The Sea is a House 

Join Maru Aponte, Artist in Residence, for these hands-on workshops exploring the physicality of making through papermaking and bookbinding practices, each rooted in traditions of craft and cultural storytelling. In the bookbinding session, participants will learn the art of assembling pages into a cohesive structure, while the papermaking workshops will emphasize transforming raw materials into something meaningful. These workshops invite reflection on how making is a way of thinking, connecting participants to the artist-in-residence’s cultural heritage and the creative process. 

Maru Aponte (Puerto Rico, 1996) emerges through her exploration of watercolour, challenging its traditional and historical associations with “low art” and leisure. Her paintings and drawings, executed both in the studio and en plein air, investigate colour and light as phenomena through which she examines and observes nature while redefining landscape to evoke an intense sense of place or comment on her Caribbean experience and identity. Aponte recently graduated with an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. Previously, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduated from the Painting Department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Aponte was the 2023 Emily Carr Fellowship Resident at Griffin Art Projects, North Vancouver and recently was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture 2024.