Newsletter #2 from Canada 2025
~ by Serah Hedin
In Calgary we are gearing up for the 3rd Mush Love exhibition and market, July 18-27, 2025. I was fortunate to be selected as an exhibiting artist, as well as a contributing artist for the event poster. I will share more as the event unfolds and should have a submission for the archives soon as well.
I am a Fibre artist and a natural dyer, from Vancouver, British Columbia. I have recently relocated to Calgary, Alberta. My work with yarn and thread explores the pursuit of natural colour from locally wildcrafted plants to historical dye extracts. https://www.langsamdyedgoods.com/
If you’d like to follow along here are the links for the website and Instagram:
WEB: https://mushlovearts.com/the-events/
IG: @mushlove.arts
Newsletter #1 from Canada 2017 and 2019
~ by Ann Harmer
We were blessed with a wonderfully rainy mushroom season for the 2016 Symposium on British Columbia’s West Coast, but the next two summers were so dry and the autumn rains so late that the dye mushrooms were hard to find and few in quantity. Fortunately, this year we’re back to our typical rainforest conditions, and the fungi are popping out everywhere.
We have a presence in the Sunshine Coast Fibreshed, a group that encourages sustainable fashion, particularly throught the use of local fibres and natural dyes. We plan a workshop for interested members of that group some time in the new year.
Ann Harmer had put just enough fungi aside to give one workshop in the spring of 2019 for a fibre arts guild on Vancouver Island, so perhaps we can expect some new converts at IFFS 2020. Undaunted, Muriel Prior has used the mushrooms she purchased at IFFS 2018 in Norway to dye enough fibre for another colourful sweater, which we can expect to see next year in Port Townsend!