The Public Studio – An interview with Jessica Fern Facette

October 22, 2026

As COI prepares for the end of our first season, I wanted to speak again with Jessica Fern Facette, the first artist interviewed in Season One. Fern’s practice extends into her working life through her studio and store, Fern’s School of Textile Craft, and I wanted to know more about how she approaches blending her personal textile practice with a role that is so public-facing. I spend a lot of time thinking about public art in our communities—especially art that extends beyond the monumental and focuses instead on developing engaged and relational interactions with the public. I am interested in how artists blur our understanding of the distinctions between collaboration, community-building, and art when engaging broader audiences through public work. Public studio spaces are critical to enhancing collective creativity. Schools, stores, and other spaces offer different ways to engage with publics—and often active, unique ways to approach training, mentoring, and sharing knowledge, all critical when considering the broader framework of public art. I was curious about what it might mean to spend so much time with the public as part of an artistic practice, and to work to build a community that otherwise may not have formed.

In this follow-up interview with Fern, we speak about her studio, Fern’s School of Textile Craft, and how it impacts—and in turn is impacted by—her practice. It’s a great way to help us get ready for COI Season Two: Contours of Interconnection, which will investigate how artists, communities, and landscapes across Alberta relate to, influence, and sustain one another; what we mean when we talk about a “public;” and how public art and artistic communities are distinct in this region of the country.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Christina Battle (CB): I’m excited to talk with you again, especially as a way to bridge to our next season, which is about connection, collaboration, working with others, and working with publics. With COI, we started off thinking that what we were interested in focusing on was this broad idea of artists working in the Prairies, but once we got going, we realized that we were really interested in Alberta (maybe even more specifically, Edmonton) and what artists are doing here. I think there are so many interesting things that go on here that often don’t get a lot of attention—especially attention outside of Edmonton.

Fern Facette (FF): It’s so cool to have someone wrangle all of that together because even if you’re in it you might not know. For example, I’m so excited to read your conversation with Michelle [Schultz], because I’m very curious about her work and how she does it.

CB: Have you met before?

FF: I’ve met her a few times and I know a few people who work with her, so I have a general idea of what she does, but it would be interesting to learn more about it.

CB: Totally; she’s a perfect example. I kind of knew what she was up to, but not entirely. I think she’s performing this incredibly important role, that is somewhat invisible.

That conversation with Michelle is one reason I’m really stuck on thinking about this idea that what is happening in Edmonton is unique. She’s doing this work that’s so invisible but so necessary in terms of supporting artists here—because we don’t have an infrastructure of support for artists. I don’t think the need for her role exists in other places in the same way.

FF: Right—like the actual work that she’s doing, or the fact that it’s hidden?

CB: Maybe both, actually. But mainly the work itself, because in other cities there are more opportunities for artists to show and sell their work, and here, there just aren’t. So many artists are stuck either figuring it out for themselves or moving elsewhere. She’s offering that support for artists and introducing their work to other galleries and collectors from outside of here.

FF: Helping people create a wider reach.

CB: It’s very entrepreneurial too, which is something that comes up in that interview. I think that’s the thing that both Zach and I have been talking about a lot too: obviously an entrepreneurial ethos exists everywhere, but it does seem like people here uniquely gravitate toward it and excel at it. I think that a lot of that comes from a lack of opportunity; in other places across Canada, you might get support from an institution, but when the institutions aren’t there to offer support, it’s like: Okay, we’ve got to do it ourselves. I think that’s pretty unique to this region.

FF: Wow, that is super interesting, and it seems like a cool way that people could create work for themselves within the art world. If you’re doing that with just a few people, then you might still have time to have your own practice.

CB: I have so many things that I want to talk with you about related to this, because you’re immersed in the work that you want to do personally: you’re surrounded by weaving, and that is your practice, but I can only imagine that the bulk of your time is dedicated to administrative work, business work, and teaching workshops. How do you balance all of those things?

FF: Usually, the path that is going to help pay the rent and the mortgage is the most well-beaten path. I feel like I don’t have a lot of time to work on my own personal practice because I’m busy working on running a business just to pay the bills. While I’m simultaneously very lucky to really love the work that I do—and that it is adjacent to my own practice—I’ve barely done any personal weaving since my exhibition last spring. I also had a big move.¹

CB: That’s right, and a new studio space to figure out—that was a lot.

FF: Yeah, I’m still struggling to find the balance of how to carve out time to make things myself.

CB: Totally—it’s the forever struggle in some ways, right? Did you anticipate that? I know a little bit about the story of how you started the studio. Was it a way to seek the opposite balance in a way? Was it a way to be immersed and surrounded by weaving day to day?

FF: It wasn’t super intentional. It started very small and just grew naturally, so it wasn’t an intentional decision to be more immersed in the textile world. It was more like: Well, people are asking for it, and it could be fun to do, so I’ll give it a try. Honestly, that’s how it started, and then it just kept growing and growing and other people started asking if they could teach in the space, and then that kept happening more and more. The old space used to primarily be photography related, and then the textile thing just kind of crept in, and took over completely when my photo-based roommate moved out. It happened very slowly, in small increments.

CB: Do you feel like you saw it happening at the time, or did it take you by surprise?

FF: The moment when I really saw that balance shift was when the pandemic hit. Previously, I was working as a wedding photographer, and all of my work for that whole year was canceled in a day.

CB: Yeah, wow.

FF: So that was done and all the photographers that I knew were doing family portraits through the front windows of homes or adapting in ways that I really didn’t want to do. That’s when I shifted and really started focusing on the textile thing, because my main job just shriveled up in an instant.

CB: It’s so amazing to think about that now in hindsight, because it happened so quickly, and at the time I feel like everyone was just like: Oh, this is happening now, and were forced to quickly adapt. But when you think about how absurd that was now in hindsight…wow.

FF: There were things that happened that were really beautiful. I don’t remember it super clearly, but it felt like there was a projected date, like: Coming this day, everything is going to be regulated and things are shutting down, etc., so I started building out [punch needle] kits to sell, and there was a really supportive response of people ordering and picking up kits curbside before we shut down for a stretch of time. I wasn’t able to do group workshops for a while, so I had to do one-on-one workshops, and that was actually really fun because people came to me with these random ideas, like: I want to do some sort of indigo-dyed giant weaving. Normally I’d be like: Sorry, I can’t do that because there’s just no way that is financially feasible. Instead, it was an opportunity to say, Okay, yeah, let’s do that.

CB: Amazing. I guess that was also tied to the pandemic itself, right? People suddenly had time to think up these ideas and focus on them. I think we’re in this time now where it seems to me that many people have held on to that desire to spend more time doing things that are important to them, and they’ve tried to work to keep it up. I know there are a lot of people who haven’t been able to—like when you hear the stories about sourdough bread, and it’s like, everyone was doing it, and then they all stopped when they went back to work—but I feel like with some of these hands-on practices, some people kept it up. They learned how and spent a lot of time doing it over the pandemic, and then kept going.

FF: Yeah, I think some people kept at it. The responses to my last two rounds of workshops have been some of the best responses I’ve ever had, so people are still making time for doing the kinds of activities that were really popular in that moment.

CB: Strangely, some things grew in a way because of everything shutting down.

FF: I think it helped. I think it was the push that some people needed, because there were people that were always gonna do it, like me, but just didn’t have the time, or whatever reason, and so that was their way to get in.

CB: There’s something so perfect about those take-home kits as reflections of that time, too. Because, as you said, you made and advertised the kits, people would drive up, pick them up, and then they could take them home having everything they needed to get started. There’s something about that form of learning a skill, where everything’s provided for you—it was almost perfectly packaged for the pandemic.

FF: Yeah, it was a good sort of fill-in. Although, I do think that most people prefer in-person learning—or maybe it’s just the people that come into the studio prefer it. But it seems like most people that I talk to here are hands-on learners.

CB: There is something about the framework of your studio in particular that I find interesting. A community does form and take shape—that community might be more fluid than say a collaborative group working together on something consistently—but there’s something special tied to the hands-on learning as well. When I was last here, there were moments where I was like: I recognize this person; I don’t know if I recognize them from being in a class together or just seeing them around while I happened to be doing something. One woman had a tea towel that was the same pattern of a tea towel I had done in a drop-in session, and I was like: Oh, we have that in common, and that sparked a conversation. When you were talking about one-to-one workshops and someone presenting you with the idea to make a particular thing, asking if you could help them make it—can you talk a bit about how you think about collaboration in those sorts of situations. Do you consider it a collaboration at all?

FF: This was a question you sent me ahead of time; it kind of stumped me, actually. It made me realize that, as you say, there are a lot of collaborative aspects happening in the workshops, but I don’t know if it’s really, you know, actual collaboration. I think within a workshop setting, folks might be drawn to certain things or materials, but not necessarily be able to envision how it’s going to look. The thing that I can offer to folks is help with visualizing.

CB: Right.

FF: I feel like that’s a big part of where I come in, and because I’ve done lots of rugs and punch needle designs, I can be like: This is probably what’s going to happen and you might want to use more contrasting colours—so that they have a stronger sense of what their end product is going to look like. There’s some collaboration that happens in the project with Fatme [Elkadry];² I think that is probably the most collaborative project that I’ve done. But I’ve never sat down with a person and been like: Let’s collaborate and make a piece where we’re equally planning and making a thing.

CB: There’s a real skill in teaching others how to see their vision through, and in helping shape that vision while also standing back to not claim some kind of ownership over it. There’s real generosity in that. This is why I think teaching is such a powerful thing—and why it’s not for everyone. I’ve started thinking about how that might be a form of collaboration that is quite invisible, because you’re not putting your name on the work or process in the end. Collaboration is a tricky thing to do, right? Even when it comes to more formal collaboration, we’re very rarely taught how to approach doing it or how to think about it within the arts. But I think that generosity of give and take sits at the centre of it. So, I understand when you were talking about working with Fatme—maybe that follows a more formal way of thinking about collaboration, which I agree, but I actually think there are all of these different ways of thinking about collaboration within the space of the studio.

FF: Yeah, totally. That’s a great point, because if you expand and include other things within the definition, it is collaborative in the sense that I’ve set the foundation for the blanket, for example, but then folks alter it in some way and make it their own. They may try to imagine how certain colors might sit together, or want to alter the pattern but wonder if it will still be okay structurally and then I jump in to help. So, yeah, there is definitely an exchange happening.

CB: I hadn’t thought about the patterns that you design and share with others to then make for themselves. I know that this exists in all different forms of textiles. There is something really interesting about setting a pattern and sharing it with someone. It becomes their own despite the fact that the pattern was designed by you. It’s almost like you’re offering something that is still yours, but becomes someone else’s—I just really love that.

FF: This is why I like talking with you—you make me think about things in a totally new way that I never considered before. When you were talking about patterns just now, my mind went to thinking about other art forms and how, if you were to take a painting class, you probably wouldn’t come into a class with 50% of the canvas already painted, and that’s essentially what people are coming into here in a way, because the design is already done and set up on the loom before they come and do their half of the project.

CB: Yeah, and truly, they wouldn’t be able to do the project if you hadn’t set them up in that way to help and offer a place to begin, right?

FF: For a lot of folks, yeah, because we do get a lot of folks who are new to weaving, and so setting up the loom would be pretty challenging. A lot of our beginner classes are doing pretty gigantic projects, like the blanket and rug. Those are pretty large undertakings, and some of the designs broke my brain a little bit when I made them. I’ve been doing it for 20 years and try to simplify things in a way so that people can make these really complex blankets while being new to weaving.

CB: The first floor loom workshop I did at the old studio was a rug, and because of how you organized the workshop, the fact that I came in knowing nothing and walked out with a completed rug (that I still use!) is the main reason why I kept weaving. Truly. I imagine that, had it been taught in a way where I had to figure it out from scratch, I probably would have been like: Oh, that’s interesting, but I cannot do that again.

FF: I do teach classes where people start from the very beginning—winding the warp and dressing the loom—but people can get a little bit frustrated when they start there. It’s intimidating and it’s very tedious, and the super fun part that tickles your brain and eyeballs is just a small fraction of that class. I try to set that expectation in the class description, but I think people maybe partly don’t believe it.

CB: Right.

FF: But truly, it’s two days of just setting up and maybe a half day of weaving. It can be a punishing place to start.

CB: I’m assuming you didn’t start out thinking: I really just want to collaborate with people on weaving projects. It’s much more of an individual practice for you. Did you start to collaborate more in your practice because the studio offered the opportunity to do so?

FF: I think so. When I think, for example, of the project with Fatme, or the Tufting Artists Residency—those were ways for me to keep that spark going, because, as lucky as I am to have a teaching and retail studio, I worry a little bit about doing what I did with photography, where I worked so much that I never picked up a camera unless I was being paid to do so and just didn’t have any personal photography practice at all. I’m worried about doing that with my love for weaving. Luckily, that hasn’t happened. I think part of the drive is to have these projects that are a less transactional and outside of that capitalistic framework. They’re more about connecting in a long-term way and creating things that aren’t just started and finished within a day. They are a chance to learn about other people’s art practices and to see how they work. All of it stems from not wanting to totally burn out and make the studio feel purely transactional in that way.

CB: Even when it comes to language, that’s the difference between a studio and a store. I’m thinking about some of the more collective-centred studios that I’ve been part of, or even when I’ve had studios with other artists in the same building. That’s the kind of experience where you have the opportunity to meet other artists, see how they work, be inspired, and influence one another. And that’s the potential of what a studio can offer, which is a pretty unique model. Being in the same space is something that fuels that sense of being in a collective or a community.

FF: Yes, definitely—to have the opportunity to share and exchange with people, even just sharing what it is that you’re working on, because it can be kind of isolating doing that work. Fatme’s been coming in for five years, and you know, a lot of the folks that are here when she comes in recognize her now; maybe they haven’t heard about our project before, but they’ll ask, What are you working on? And then she gets to share about the project and the work that she’s doing. So that’s really nice.

CB: Let’s talk about your work with correctional facilities. Can you share a bit about the work that you did a couple of years ago when you had been invited to work with the women’s facility?

FF: Initially, I was invited by Native Counseling Services of Alberta to teach a crafting class at Buffalo Sage Wellness House and at Stan Daniels Healing Lodge. Both are minimum security correctional facilities for Indigenous women or men. They called me and were like: “We’re at the end of our fiscal year, and we have some budget left over. Can you come and teach a tufting class?”

It was kind of funny—months before I had been on the Government of Canada website looking for some sort of contact number because I wanted to bring textile classes into a carceral setting. There were no direct contact numbers on the government website, so I sent a couple emails and left a few voice messages and never heard back. But then Buffalo Sage emailed me and it was set up within a day with a projected date, because they had to spend the money before the end of their annual term. Later that summer, I did the two classes: one at Buffalo Sage and one at Stan Daniels. Both were one-day tufting workshops.

CB: I didn’t realize that actually; I assumed they took place over multiple weeks.

FF: No, they were both short, which gave me the idea to do something longer, specifically at the Stan Daniels Healing Centre, because they didn’t have any art programs at all. At the women’s facility they have a craft room with lots of quilts and supplies around. It looked like a fairly active craft room. But at the Stan Daniels Centre they didn’t have anything. We were in a room that was usually used for some sort of group therapy or ceremonial type sessions.

So, I wanted to try to start a longer-term project. I went back to the Stan Daniels and hung out in the cafeteria for half a day and chatted with some of the residents. Some of the men who took the initial class came and talked, and even some who weren’t in the class talked with me. I was like: I’m trying to write this grant, and I just wanted to hear from you guys if this is something that you want or what you liked about it. That was when one of them told me that they didn’t have any art programs. He found it disappointing. He had day parole, so he would leave and go to different places around the city to do different art programs.

I got the grant, and then there were lots of problems getting started. There’s been lots of back-and-forth about renovations. I think there were some things out of their control until their lease was renewed, so there’s been almost a year delay in the start time. We’re scheduled now to start in September.

CB: Great, and is it tufting or is it weaving?

FF: It’s basically a continuation of the Tufting Artist Residency that I had at my studio, but taking it into a different setting.

CB: With that same spirit of engaging with other artists, learning the materials, and translating their already artistic selves and ideas into textile form.

FF: Yeah.

CB: With the first one-day classes that you did, did they look something like you showing up with all of the materials, pre-stretched canvases, and teaching and doing at the same time?

FF: Yeah, it was basically structured exactly the same as the workshops in the studio. There was a miscommunication about the start time at Stan Daniels, so after waiting for an hour or so, I started going up to random dudes and being like: Hi, do you want to come and do some art in the basement? I wasn’t expecting to have to try to recruit people, but we got about six or seven folks that came on a whim and completed a project that day.

CB: Did they get to design their own images?

FF: Yeah, they all designed their own images, and that was fun, because normally people are prepared for the class and have their design ready to go, but because this group weren’t, that part was a lot more collaborative than it normally is. Some knew what they wanted to do and some people wanted more feedback and help as they were planning.

CB: What about the new project coming up at Stan Daniels—is it spread over more than one day, are you introducing new stages to the process?

FF: It will be similar to the artist residency: There will be an initial practice piece that will probably take shape over the course of a month, and that’ll be when folks learn about what this craft is, how the tools work, what the end result looks like—just kind of getting their footing in that way. And then in the second half, they will create a larger piece. I’ve also written into the grant to have AJA Louden come; he is now a master tufter!

CB: Yeah. Totally!

FF: He’ll visit after they’ve done their first piece and have a stronger understanding of what tufting is. AJA will come in and spend a day or two working with them on the design stage for their second, larger piece. Hopefully he’ll bring in some examples of his own work and show people what you can do with tufting and help get the inspiration going.

CB: That sounds awesome. How many tufters will be in this longer residency at Stan Daniels?

FF: Initially, we were going to have two people over the course of six months, but one thing that we realized in trying to get things started was that, because it’s a correctional facility and the men are serving sentences, there is more fluidity in who’s coming and who’s going, so planning for a six-month timeline would be tough. What we have done is scaled back the project size a little to accommodate for more people over less time and adjusted it to two artists over three months followed by another two artists over three months.

CB: Also, that way more people will benefit! You were talking about the Tufting Artist Residency as an opportunity for yourself to get to know artists and how different people work, to help keep that spark alive for yourself and as a way of balancing the transactional versus the relational. I love thinking that you’re leaning into that and bringing the relational into the correctional facility and developing new relationships over time through tufting and learning. Does it get you thinking differently about the tufting workshops that you hold in the studio, which last one day, and might include people you only see that one time? Do you start to separate in your brain tufting residency versus tufting workshop? Because, the tufting is the same, and in some ways the method of learning is the same. You set it up with the same structure, but they’re clearly quite different in terms of spending time and getting to know folks.

FF: I think it’s just different capacities of space, time, and energy.

CB: Oh my gosh, the time to run all of these workshops, but also the time to learn how to tuft. You know, even using myself as an example, being introduced to tufting through the artist residency and then the time it takes to introduce it into a practice. To keep going with it takes so much time.

The way that you’ve set up the Stan Daniels residency across the six months incorporates time for participants to really sink their teeth in and get to know it. It’s something that you can’t offer all the time.

FF: I think it would just be so cost prohibitive for most people, and the audience for that level of time commitment would be so small. I think it’s just such a huge barrier. I think that’s why going the route of securing funding to pay for it is important—to buy the time.

CB: Yeah.

FF: Then you can have that longer term opportunity to get people doing something more in depth and getting that first practice piece—which, you know, nobody’s first piece is ever their best work. There’s just so much to learn, and so having that and then getting to really take the time to create an even bigger piece—I would love to see a lot more people have that opportunity.

CB: It kind of changes everything. I mean, I guess time is the thing, right? Even when you were talking about not having time to work on your own practice this past year, time is always the thing. I often feel this too. There’s this sense that working in the studio will be such that you have all this time to experiment and try things out, but it’s never really like that. Usually, it’s like: Oh, I have time in the studio and I have to do this one thing, and how can I be efficient with the time so that I don’t waste it? That romantic idea of just showing up in the studio every day—I guess some artists maybe have that, but most don’t. It seems like the dream. Then again, I don’t know if it would be the dream, at least for me, because there is something that happens when time is precious that fuels making.

FF: Yeah, when I did a three-month residency, there was so much creative output that my brain almost couldn’t stay on that channel all the time. It was nice to switch back and do the creative work of running a studio, where it’s still creative but not super personal or exploratory in the way that your own personal creative work is. Putting on a different hat was actually kind of needed. I don’t think I could have done the level of creative work that happened in that residency for more than three months.

CB: Oh my gosh, yeah. It’s almost like the fantasy everyone has is weirdly not what you actually want. I just feel like I would never actually make anything, because, I don’t know, maybe I thrive with deadlines and imposed endings.

FF: Right.

CB: Since we’re talking about time, I’ve always been so impressed and amazed by how you organize time and workshops in the studio. It seems like such an efficient way to think about organizing a studio and sharing time and tools within it. I know that it must come from your ability to know how long it takes to make a thing and I’m curious how or if that seeps into your own practice of making. I know you often have more than one loom on the go when you’re working on your own projects. Do you think about time in that way for yourself too?

FF: I try not to have the same sort of time management mentality, because honestly, the time management for workshops in the studio is largely driven by trying to pay the bills and trying to optimize the use of the space. And that actually came about when Boardwalk (the management) at the old studio kept raising my rent. I was like: Okay, I have this space, how can I maximize its potential? So, instead of just having, say, one class at a time, I would have one class where everybody’s seated around a table and working on smaller projects like an embroidery class or something like that, and then have my weavers over in the other room doing their thing at the same time. That’s when things really ramped up in terms of all of the activity at the studio, and that was just to be able to pay the rent.

CB: It’s horrible that you had to do it because the rent was getting raised and that you even had to think about optimization as a strategy, but, because I am so interested in the studio as a communal space and a place for community building, I loved doing a workshop and having other people around doing all this other stuff at the same time. It was a chance to be introduced to different techniques; I remember thinking maybe I would take that other workshop later on myself. There’s something so collective about it, and despite the origins of the strategy, your way of approaching time in the studio is unique. Even thinking about that word ‘optimization,’ I think there’s something about time in a studio that is just really interesting to think about.

FF: It’s interesting that you say that because I also felt similarly, even though I was doing it from pressures that were really big and scary. It did ramp up the amount of activity and the number of people who came into the studio, and I think that’s when things really became more like a fluid community just by the nature of having more bodies in the studio on a frequent basis. It was really fun and exciting, and it did feel good to be like: Okay today’s gonna be a bopping day, and from the start to the end of the day there are gonna be 25 people coming into the studio. That was pretty invigorating.

CB: And exhausting, I’m sure.

FF: And exhausting, absolutely for sure, exhausting as well. But now in this new studio space, even though I don’t have to hustle as hard because we’re sharing a lot of the costs, I still try to have multiple things happening at different times in the space.³

CB: Part of the reason I noticed was because I started doing drop-ins. And you know, it’s so solitary, because you’re just dropping in and weaving by yourself, so having other people around doing stuff felt great. It was always nice to know that there were folks around doing stuff too. Because I have a studio practice that is in my home, it’s always just me in my studio by myself. It was always nice to have that feeling of being around other people while making stuff because it can be so inspiring.

FF: Definitely.

CB: Is there anything else that you feel like you’ve learned, the hard way or for the better, about working with the public that you carry forward now and maybe didn’t realize you would? Because working with the public is not easy—especially artistically—and you do it so often.

FF: I think a thing that I learned from my previous photography job was how important setting expectations are. I carried that over into the weaving workshops. I try to be explicit about what people can expect from this thing that they’re about to do. When I have guest instructors, I stress that we’ve got to share the size of the project, the materials that they’re using, whether they are going to finish the project in class or at home. I think being really clear about expectations is a really big thing because if you sign up for something and it’s not what you expected in a negative way, then I think it’s going to hinder that sort of trust in what’s being offered. I think that’s huge.

CB: That is huge, and I feel like it’s such a good reminder, especially for artists working with publics, because it’s true, setting expectations puts you on even ground where you can experience a thing together, instead of it being met with uncertainty.

FF: If you go to, say, a performance-art show, you kind of want to be surprised, but sometimes that can be uncomfortable, right? It’s such a balance.

CB: I mean, clear expectations are also huge for community building and activism as well, right? And sometimes they’re neglected. Even being honest about the expectations of what folks are doing together and where that leads—it’s really critical.

FF: Yeah, I think so. For a lot of people, workshops are expensive, so if people feel like they know what they’re gonna learn and what they’re gonna make, it helps them commit to that spending.

CB: How much time it takes to make things is a great reminder for people too, right? And why when you buy a blanket on Amazon, it’s very differently priced than when you buy one from the Alberta Craft Council. The time and the labour that goes into making and the value of that. I feel like it’s amazing for people to know that, even if it’s a lesson people hold onto in the back of their brain while out shopping. Also, the time it takes to prepare and plan. I know that you spend a lot of time designing patterns, testing them, maybe taking them apart, and then trying them again—all of that invisible work, and invisible time. It’s amazing and important for people to be able to see that, and to have a sense of the time it takes.

Jessica Fern Facette is an artist based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has initiated growth in the textile community by founding Fern’s School of Craft, a space where fibre artists share knowledge. Fern is passionate about reducing barriers to craft through volunteerism, long-term mentorship and collaboration. Her work in correctional facilities and the creation of a fully funded artist residency has introduced textiles to a diverse number of local artists.

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Footnotes:

1
In November 2025, Fern’s School of Textile Craft moved into a new space in the Strathcona neighbourhood in Edmonton. ↩︎
2
Since 2020, Fern and Fatme Elkadry have collaborated on Weaving to Reclaim. The collaboration sees the two explore and Fern support Fatme in the creation of traditional woven Palestinian textiles. You can learn more about their project in this 2022 interview in Art from Here. ↩︎
3
Fern’s School of Craft’s new space in Strathcona (since November 2025), shares a store front with Former and Latter Fabrics—a garment-focused fabric store who also offer workshops. ↩︎