Ep078 Seals, Culture, and Craft.

• Main Author: Jarvis, Dale
• Other Authors: Fowler, Clare
• Format: Audio
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Oral traditions; expressions and the written word; Bell Island; Newfoundland; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/ref/collection/ich_oral/id/710

Clare Fowler grew up on Bell Island. She spent time working in fish plants and other food processing plants before moving to Ontario in 1999 to do the Chiropody Program at the Michener Institute for Applied Health. She moved to St. John’s in 2004 and worked for a decade before switching gears and following her passions for art and craft. She completed the Textile: Craft and Apparel Design program with College of the North Atlantic in 2016 and is now a full time crafts person and maker with an open studio at the Quidi Vidi Village Craft Plantation. Her body of work focuses on the use of seal fur and seal leather. We talk about her journey as a craftsperson and maker, her work with seal fur and leather, the craft program at the Anna Templeton Centre in St. John’s, National Seal Products Day, and future work on seal art and documenting and learning bark tanning and sealskin boot making on the Northern Peninsula.