amy robertson's journey | ccbc's featured region program

The CCBC’s Featured Region Program highlights guilds, organizations, and art communities around BC. This spring we hosted a lovely group of artists from Cortes Island, BC, including weaver Amy Robertson. Read more about Amy's journey of becoming a craftsperson below!

My name is Amy Robertson and I currently live on Cortes Island off the east coast of Vancouver Island. With a focus on landscape drawing and painting, I earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from small liberal arts college in Colorado in 1986. My three children were all born on a farm in the Fraser Valley, then we moved to Cortes, which had a vibrant art scene. Work and high school took us back to the mainland, but I returned to Cortes full time once the kids were doing their own things. Since then, I have created art using many different mediums, but the one that resonated with me the most has been cedar bark.

In 2000, I took a course from a Hornby Island weaver who came to Linnaea Farm on Cortes Island. We made large sturdy baskets traditionally used for harvesting peat that were built by pounding the willow stalks into the soil to create the oval shape. Then we wove from the ground up, folding over the stems once the desired height was reached and creating the bottom of the basket. Once finished, the piece was lifted from the ground and placed upright... voila! Soon after, I took a basket making course from a woman on Salt Spring Island, where she introduced me to a variety of coastal plants that were conducive to basketry. Among the willow and cherry barks, and the sedge grasses and lily fronds was bark from the Western Red Cedar, which we used as the base of the project. After that, I managed to source some from a local saw mill, and made some pretty rough but sturdy pieces.

In 2007, I made my first trip to Masset, BC, as a guest for a potlatch, and my host introduced me to Haida weaver Marlene Kun Kayangas Liddle. Marlene welcomed me into her home to weave with cedar bark. Of the six of us seated around her dining room table, I was the only non-Indigenous person there. I spent the next two evenings there, and two years later I returned and wove 9 projects in 11 days. My enthusiasm was met with support, but also scrutiny, as both Marlene and artist Reg Davidson, with whom I was staying, wanted me to "do it right." I returned for four more two-week visits, weaving, fishing, and walking the beaches. The first two days of each visit was spent out in the woods harvesting bark for ourselves and the elders back in the village. I wove every evening with Marlene and a number of other weavers of all levels. It was important to Marlene that this craft and all that it entailed be preserved and passed on as long as there was a commitment to the entire process, an honouring of the trees, and an appreciation for the traditions. And at some point during those sessions, there would be an ice cream break.

In 2015, Marlene, accompanied by a box of Yellow Cedar bark, came to Cortes and taught with me at Hollyhock Retreat Center. The local Indigenous community was offered a full scholarship for someone to attend, and they also provided a traditional welcome upon her arrival. We had five glorious days of creating a range of pieces and sharing stories.

In 2017, Ivan Rosypskye, a Heiltsuk weaver and carver, came over from Powell River to Cortes and taught a hat making workshop. Phil Russell, an Irish man who has supported reconciliation through the arts with a project called Hehewsin (The Way Forward), was his assistant. A year later, Phil and Ivan engaged a few Cortes artists in an effort to weave hats for the canoe journey that was to be hosted by the Tliamin Nation in 2020. In less than two years, I contributed 28 hats with materials and a pattern that were supplied to me. Sadly, the journey was cancelled due to COVID, but the hats have been shared with their community. Following that, I was commissioned to make a few more Coast Salish hats, but have shifted to non-Indigenous designs such as cowboy, fedora, and sun hats for family, friends, and customers.

I was contacted by Hershel Supply Company later that year to bid on a contract for a statue to stand in their flagship store in Vancouver. They wanted a full-size person woven in cedar! After 3 months and over 400 hours of work, I completed Manfred, a 5'10" person that still stands just inside the door of the shop in Gastown. At that point, it was my largest project and super challenging, having to maintain a pattern as the torso expanded into the limbs, a neck into a head, etc.

I have taught in Vancouver, North Vancouver, Kelowna, and on Quadra and Cortes Islands, and always share information on the materials, be they cedar, birch, or cherry barks, grasses or vines. I explain my history with cedar bark and pay tribute to my primary mentor, Marlene Liddle. My work has sold at holiday markets, farmers markets, commissions through my website, word of mouth, and out of my home. When pricing my work and workshops, I charge for sharing my skill and my knowledge. The materials are a gift from Nature, and are hers to share.

About five years ago, I stopped harvesting cedar bark from live standing trees unless the owner of the land on which they stood told me they were going to be felled soon. By posting an ad in our local online newspaper in the spring when the sap is running, I can keep in touch with the community and find out when cedars are coming down or have arrived at a mill. In this way, I am able to gather materials that otherwise would go to waste.

I have made hundreds of woven projects in the last 25 years, including hats, baskets, bottles, covers, ornaments, and mats. And one person! While my work carries the influences of all my teachers, it is mixed with my own creativity and artistic expression. Most recently, I participated in a collaborative piece at the Cortes Island Elementary School, weaving a living willow 50-foot dragon with a tunnel body into which the kids can enter and play.

If you are interested in learning to weave or would like more details of my work, please visit my website at www.amyrobertsonweaving.org