Interview with Cathie Ugrin of Textile and Fibre Artists of Manitoba

How did you get started with fibre art?

My story is a little bit unique because I was a complete non-sewer to start with. Growing up I was very creative; my intention was always to go into Fine Arts but then in Grade 12 I was seduced by biology, and I went into nursing instead. I was a nurse for 20 years, but I still wanted to do things with colour and have a creative outlet. When I was working night shifts the other nurses would bring their hand quilting and I just thought, ‘that’s what I’m going to do!’ So, I went off to the fabric store, bought fabric and a book, and that’s how it all started. I loved it right off the bat, took one or two quilting courses, and went on from there. I think not having a sewing background and not knowing all the rules gave me the freedom to try different things with my art.

As one of the founding members, why is TFAM important to you?

It started off with our president, Krista Zeghers, she lives out in Treherne and was feeling isolated since we’re very far apart in Manitoba. We would talk with people from other provinces when we went to Quilt Canada – there’re so many people from BC, they all have their own groups and we realized Manitoba didn’t have that. There’s traditional quilting groups and guilds, but for people that want to do fibre art, it just wasn’t there.  

So, Krista started by going around and talking to everyone she knew, that’s how the executive started, there were six of us in the beginning. We were all really excited – we wanted to address the needs in our community and think about what the possibilities could be.

If there’s a need in the group, we always try to follow it through. For example, a lot of members are really interested in felting, so this year we created a felting pod. It’s not the whole TFAM membership, but it’s for people who are interested in felting and want to talk and share ideas. It’s amazing, it’s a big group and they’re super enthusiastic and passionate about wool, and I’m hoping the next exhibit has a component of that.

It’s very supportive group. Through TFAM I’ve made some really great friends, we all love fibre and love spending time together. We talk a lot about the history of fibre, its role in the world, and its possibilities.

How does TFAM foster community?

We have regular meetings – since the pandemic we meet via zoom. Once we’re in person we’re going to maintain a zoom component because we’re scattered all over the place, so now everybody can join.

We have a quarterly newsletter which talks about what’s going on with the membership, it usually has tutorials, as well as calls for exhibits and any other news like that. Our website (https://www.tfamartists.ca/) also brings our community all together.

Our exhibits pull in anybody who wants to participate. Related to exhibits we always try to have a studio day where we get together and show our work. The intention is to start on the next exhibit, but it’s generally full of ‘how do you do that? and what are you doing there?’ We’re all really inspired by the end of it.

We participate in a lot of different events as well. We’ve been a part of Art and Bloom, Manitoba Fibre Festival, and we do as much as we can with Manitoba Craft Council and Manitoba Craft Museum and Libraries.

During the early days of the pandemic, we had a mask initiative where we gathered masks made by members and donated them to Main Street Project. We also donated a covid related journal project to the Manitoba Museum as part of their permanent collection.

We love to bring in speakers, a couple years ago we brought in Barb Hunt. We like to do things for the membership that bring us together.

Would you say that being a part of TFAM has changed your art practice? 

Yes, very much so. We’re always learning from each other. In the meet ups we always try to have a section for show and share, it gives us a chance to see each other’s work and talk about our own work. It’s a nice passive learning experience where you’re not setting out to learn something, but you just absorb so much.

I find I have a lot more confidence in my practice now. We often do gentle critiques where you learn a lot without feeling criticized and you feel really encouraged. Like any art community, there’s support, information, excitement, and inspiration.

Coming up on 5 years, how has TFAM evolved since its inauguration?

The basic premiss that we started with is that we wanted to cover four areas, which have become the pillars of our foundation – education and workshopping, exhibiting, networking, and promoting fibre as an artform. When we started people got excited, our members were mostly people that we knew already and wanted to support us. Now it’s grown to over 70 members.

TFAM isn’t the structure of a traditional guild, it isn’t specifically modern quilting or traditional quilting, so initially we didn’t know what we wanted to do with the meetings. Now we’re doing what our members want to do with the meetings. Through the years we have more and more of our members wanting to get down and dirty with fibre art, they want to learn more. With the pandemic everything is over zoom anyway so our Education Coordinator, Theresa Shaw, started bringing in fabulous speakers from Australia and all over the place.

We have so many friends throughout Canada, especially Western Canada, who were interested in what we were doing and wished they could be a part of our group. In 2021 we decided to open it up Canada wide, we’ve now got members from BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.

With the world opening up again, our challenge now is getting our exhibits so they’re not just showing all over the place in Manitoba. We’re in the process of expanding and breaking up the job I do as Exhibition Coordinator – thinking about what we need for a group that’s Canada wide. So yeah, so it's kind of the same, but a little bit different.   

Why did you choose the theme 'River' for this exhibition?

For our very first exhibit, Manitoba Moments, we decided to organize it as a group, then our second exhibit, ICE, was organized by Yvonne Carlson and I from the executive team. Since then, it’s been our members who choose and organize the exhibits. River was thought of Cindy Dyson and Cindy Smyth, they come from different parts of Winnipeg and would meet at the Forks which is where the theme came from.

Could you tell me a bit about the next exhibition TFAM is putting together? 

We have three more exhibitions this year. Currently there’s Shifting Perspectives, Antoinette Blankvoort-Wieberdink and Judy Birch came up with the exhibition concept during the pandemic lockdowns. The exhibit contains twenty-three triptychs, it just finished at Birtle Centre for the Arts and will travel until the end of 2024.

Our next exhibition is called JOY. We thought we all need some joy right now, and it is just the greatest looking exhibit you could imagine. It’ll be ready to go by September this year and in will travel until 2025.

Since we’ve been around for five years, we also decided to have a members show, called Five Years of Fibre. It’s going to be at the Cre8ery Gallery in Winnipeg from October 7-18. Each Saturday that it’s open we’ll be having meet and greets with several of the artists. We’re really looking forward to it.  

We’re also organizing and curating the Art Quilt Show for the Manitoba Fibre Fest, it’s the ten-year anniversary this year and the theme is Serendipity. We’ve done that for three or four years and it’s just so much fun to see what people put in. It’s going to be at the Red River Ex like it was before the pandemic, on September 9-10.

That’s what’s coming up for us this year.