Circle Craft Market

Vancouver

Circle Craft Christmas Market acknowledges the entry into the Christmas shopping season for Vancouverites. The market has been around since 1973 and grown to hosting 310 artisans. It has to be held in the Vancouver Convention Centre since I've been attending it, giving the shopper room to linger, touch and examine everything.

A friend and I attended it on Saturday from 11 am to 6 pm. Yes, that's 7 hours of looking, getting inspired and making a few purchases as well. Of course I was most interested in those selling knit wears like Craftworks, Mimi and Vividworks. But the most astonishing item was seeing Sola Fielder's exhibit. Although she was selling hats and scarves, it was the item shown above which is 11.6’ x 5.3’ that completely mesmerized me.

From a distance it looks like an aerial photo of Vancouver focused on the downtown. But look closer and you can see that this talented artist has used recycled textiles, mainly yarn from thrift shop sweaters. This particular work took the artist five years to create this show-stopper. Please go to the Sola Fiedler website so you can get a closer look at her work for yourself. (The photos are so big they don't fit into this format.) Fielder was pleased the tapestry will stay in Vancouver and be available to the public. However the most amazing part of this story is Fielder has also created large tapestries for other Olympic-hosting cities including, Las Vegas USA, Salt Lake City USA and Sydney Australia. (Go to the websites to see them.)

The talent it takes to find sweaters in the right colours and texture, to turn them into thread/yarn, and finally the overall artistic talents to create such works immensely impressed me. Hats off to you the very talented Sola Fielder.

What a lovely way to spend a day impressed, awed and at times overwhelmed by creative genius.

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