Jon Jarro was born in England and moved to Canada as a child. He studied art at the University of Windsor and at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto.

Yet, Jon discovered, working as a graphic designer, and especially, as a fine art technician presented him the best education he could have hoped for. He had the opportunity to observe the world of art from behind-the scenes, around great works by Degas, John Singer Sargent, Picasso, the Group of Seven, Harold Town, and many others. Working with international curators opened his eyes to the larger world of art, not just as a career, but as a vocation.

Jon’s desire to be visually creative evolved into a driving force by 2002, when he started painting full time. His work hangs in private collections in Canada, the United States, and Europe.



jonjarro@rogers.com
www.jonjarro.com

“Born in 1969 and raised in London, Ontario, I took an interest in art at an early age: drawing all the time and going to art classes and workshops over summer holidays during elementary school. In high school I continued to pursue my interest in art, participating in a one-on-one art course outside the school with local artist and teacher Michael Rouse, which focussed on drawing and photography, as well as an Art Co-op course with a placement in the art department at London's Museum of Indian Archaeology. After high school I went on to study fine art at the Ontario College of Art.

“During my time in college I took summer jobs working in carpentry, which led me to a love of working with wood that continued after college and to this day. After college I started a small business designing and building custom furniture pieces for clients as well doing small renovations. I soon met my partner Mara, who is also an artist and with whom I started to collaborate in designing and producing furniture and home décor. We have been showing our work at craft and art fairs such as the One of a Kind show for the past 15 years. The biggest joy of my life was the birth of our son Max in 1999 and besides the job of raising him the biggest project of my life began in the year 2000 when we purchased a beautiful parcel of land in Caledon, Ontario, and decided to design and build our own home. Although we have enjoyed living in the house for many years now it remains a work in progress, since as artists and consummate do-it-yourselfers we feel the need to design and make everything ourselves, including the concrete bathroom sinks.

“My latest major project has been to design and build a new studio workshop on our property, which includes a beautiful painting studio for Mara as well as plenty of shop space to accommodate my woodworking, sculpture, and photography projects.”

905-880-0707
mail@liscious.com
www.liscious.com
www.studioliscious.etsy.com

John Huggins attempts to extract what he deems beautiful from the zaniness of these modern times. He uses fast-drying acrylic paints to help these visions materialize at a modern rate of speed. Trained as an Illustrator there is a narrative that runs through his work, as well as a deep love for his homeland of Northern Ontario. Life can be very interesting if your looking in the right places.

226-926-0709
johnhuggins@rogers.ca
www.johnhuggins.ca

Rachael Speirs began painting as a toddler as art was always encouraged in her household. She remembers having "art days" with her older brother, where one day a week they would work in the basement of their home, painting caricatures of each other and making small sculptures that expanded in water. Throughout grade school and high school she was always known as "the art kid" and was an active participant in both her school and community theatre. During this time Rachael privately studied opera for over four years.

Rachael holds both Canadian and American citizenships and upon graduating from high school she chose to travel throughout the United States. She lived in California for almost a year beforeliving on Mackinac Island in Michigan where she worked for local artist Maeve Croghan. Upon her return she went to school to become a social service worker and was consistently encouraged by her professor to pursue her love of art. She worked in the field as a career counselor for over four years, eventually running programmes for the City of Toronto. As a career counselor she encouraged authenticity and honesty in ones perusal of meaningful work. Her belief in the strength of human potential lead her to take a risk in 2010 and leave this career behind to follow her own calling as an artist.

416-553-8797
rachaelspeirsart@gmail.com
www.rachaelspeirs.com/

"As a realist painter my main focus and inspiration is the environment in which I live. I feel a constant urge to record my thoughts and sensations through painting to bring a contemporary portrayal of my surroundings. My search as an artist is to record visually those elusive elements that define a thing or place and successfully interpret such feelings as solitude, bareness and desolation. The more I worked on my painting, the more I came to see that the light is really the unifying thread to all the paintings—whether I am conveying the warmth of dusk or the intense midday sun beating down on the landscape, or an artificial light illuminating a country porch in the middle of the night, light is the central theme. In the mode of artists like Cezanne and Wyeth I never grow tired of revisiting subjects and motifs over and over again, forever in search of the elusive perfect picture."

705-385-1834
nasternberg@hotmail.com
www.artofneilsternberg.com

Marta Mouka was born and raised in Olomouc, Czech Republic. After graduating from college, she studied graphic design at the College of Commercial Art in Brno, Czech Republic. She emigrated to Canada with her family in 1984, and for the next 25 years held a graphic design position in the advertising/publishing field. During the past 14 years, Marta has run her own company, specializing in art direction of magazines.

Marta has been creating art for over 20 years. At first, it was a peaceful escape from her demanding professional work. Now that she lives on a centuries-old farm near Tweed, Ontario, with her partner and numerous orange cats, her full focus is on art.

She takes her inspiration from her surroundings. A repeated motif is the Clare River, which meanders through 23 acres of meadows and mixed forest, creating the magical view Marta sees from her studio. In the winter, cracks in the ice, which melts during the day and refreezes overnight, create an unreal painting when the sun shines on them. The crazy rush of spring budding is a source of bizarre shapes and colours, and late summer brings hay bales, which are very attractive to the eye of an artist.

Marta creates textile collages. Her technique, developed over many years, is unique and gives her creative freedom and the ability to focus on detail. She cuts silk into mostly small pieces and thin strips, then builds the collage by layering them on top of a fabric background. “It’s like painting with silk,” she says. “Each creation is designed to take advantage of silk’s chameleon properties. Depending on how the silk is viewed, sections of the collage can shimmer, or be iridescent, smooth or rough. Silk is such a rich textile, with its subtle textures and ability to react differently to light.” Another element of Marta’s art is felted silk. This brings soft textures into her art and creates different values of shades and transitions between colours.

Over the years, Marta’s work has been featured in a number of galleries in Toronto, Kingston, and the Quinte area. She recently added wearable art to her collections, including belts made with a faux chenille technique. Four layers of fabric — in cotton, rayon, and linen — are machine-quilted onto a base layer of cotton, cotton batting (for firmness), and a stretchable polyester. The stitched layers are then cut, leaving them anchored to the base fabric along the stitched line. The swath is then washed and dried several times. The fabric “blooms,” creating the rich texture and fur-like feel of faux chenille, and providing the luxurious material Marta uses to construct her artisanal belts.

marta@bijoucom.ca
613-478-1555
www.martamouka.etsy.com

“I was born in Gimli, Manitoba but emigrated at six years of age to South Africa in 1969 with my family. My dad (who was born in Johannesburg) bought a VW Kombi (blue) and we slowly travelled our way to Stellenbosch, where he purchased a grape and plum farm just outside Paarl. On one of our travelling excursions some years later (in the Blue Kombi), we made our way into Lesotho and headed up into the Drakensburg mountains on our way to Maseru. At a lookout point, basically in the middle of nothing but rock, scrub bush, and rushing mountain streams, stood a boy, playing music for the tourists. He played a guitar made from an oil tin (Castrol GTS) with bent nails for tuners and fishing line for strings. I was fascinated by this guitar - and also by the fact that people were giving him money as he played. And it sounded good too!

“All the way back home, in the back seat, atop the vvvvvvring VW engine, I played air guitar. When we finally got home I scavanged GTS oil tins from the local garage and spent at least a year trying to build a Tin Can Guitar - until I went off to boarding school and forgot all about it.

“Many years later, after returning to Canada in 1979, finishing schooling at Carleton University, becoming a red seal chef from George Brown College in Toronto, meeting my future wife and having three boys, becoming a truck driver to make it all work better, starting an outdoor carpentry - and acquiring certified House Inspector status- business that I ran successfully for 8 years, buying, gutting, and renovating two houses, and then... Then... in the middle of a bleak, wintery day, my wife said to me: 'Ross, lets have a party for our friends. Lets make it something warm and happy: lets make a Hawaian theme. You get the lei's, some flowery shirts, and we better get a ukulele too.'

“I couldn't put that ukulele down. I didn't put it down for two years. Then I started to build them and my sister said: 'You know Ross, you used to be obsessed with making those things, when you were about ten years old' Then I did remember, and it felt like coming home somehow.

“The guitars I built started out wooden, then I discovered resophonics and had to have one. To cut a very long story short, it took five years to develop the Tin Can Banjo / Ukulele in the format that it is in today. It went through many incarnations: The Iron Uke, The Mush-Uke, and now - the Tin Can (and of course - the Electric Tin Can) I could write a book about the trials and the errors, tools falling from numb fingers (as back then I had no heat for the workshop as all the power was reserved for the tools) and me weeping in frustration etc. But I always had the support of anyone I showed the 'enfants terrible' to, I knew that if I could build it properly, they would come. I think I'm very close now: demand has outstripped supply. Thank you, but I have get back to work.”

1207 Bloor Street West, Toronto
416-531-0645
ironuke@thegreatmush-uke.com
www.thegreatmush-uke.com

Patouche is the creative child of Kessa Laxton. After working as a designer and scenic artist for the theatre world and having two kids, she started making stuff for her son and daughter to wear that was playful and free from branding. She discovered that she might be onto something when her son was reduced to tears on finding his favourite “pirate” pants in the wash.

info@patouche.ca
www.patouche.ca/

Bruce Smith’s love of paddles and all things “canoe” started at age nine when he first attended the Orillia YMCA’s Camp Summerland. This led to summers spent as a counselor, then eventually to building his own canoe in the boiler room of his high school in Newmarket, Ontario. During university in the 1970s, he continued his canoe-craft education by working summers at the Ontario Camp Leadership Centre at Bark Lake in Haliburton. Maintaining and repairing a fleet of fine old Peterboroughs and Chestnuts cemented the love affair begun as a child with cedar canvas canoes and built the foundational expertise Bruce has carried with him throughout the years.

During this time he also completed his Master Level in Canoeing and perfected carving his own paddles. Fellow canoeists quickly recognized the high calibre of these custom-designed, hand-crafted pieces of “functional art”, praised both for beautiful design and superior performance. Bruce’s paddles were sought after at canoe instructor schools such as Camp Kandalore’s in Haliburton where he guest lectured.

Bruce’s “official” career for 30 years was as a school teacher. For most of those years he has lived in the Elora area, teaching Construction Technology and Outdoor Education to young people in drug and alcohol treatment. There were many special projects, including constructing log buildings and of course, canoes and paddles. In January 2009 Bruce retired. At last – time to enjoy and work in his beloved woodshop!

Bruce’s paddles and canoes continue to be prized by those who own them. His hope and passion is to help equip people to find the special and beautiful places nature has to offer.

519-993-0992
www.brucesmithpaddles.com