Living is Easy members' projects 2025

Struts is happy to announce this year's Living is Easy Members' projects by Kris Gunn, Saarah Ali, Dee Olinglass, Jess Paget, Susie Vokey and Margaret Olscamp. From ceramics workshops, to exhibitions, to community inquiries about nature, to animatronic revivals, our members' interests span a wide and eclectic range. Learn more about each artist's project below.

All projects are open to the public during Struts Gallery hours, unless specific times are indicated!

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Kris Gunn | Critter Call | May 6 - 20 

Open Studio Drop-in

Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays between May 6 –20

1-5pm 

Calling all citizen scientists! Do you have a favourite bug? What’s the strangest mushroom you’ve ever seen? Is there a flower that you wait all season to watch bloom? I want to know what in nature catches your eye, keeps you guessing or makes your skin crawl. Come share some stories, pictures or respectfully gathered specimens and a cup of tea as I explore the colours, shapes and textures of our local environment that inspire my ceramic work.   

Kris Gunn (she/they) working as Cricket Sound Studios is an independent ceramic art studio creating handcrafted objects for the home and altar. Drawing inspiration from the local environment, the pieces channel the calm of the lapping tides and the whispering forests.  

Saarah Ali | May 6 – 20 

During my time in the Struts studio space, I will be exploring how embroidery can be used as a drawing and sculptural tool. I will be doing so with an illustration of Grand Manan Island and Trinidad connected by the sea on a soft cotton canvas. I want to emphasize their similarities as they both have beautiful island features, but naturally differ to match their respective climates (continental and tropical). Using coloured embroidery floss to draw the base of this design, I envision most of the tapestry to be sewn in simple stitches such as running and back stitch to form the image. By experimenting with embroidery techniques, crocheting, knitting, weaving etc, I will fill in the design to find a playful colouring book kind of quality while adding wonderful intricate details.  

Saarah Ali is an artist based in Sackville, NB that creates large-scale soft sculptures and drawings. She tells fantastical stories and explores the beauty of nature using embroidery and sewing techniques. Her work is known for its attention to very fine details and immersive illustrations. As the works are built up with thread and soft material, they create a cozy feeling which the artist deems essential to an immersive story. Saarah is a graduate of Mount Allison University and is now exhibiting works in local galleries around New Brunswick and through her website and social media.  

Dee Olinglass | All the small things | May 27 – June 10

Ceramic Workshop with Dee Olinglass

Saturday May 31, 1:00-3:30pm

Open Studio | June 3-7, 11:00-4:00pm

Community members are invited to join ceramic artist Dee Olinglass in creating small clay objects, based on their own personal mythology, to later be incorporated into daily rituals. Join Dee Olinglass in creating small ceramic objects for daily ritual! Channel your inner mythology into a shrine, vase, incense burner, or whatever your fingers whisper late at night. Participants will make their own pieces, which will be displayed in the Struts gallery space while drying. Community members are also encouraged to independently work on a piece alongside the artist throughout the work week.  

Dee Olinglass (née Danielle Douglas) is newly-professional potter, recovering academic, and psychonaut residing in Mi'kma'ki (Sackville, NB). She makes and sells functional ceramic wares through her new business, Day Moon Ceramics. Her work explores the relationship between nature, inner myth, and household objects–illuminating the sacred in the everyday. While on the wheel, she is thinking about ancient myth, neuroscience, music, motherhood, psychedelia, flowers, friendship, and the nature of consciousness.

 

Jess Paget | July 16 – 27  

This project is a deep dive into the world of forgotten animatronics. Front and center is a focus on Daisy - a retired life size animatronic cow, fully analog, made in the 1980s who worked many decades at an amusement park in Nova Scotia. Jess will be working at Struts with a passionate goal to get her fixed up and moving just like she used to. Jess will also also be working on a continuous collection of stipple drawings of the many once loved animatronic characters of the last 40 years.

Jess Paget is a multidisciplinary artist with a love for bleach dying, marsh nature, and all things analog, but mainly focused on stipple illustrations and film photograph. She has shown some of my work at Thunder and Lightning, Hounds of Vintage, and tabled at various craft fairs in town over the years.  

Susie Vokey |  August 8 – 22 

This project will focus on building a textile creation of a Lion’s Mane Jellyfish – the largest jellyfish ever recorded. Through crochet, sewing, Nordic braiding and sculpting, this wild and whimsical sea creature will be found floating in the back studio of struts. Follow the tangled tentacles and hide amongst its cozy mane. And if you would like to help contribute to the mass of tentacles needed, please reach out to Susie at spvokey@gmail.com or stay tuned for upcoming Hook and Hangs. 

Susie Vokey is a mixed media crafter who has been focusing more recently on textile arts. 

Margaret Sharon Olscamp |  September 22 – 27 

Visitors are welcomed to drop by the gallery during open hours and share their own memories and perspectives of Sackville’s ever-changing landscape. Margaret will be using the back gallery as studio space for the week to develop a new project that explores several local physical spaces and landmarks which are related to her memories of Sackville and surrounding areas.  

Margaret Sharon Olscamp is an interdisciplinary artist based in Dunlop NB on Chaleur Bay, with over sixty years of artmaking experience.