0:07  
Hey guys. Come on in. Welcome to my studio. 

0:08  
I'm Sydney. 

0:14  
And I'm Lisa, and this is Girl Talk. For this episode, we got together with three lovely ladies who all help to outline a story of women in the arts. The struggles, the fruitions and everything in between.

0:28  
Women have faced decades of adversity in the arts industry and all industries for that matter. We felt it was important to highlight their stories. 

0:36  
First, we talked to Bree Hoi, a fourth year creative industry student, and well, she can tell you what she does.

0:43  
Um, well, I started sewing by hand little things like pillows and stuff. When I was nine, taught by my nanny. She gifted me a sewing kit, for I think it was my ninth birthday. And we used to sew together and she would sew things like on larger scale with her sewing machine, and I would sit beside her and stitch my little pillows. And she would help me, it was very cute. And then I kind of abandoned that for a few years again, and then I just kind of continued doing it. I bought hoops, which worked out a lot better and then it just kind of came into fruition. Needlepoint was used in the first wave feminism through like women's suffragettes would make political needle points and to use flags, kind of as they marched for their rights to vote. Which I think is really beautiful, yeah.

1:42  
Did you do any sharing, distributing through at Bunz at all, like doing trading or bartering for your pieces? 

1:49  
When it first started out, I wouldn't get people to pay me money, because like, almost there was a part of me that didn't think it was worth it. Which kind of speaks to art as a female and I felt like, I could just trade other people for their art and other things like that.

2:03  
In embroidery, which is traditionally a woman's craft. And then like, have you ever had something like that where you've told people and they've maybe reacted in a way that you weren't expecting?

2:12  
I generally don't tell people unless they ask. So I've had like a few men asked me like if I'm an artist, and I'll be like, yeah, I do embroidery. And they're like, oh, okay, and they just don't really feel interested anymore. So it's just like, okay. 

2:30  
We were interested if other women had similar experiences to bring their treatment by men when pursuing their craft, we met up with Victoria Long in Trinity Bellwoods Park on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Here's what she had to say.

2:43  
My name is Victoria Long and I graduated, I think, two years ago, from York University's film production program. So much of the time, whenever I'm new on set, and like, I go somewhere to like, try and fill the paperwork or whatever they're like, okay, like, you must be makeup. And I mean, again, it's frustrating I'm always so tentative to talk about this stuff, because it is so subtle, a lot of the time. And whenever you bring it up to guys, or whenever I have a lot in film stuff, they're always just like, oh, really went, nah, that's not true. Or they're like, I know, a lot of female camera people. 

3:16  
And I'm like, Oh, cool. Well, like, that's awesome. I personally have never worked for a female cp. I've really, yeah, I've just found such a difference in working on projects that have had female like leaders and, and stuff in terms of like, the tone of the set too. I just feel like sometimes there's more respect, and like, to all levels, as opposed to being like this hierarchy thing that's like, well, you're a worm, cuz you're a camera sister. You know, like, you don't mean anything or whatever, it's just like, everyone is a person. And like, maybe that's because, like, the oppressed don't want to be the oppressor, like women know how it feels to be, like, treated like shit all the time. In the past year, I've really been fortunate to be able to connect with a lot of like, female, creative people in the city and artists, and entrepreneurs and, and work on projects with them. And I've been able to work on a lot of really great like, female driven projects. And these are ones where I actually get to do more stuff and that's exciting.

4:16  
I am in the All Girls to the Front, art that is in Take Time Vintage right now in golf. And it's all female run. And everyone who's in the show is a female, mostly local, which is really cool. And I was born and raised in Guelph, so it's nice to kind of go back to that.

4:36  
That's Bree again, telling us about some of the shows she's in right now.

4:40  
So I have a few pieces there for the next month and then I'm gonna be in Graven Feathers holiday craft show and have a bunch of pieces there. Oh, yeah. And I also have two pieces in the round, which is the show at Graven Feather now.

4:55  
We were interested in exploring some of these primarily female art collectives around the city. So we headed down to Graven Feather on Queen West, an art gallery studio and workshop space where Bri works. We met Pam Lobb.

5:19  
Usually there's a girl over here, oh, and then the rollers on it. Yeah.

5:25  
My name is Pam Lobb and I'm the director of the space. Started out with three of us in the space, so I'm also a co-founder. But the other two members have gone on to different things and now I run this space on my own. It's been formally almost a full year that I've been doing it on my own. And, yeah, it's been really neat. It's allowed for a lot more room for new people to come in, and a lot of change to happen. About the time that we opened there were quite a few other spaces that opened. All different, but there's a lot of other female entrepreneurs that I was able to link up with right away. Which has been exciting to grow our businesses alongside theirs and have a very open exchange of, you know, everything from more formal stuff about talking about curating shows to more practical stuff of how do you do your accounting. And everyone's been super open to sharing, you know, getting together for coffee and trading either materials or ideas or tips.

6:38  
Coincidentally, the night we were visiting Graven Feather, Bree was teaching an Embroidery Workshop to a group of six young women. As we pushed and pulled our needles conversation unfolded and we learned more about the craft and what it means to Bree. 

6:53  
What time is it? It's 6:43. And it goes until?  8:30. Cool. 

7:04  
Tonight, the workshop is called bloom in a room, which is embroidery based and each participant gets a four inch hoop, and we're going to make little gardens on it. So one of my favorite ones that I've made a couple of in the past two months is the Shiny Diva Cup. Which is called an ode because I love my Diva Cup, and I hope everyone loves a Diva Cup. And basically it's just an outline of a Diva cup with kind of like the sparkle emojis around it, so I love that one.

7:44  
Thank you.

7:45  
Thank you for having me. No problem, so glad I could help.  Yeah, thank you. 

7:57  
 That's it for this week of Girl Talk. We'll hit you with more lovely ladies and their work soon.