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Nature’s glow inspiration for Maple Ridge art quilter

The Ridge Meadows Quilter’s Guild show Apr. 12 and 13
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(Contributed) Kanaka Sunset by Vivian Kapusta.

Eagles, the red glow of blueberry bushes and the golden glow of fall leaves are all inspiration for a Maple Ridge art quilter featured in the Ridge Meadows Quilter’s Guild upcoming show.

Vivian Kapusta, an avid sewer, who started as a watercolour artist, only got into art quilting after retirement.

The former Maple Ridge secondary and Thomas Haney secondary teacher uses the arts of photography and design to make her colourful quilts.

Kapusta has traveled everywhere including Russia and all across Canada and has used photographs she has taken on her journeys in her work.

On smaller quilts Kapusta will occasionally have the photograph printed right on the fabric.

With bigger quilts the artist will either combine one or two pictures of a scene, or she will take something out of the photograph to make the image simpler.

“Most of the time I simply blow (the photograph) up and use the parts I want and then create a background with the remainder of it,” said Kapusta.

One of her favourite quits is a scene of 12th Avenue in Vancouver that, she says, glows gold in the fall because of the huge trees that line the street.

The image on the quilt is of a girl walking along a wide expanse of leaves with the towering trees beside her. Kapusta took out houses and cars and other distractions in the picture.

Another of her admired quilts is one that came from a photograph taken at an eagle sanctuary just north of Squamish.

“I had to simplify, you can’t put 1,000 eagles on a quilt,” said Kapusta.

So she chose three specific eagles to put on the quilt. One eagle has a fish in its clutch on a log and is looking over its shoulder where another sits on the shore and yet another is flying in, intending to get a hunk of the fish. The river, rocks and mountains frame the stunning scene.

A sunset scene of Kanaka Creek is also one of Kapusta’s favourites along with one depicting the scarlet leaves of the blueberry bushes along Old Dewdney Trunk Road with the Golden Ears Mountains in behind.

What Kapusta enjoys most about the artistic medium is the feelings that the work brings out in people when they view the scenes.

“One thing I really like is seeing someone just standing and gazing at one of these and you can tell there is some kind of meaning from their past that they are connecting through to what I’ve done,” said Kapusta, adding that it’s not so much that she chooses a subject to use in her art, but rather a subject chooses her.

“There is something about that subject that I want to reproduce whether it be in a water colour or in a quilt. I don’t worry as much about the detail of it as I do the atmosphere connected to it,” she said.

As the featured artist Kapusta will have ten quilts on display at the show.

The Ridge Meadows Quilter’s Guild was formed in the early 1980’s and has since grown to 85 members.

They meet the second Tuesday of each month from September to June.

The theme for this years show is Quilt Stories 2019.

There will be door prizes, a quilt raffle, a tea room, merchant mall and boutique.

• The show runs Apr. 12 from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Apr. 13 at Maple Ridge Alliance Church, 20399 Dewdney Trunk Rd. in Maple Ridge.

Admission is $7.



mailto:cflanagan@mapleridgenews.com

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A Moment In Time by Vivian Kapusta. (Contributed)


Colleen Flanagan

About the Author: Colleen Flanagan

I got my start with Black Press Media in 2003 as a photojournalist.
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