The village of Masset on the north coast of Haida Gwaii has the kind of tight-knit community that fosters new friendships and gives rise to creative collaborations.
That's what North Vancouver resident Wendy Van Riesen found when she and her husband sailed to the B.C. archipelago in 2014. They ended up mooring their boat over the winter and stayed nine months in Masset where they felt warmly welcomed by the locals.
Renowned Haida artist Reg Davidson is among the estimated 1,000 residents of Masset. At the time of Van Riesen's visit, Davidson was carving one of four sculptures that he unveiled at Vancouver International Airport last month. The carvings are intricate red cedar designs that represent the Haida stories of Raven Stealing Beaver Lake, Raven Steals the Moon, and Blind Halibut Fisherman. Van Riesen, who is an artist herself and the creative force behind Dahlia Drive fashion designs, was invited by Davidson's cousin to watch him work one day.
"We ended up becoming friends, and then out of the friendship we were able to collaborate artwork that we do," she explains. "It came out of eating together and fishing together and being together, and that's just a lovely way to be able to create something."
Van Riesen specializes in using screen printing and dying techniques to renew recycled garments and textiles. She had long been interested in incorporating indigenous art into her designs and approached Davidson with the idea. He was keen to work together. The result of their collaboration is Ravens, Eagles, Polka Dots - a fashion collection that features Davidson's traditional Haida artwork on women's clothing. The pair launched their line Feb. 16 at a fashion show at the Skwachays Lodge in downtown Vancouver.
The collection is based on the two main clans of Haida lineage: the Raven and the Eagle. The Raven Dancing silkscreen and the Eagle Drum painting were chosen to decorate the fabrics and the palette was inspired by the Haida Gwaii landscape and traditional colours used by Haida artists on their carvings: red cedar, red ochre, ash black and sea foam green.
Meanwhile, the "Polka Dots" part of the collection's name represents Van Riesen's design influence, as she often uses the playful motif in her work.
For this project, Van Riesen sourced gently used white slips and curtain sheers, the flowy and translucent fabrics reflective of the transformational aspect of many Haida stories. Once the slips and sheers were sewn into the desired shape, they arrived at her North Vancouver studio like blank canvasses.
"I take dyes that I mix myself and thicken them if I'm going to use a screen or keep them thin if I paint them," she explains.
One of her image transfer techniques involves painting the design pattern onto a piece of paper, pinning that paper to the garment, and then heat-pressing the image onto the fabric.
"It goes right into the fabric so it doesn't change the diaphanous flow of the sheers," she says.
Van Riesen is familiar with transferring the work of another artist onto clothing. In the past, she has created fashionable pieces for sale in the Vancouver Art Gallery gift shop that are decorated with famous paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and Henri Matisse.
"We only have so many walls that we can put art up on, and so if we can create art that is wearable then basically the walls are now moving and it's now more of a sculptural piece and women are the gallery."
Of course, blouses and dresses do not lie flat, which means Van Riesen had to break up Davidson's straight lines in order to wrap his images around the garments.
She says she is grateful that he gave her the flexibility to manipulate his designs in that way.
"What I really have to honour about him is his willingness ... to let somebody that's not indigenous play a little bit with the work," she says. "I'm just very thankful to be able to be included in a wonderful culture and contribute in a small way."
Pieces from the Ravens, Eagles, Polka Dots collection range from $100 to $375 and are available for purchase at dahliadrive.com, though Van Riesen would love to eventually get the items into gallery and museum gift shops.
Ten per cent of sales will be donated to the Iyoli Water Project, which is a partnership between Vancouver's Strathcona elementary and a school in Tanzania to build a clean water well in the village of Iyoli.
