Mayor's Art Award for Craft and Design
2017 recipients
Brendan Lee Satish Tang
Honouree
Born in Ireland to Trinidadian parents, Brendan Lee Satish Tang moved to Canada when he was five. Tang’s upbringing informed his approach to art making, and he now works as a visual ethnographer – documenting and interpreting contemporary culture through his own assumptions, preferences, values and personal history.
Tang aims to create work that serves as a portal for reflection and dialogue. While his aesthetic is driven by a manic consumption of visual culture, Tang’s work is labour intensive and detail oriented, with a high value on craftsmanship. Working primarily in clay, he exploits its ability to convincingly emulate other materials. By employing hand painting, gold lustre, airbrushing, hand-modelled filigree, and photo-based decals, among other means, Tang creates unusual and alluring pieces. Tang teaches in the ceramics department of Emily Carr University of Art + Design and is represented by Gallery Jones.
Shaun Peter Mallonga
Emerging artist
Shaun Peter Mallonga was born in Vancouver. Having spent most of his formative years in both the Philippines and India, he migrated back to Canada with his family seeking brighter futures. His work uses narrative to investigate the malleability and tensions of identity evoked by his experiences with migration and queer identity.
Mallonga’s practice in ceramics began at the Langara College Fine Arts Diploma Program (2014) in Vancouver, BC. He has recently completed his Bachelor's in Fine Arts degree at the Alberta College of Art + Design (2017) as a Ceramics Major. Mallonga has exhibited his works at the Marion Nicoll, Illingworth Kerr, Untitled Arts Society, and Yuill Family Gallery in Alberta. He is currently working on furthering his studio practice in his hometown, Vancouver.
Sharon Kallis is a community engaged environmental artist and committed life-long learner. Learning while teaching – and teaching while learning – Sharon partners with ecologists, gardeners, weavers and others with an interest in linking traditional hand technologies to what we can grow, gather and glean in our urban green spaces.
Mary Lou Trinkwon began her artistic life in Vancouver in the early 1980s, moving here to study modern dance with Paula Ross.
Marie Horstead is a Vancouver-based fibre artist currently living in Strathcona. Marie completed a diploma in textile and fibre arts at Capilano University in 2008. In 2010, she moved to Montreal to finish her undergraduate degree at Concordia University, where she graduated with honours in fibre art and was awarded the Prix Diagonale, which recognizes excellence in the medium of fibres.
Dominique Bréchault is an artist and educator who has lived in Vancouver for over 30 years. Born and raised in France, she moved to Canada after completing her university studies. She holds a master’s degree in art history from the University of Poitiers, and is a graduate of both the Emily Carr College of Art and Design and the Jewellery Art and Design Program at Vancouver Community College (VCC). 
Urszula of ZULA Jewelry + Design was born in Warsaw, Poland and lived in Germany before her family moved to Canada when she was five. Urszula has always used her hands to create adornment. While pursuing a career in acting, she had a small business as a bead and wire jeweller.
Yvonne Wakabayashi is a Vancouver-born textile artist. Her Japanese heritage and the sea influence her textiles, which have recently moved toward sculptural forms. Japanese influences range from the teachings of Hiroyuki Shindo in the ancient art of shibori, to the special silks from a family mill in Gunma Prefecture, to the elegant qualities of simplicity and understatement learned from her mother. Her art recreates the delicate and fragile beauty of sea life. In her own words, “I have been to the water’s edge and have collected memories which have become the inspiration for my art.” Wakabayashi’s work has been exhibited internationally and she has been nominated for and received many awards and honours. However, she is most comfortable with and gains a sense of accomplishment through teaching, which allows her to exchange ideas with students.
Soledad Munoz is an interdisciplinary artist born in Toronto, Canada and raised in Rancagua, Chile. With a base in textile arts, and through a combination of new and old technologies, she explores the ever-changing woven spaces we inhabit, navigating outside of language and representation. While still living in Chile, Munoz studied Film Arts at the Art and Social Science University of Santiago (ARCIS). After returning to Canada, she completed the Textile Arts Program at Capilano University, where she focused mostly on weaving, acquiring skills that are now the material and conceptual base for her practice. Munoz is now furthering her education at Emily Carr University of Art + Design where she has developed a body of work composed of performance, sound-based installations, and environment-responsive pieces which come alive through the interaction of the viewer. 
Robert Studer is a principal of this is it design inc, a creative laboratory focused on blurring the boundaries between art, craft, and design. The achievved results take the form of architectural and commissioned works of art, functional design, and products that have been represented, marketed, and sold internationally. Robert is a practicing artist/designer who has also exhibited and participated in symposia internationally. His art works are found in the collections of Microsoft and Simon Fraser Univerisity. Among Robert's notable Vancouver installations are the 28-foot Navigation: Origin Unknown in Cathedral Place and the panel of swimming fish profiles that is the Vancouver Aquarium's unique donor recognition feature. Roberts has also created commissions of art presented on behalf of the citizens of Canada to HRM Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke and Duchess of York, and other foreign dignitaries. A founding member and instrumental in the formation of the BC Glass Arts Association (1989), Robert also served as President from 1994 to 1995. He earned his journeyman trade qualifications in industrial pipe and steam fitting in 1986. 
Zoe Garred's interest is in creating elegantly simple, useful objects. Since the usefulness of an object is entirely subjective, Zoe explores ways of designing objects to be open in their function, inviting the owner to define its significance. Zoe's designs are also driven by a desire to minimize waste, both during production and in the hands of the consumer. As a result, the use of materials in each piece is carefully considered. After degrees in painting from the Univeristy of Calgary and in industrial design from Emily Carr University, Zoe designed for many years under her own name, exhibiting at Design Week in London and 100% Design in Tokyo. She launched Fleet Objects, her Vancouver-based design studio, as the commercial endeavour of her studio practice at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City in May 2010. 
Ruth Scheuing is an artist, educator, and writer who works with textiles, focusing on pattern, language, and mythology. Her works have been exhibited across Canada and internationally and often combine old and new technologies, such as the computerized Jacquard looms used in her artist residency Silkroads at the Surrey Art Gallery Tech lab. Her published writings include The Unraveling of History: Penelope and other Stories and she is co-editor of Material Matters: the Art and Culture of Contemporary Textiles. Ruth is also included in Art Textile of the World: Canada, published in 2009. She teaches in the Textile Arts Program at Capilano University and is the current president of the Textile Society of America.
Sharon Kallis, with a “one mile diet” approach to sourcing art materials, works to discover the inherent material potential in a landscape. By involving community and connecting traditional hand techniques with re-purposed invasive species or garden waste, site-specific installations become ecological interventions. Graduating from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1996, Sharon began working materials from the land in 1999 and has exhibited and activated communities in Ireland, Spain, and throughout the United States. Locally projects include THE IVY PROJECT in Stanley Park, NEST in Crab Park, and ongoing interventions at the Means of Production garden in Mount Pleasant. Sharon has received Canada Council and British Columbia Arts Council grants and is the 2010 recipient of the Lillian Elliott Award for Excellence in Fibre Arts.
Paul Mathieu has been a student of ceramics since 1972, in Montreal, Calgary, Stoke-on-Trent in England, and San Francisco and Los Angeles in the USA, where he received a Master of Fine Art degree (MFA) from UCLA in 1987. He has taught ceramics since 1976, in Montreal at the college and university levels, in Mexico, and in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. Since 1996, he has been teaching in Vancouver in the Faculty of Visual and Material Culture at Emily Carr University. His work has been shown internationally in numerous exhibitions, among them Mino, Japan in 1992, 1994, and 2002, and in Korea, Taiwan, Italy, England, Australia, and all over the US and Canada. His work has been exhibited in 21 individual exhibitions since 1978, and in cities throughout Canada and the US. His work is in numerous private and public collections world-wide.
Alwyn O'Brien was born on a rural property on Salt Spring Island, BC, to a family of makers and gardeners. Her ceramic practice has taken her across Canada, studying at Capilano College, in Vancouver, Sheridan College of Ontario under Bruce Cochrane and Susan Low-Beer, the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design with Julia Galloway, and Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design where she studied under Paul Mathieu. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Washington in Seattle. She been an artist in residence in high schools, as well as taught as a sessional instructor for Emily Carr Institute. Currently she is an instructor of record at the University of Washington. Her work is represented by Prime Gallery, Toronto, and The Crafthouse Gallery, BC.