveling objects that carry cultural history and create an atmosphere of home wherever they are unfurled.”
CUAG’s Indigenous cultural engagement coordinator, Danielle Printup, says she finds human-made objects like textiles help create a sense of “human-centered connections.” She also sees activities like Art + Friends as a way to build a community around art “beyond the academic.”
According to Printup, while the gallery’s academic engagement has specific parameters, Art + Friends’ “openness allows it to be very special.”
Tierney says the gallery came up with Art + Friends while trying to figure out how to “create an event that’s really for students.”
PhD student Claire French attended her first Art + Friends event on Feb. 8. She said “the only barrier to me coming earlier was not knowing it was happening,”
CUAG digital education resident Tan Bucktowar told Capital Current this has been “a big year when it comes to student engagement” for the gallery.
It’s one way to engage with artwork more tangibly … it brings together a lot of people in a community aspect.
— Saivani Sanassy, student ambassador, Carleton University Art Gallery
He said CUAG is in an “experimental era” right now as it works to reach students. That means trying things such as hosting Visual Arts Carleton’s regular meetings, borrowing a large table from the library to create a study space on the second floor and getting a booth at the university’s next club expo.
Bucktowar attributed some of this experimenting to changes in direction. Former director Sandra Dyck retired in March 2025, meaning curator Heather Anderson stepped up as interim director. Meanwhile, academic and public programs specialist Fiona Wright is off on maternity leave, with Tierney filling her shoes.
Saivani Sanassy, a student ambassador at CUAG, has been at the forefront of the gallery’s textile activities. She brought supplies for the unofficial fibre arts circle at the December Art + Friends, according to Tierney.
Sanassy does fibre arts in her own time and says she found out that much of the gallery’s staff also crochets or knits. The staff then “started talking about how (they) could bring that to (their) events,” Sanassy said.
She also highlighted the tangible and community-focused aspects of fibre crafts. She said “it’s one way to engage with artwork more tangibly,” and that “it brings together a lot of people in a community aspect.”
In fact, the Material Journeys exhibit led Sanassy to pitch a weekly fibre arts drop-in at the gallery. CUAG plans to announce it soon, and it should take place Thursdays from 12-2pm, exploring a new form of textile art every month.
