Past Art Instructors
Hollis Nelson
Interdisciplinary Artist
Hollis Nelson (BFA Emily Carr University) is a queer interdisciplinary artist living and working in the DTES of Vancouver who is best known for her hand painted wearable leather art pieces. Home-schooled in east Vancouver her upbringing involved visiting the local...
Jinfei Wang
Jinfei Wang is a multidisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, Canada. Jinfei holds Regional and Urban Planning Honours Program from University of Saskatchewan and Bachelor of Fine Arts program at Emily Carr University of Arts and Design, she also received trainings in...
Domenica Mastromatteo
Domenica Mastromatteo is a first generation Italian-Canadian artist born in Montreal, Quebec. She is a graduate of the Vancouver Art Therapy Institute and runs a private practice in North Vancouver, offering individual and group art therapy. Domenica believes everyone...
Chantal Cardinal
Instructor bio: From wearable art to sound-absorbing wall hangings, exploring the textures and properties of wool and what it can shape into has become Chantal Cardinal’s full time obsession under FELT à la main with LOVE. After a career as a Fashion...
Tom Cryan
Tom Cryan is an actor, clown and multidisciplinary artist who trained and performed in New York City with a focus on psycho-physical interactive theater and clowning. He has continued to train and work on the unceded ancestral territory of the...
Harneet Janda
My name is Harneet Janda. I was born and raised in India, but my family and I moved to Canada eight years ago. I recently completed Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Education Assistant program. I’ll be working with kids at Maplewood House’s creative...
Anna Markovic
Anna Markovic (she/her/hers) Hello! My name is Anna and I am so excited to be a part of Camp Creative this summer! A little about me, I am currently a psychology and counseling student at SFU hoping to enter a career field centered around supporting children by...
Mairi Anderson
Mairi Anderson is a settler from Treaty 7 Territory, grateful to be living on unceded Coast Salish lands. She is a Grade 3 teacher and multimedia artist who has previously taught visual arts and writing-based day camps. She has illustrated two books...
T’uy’tanat-Cease Wyss
T’uy’tanat-Cease Wyss Skwxwu7mesh, Sto:lo, Irish-Métis, Hawaiian, and Swiss descent Cease is an ethno-botanist, traditionally trained by Indigenous Elders. Her work involves site-specific and culturally focused teaching with storytelling as her means to sharing...
CARMEN ROSEN
Carmen Rosen Carmen Rosen is a visual artist, singer, and interdisciplinary performer. She has a long history of initiating art projects and creative community integrated projects. In 2010 Carmen received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, and in 2012 the Queen’s...
Goldbard
Joyelle Goldbard (she/they) is an interdisciplinary community-engaged artist with a passion for play. As a fat, queer woman with mental health disabilities, her work explores themes of identity, place and belonging. How do we navigate our individual identities while...
Sarah Higgins
Sarah (Higgins) is a writer and theatre artist currently based in what’s known as Burnaby, BC, on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish peoples. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from UBC in 2016, and has been working in the theatre, at the circus and in...
Kirith Bains
Born and raised in Vancouver, I have grown up appreciating the diverse and colourful landscape. My love for the arts began early and lead me to a major in Art History with a specialization in Asian Art and a minor in Sociology at UBC. I enjoy sharing my love for the...
River Kero
River Kero is a queer Canadian artist born and currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia. His practice consists mostly of graphic novel illustration, scriptwriting, prose, and traditional drawing with pen and ink. As an artist who grew up in rural British...
Kathy van Gogh
Kathy van Gogh has been a professional visual artist since 2001, although as most artists would tell you, she has been obsessed with colour and creativity all her life. Her formal training began in the USA and in Canada. To further hone her skills, she travelled to...
Zaiwei Zhang
Zaiwei Zhang is an illustrator based in Metro Vancouver, Canada. When he is not drawing, he is probably thinking about opening up a ramen shop. His work has been recognized by American Illustration, Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, 3×3, and Creative...
Valeria Ascolese
Valeria is a Peruvian-Italian multidisciplinary artist and educator born in Lima, Peru. A graduate of Capilano University, she has collaborated with theatre companies like Rumble Theatre, Bard on the Beach and Pacific Theatre, while simultaneously working in film and...
Isidora Nojkovic
Isidora Nojkovic is a Serbian-Canadian cellist who performs internationally as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician. She has a passion for contemporary music, having premiered over 50 works, and is active in commissioning and working with living...
Ideet Sharon
Ideet is an artist, certified Expressive Arts Therapist, and mom living in beautiful and diverse Vancouver. She Attended the Vancouver Film School and worked many years as a digital animator in the film and TV industry. As an artist, she works out of 1000...
Margaret Joba-Woodruff
Using the techniques of drawing, bookbinding, and printmaking, my art practice focuses on patterns, nature and the body. The materials I work with such as fabric, paper, ink, copper, limestone, wood, and water all help guide the direction of each piece. Ultimately, I...
Felicia Chang
Felicia Chang is a documentary photographer specialized in family, newborn, and childbirth photography. Her “day in the life” sessions capture the real moments of your family, documenting the visual story of your life.
Sarah Turner
Sarah Turner is a writer and editor living in Port Moody, BC. Her award winning creative non-fiction has been published in various places including Event, the Utne reader, Literary Mama and the anthology Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food....
Alison Tedford
Alison Tedford is an Indigenous freelance writer and marketing consultant from Abbotsford, BC. Her personal essays have been published on CBC, Al Jazeera, Today’s Parent, Upworthy, Good Men Project, Scary Mommy, in print publications and more. Her debut book, Chronic...
Leah Gies
As a Youth Worker and Student Support Worker with the Vancouver School Board for the past 14 years, Leah discovered a passion for using art to inspire creativity and self-awareness in the students she works with. She is a life-long lover of drawing, writing and...
April Lacheur
Back in 2007, April was creating art as a hobby while working as full time Registered Nurse in post open heart surgery in Victoria, BC, Canada. Fast forward 10+ years and April is now working as a full-time artist, having traded in her in stethoscope for a paintbrush....
Hilary Grist
Hilary Grist’s signature brand of firefly folk dipped in dreamy, art pop envelopes her dulcet, often delicate vocal delivery. A diverse artist, her poignant and playful songs have been featured regularly on CBC Radio and heard on TV shows like: Grimm (NBC), Being...
Taslim Jaffer
Taslim Jaffer is a freelance writer and writing instructor with a special interest in culture and society. Her writing has appeared in Maclean’s, Huffington Post Canada, Unearth Women, CBC Parents, WestCoast Families and others. As the cultures columnist for...
Michele Mateus
Hi, I’m Michele and I am so glad you are here! I’m a wedding and portrait photographer, and everything I do centers around creating connection. I get to know my clients and learn the stories they want to tell before my camera ever comes out. Together, we co-create...
Jeff Wilson
Jeff Wilson grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland & trained as a structural geologist. He worked in mineral exploration around the world, settling in Vancouver in 2004, and took art classes at Emily Carr University, kick-starting a hobby that transitioned to a full-time...
Paula Barrantes
Paula Barrantes is a watercolour illustrator that brings the study of plants and their surrounding ecosystems to the center of her practice. After leaving her native Costa Rica to study in Canada, she went on to...
Chelsea Yuill
Chelsea Yuill is an emerging curator and textile artist based in Vancouver, BC. As a textile artist, her hand sewn appliqués are wearable embellishments of glamour, costume, and kitschy romance while her weaving focuses on community engagement. In 2018, she completed...
Melanie Rivers
Mixed Media Acrylic
Melanie Rivers, Tiyaltelwet, is an Indigenous mixed media artist who teaches online and in person art classes to women around the world. She helps women build a joyful and self-compassionate art practice. Melanie says, “Creating art brings me into the present moment,...
Rachel Brett
Rachel Brett is an emphatic storyteller and entertainer. Immersed in her natural habitat of mountainous, forested coastal climates, she resides in Vancouver, Canada, as a freelance concept artist and illustrator. Having lived in Sweden during her early childhood, her...
Cameron McLellan
Cameron McLellan’s work concerns the built environment, architectural space and materiality through drawing, painting and site-specific responses. Through form, texture and the meditative quality of repetition, McLellan explores how these connections can be rethought...