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INUVIK
Like so many other Northerners, Marja van Nieuwenhuyzen arrived in Inuvik with a six-month contract.

Marja van Nieuwenhuyzen is a textile and beading artist and also chair of the Great Northern Arts Festival Society. She has started experimenting with eco-dying on scarves and shirts. - Samantha Stokell/NNSL photo

Thirty-five years later, she's still here.

"I loved the community and I loved the land," van Nieuwenhuyzen said. "I was ready for a change and a friend found me a job."

Van Nieuwenhuyzen moved to Inuvik after living in Ottawa, for four years but is originally from the Netherlands. Now she's in charge of community programs at the Inuvik campus of Aurora College and the chair of the Great Northern Arts Festival Society.

She's always been involved in the art scene; her first degree was in art therapy. She also participated as an artist in the festival in the early 2000s. In Inuvik she became a beader and recently attended Capilano University in British Columbia. for its textile arts program.

While in charge of the traditional arts program at Aurora College, she encouraged students to attend the festival. Then she joined the arts festival board and after a few years, someone asked her to become the chair.

"I think it's important to give back to the community," van Nieuwenhuysen said. "And I believe in the festival."

Van Nieuwenhuysen continues to attend the festival as an artist, working on beading and displaying her work with eco-dying. Using local plants, she dyes fabrics to create prints and provide colour. It works best on silk or 100 per cent wool.

"It's not hard at all," she said. "It's inspiring and I enjoy doing my own harvesting."

The plants that work best are Arctic rose, birch or poplar leaves, which give predominantly green colours. To dye the material she puts leaves on the fabric, then rolls it up tightly and ties it up so it stays tight. Van Nieuwenhuyzen will then boil it for a couple of hours in water and then leave it rolled up until it's dry for four or five days.

The result is a silk scarf or shirt with leaf patterns and a natural, green colour. By adding copper or iron to the boiling process, different effects will happen, either darker leafs or different colours.

She's recently started mixing her media, by creating beaded brooches for scarves she's dyed. Van Nieuwenhuyzen finds the beads from all over the world and purchases them online, the only way to do so from Inuvik.

For her, it's the process of creating that she really enjoys.

"I don't have a plan. I just start and make it up as it goes," van Nieuwenhuyzen said. "The hardest part is, how do you know when you're finished? It's never done until it's gone."

As an artist who is constantly experimenting, van Nieuwenhuyzen really enjoys the festival, where she has a chance to interact with artists from across the North.

"I'm always expanding and learning something new and incorporating it into my tool kit," she said. "This year the variety and quality is really good, from quilting to carving to silver to gourds. It's all so very different art forms and it's nice to see that."

Next up for van Nieuwenhuyzen is working with some goldenrod she just harvested, which makes a beautiful golden colour on wool or silk.

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