PIET RUTGERS moved from making significant creative decisions in his role as former Director of Planning and Operations with the Vancouver Parks Board (up to and including the 2010 Olympic planning), to designing and building furniture for his family and clients in his Comox Valley 1920s cottage workshop.
“I’ve always been in the business of creating things,” he says, “so I just had to continue.”
After taking some night school woodworking courses, Piet felt confident developing his own style.
“I now spend about 40 per cent of my time building furniture,” he says. That includes a custom Tavolino di Violoncello for a cellist who commissioned him to build a side-table for her music books and accessories.
Piet’s work, through Sandpiper Studio Arts & Crafts Furniture, is regularly shown at juried artisan booths at the annual Filberg Festival in Comox. “It’s a hobby I get paid for,” he says, “and it keeps me connected to designing and doing.”
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LUCINDA JONES says that growing up in Canada and New Zealand led her to environmental activism. She co-founded and volunteered on projects that drew awareness to issues in her West Vancouver community.
It was her three grown children, however, that inspired and empowered her to support, fund and shape policy for youth-initiated projects that would “make life better” for future generations.
It’s with this focus that Lucinda has emerged as an environmental film-maker/producer of the 3E (Energy, Environment, Economics) Film Festival in West Vancouver (2015) and in Strongoli, Italy (2017), both at which she presented a film about her daughter’s bold farming venture in Saanich.
“There is no time to waste; no time to ask for permission,” she urges. “The projects now find me as a moth finds the light.”
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