This story is part of the Comox Valley Record’s fall edition of Trio Magazine, published quarterly and available throughout the Comox Valley.
•••
Jasper Myers
The Wachiay (pronounced watch-ee-ay) Studio, owned by the Wachiay Friendship Centre Society, provides screen printing services to people and businesses in the Comox Valley.
Alivia Flaherty, studio director, said the studio operates as a ‘social enterprise.’
“All of our profits are brought back into our community,” said Flaherty.
The studio also hosts a variety of workshops, training and other community events like live printing at markets.
“We’re like a commercial print shop that makes and prints T-shirts, posters, art prints for clients,” she said. “And then any money that we make we get to put back…through education and community events.”
The ‘bread and butter’ of the studio is the local businesses it works with. Flaherty said it can be anything from marketing materials to someone who created a clothing line and picked out colours and designs which Wachiay Studio then prints for them.
On the art side, a lot of the art prints Wachiay Studio produces are with Indigenous artists because Flaherty said screen printing lends itself beautifully to First Nations art - particularly North West Coast art.
Flaherty said the goal of the studio is to give people the skills they need to turn screen printing into a business, and allow individuals to be independent and bolster the local economy.
“Screen printing really is everywhere,” she said. “It’s in our phones and computers, and in marketing and advertising, in the clothes that we wear. It’s in medicine like the little tabs that you would use to test your insulin levels for diabetes - those are screen printed…we’re using it for the fun stuff, but there’s some really incredible stuff that people are doing.”
The studio offers more than 14 courses on screen printing, and for those who have taken the intro course, there are open studio nights to come in and use the facility.
The studio began in 2013 when the friendship centre joined forces with Andy McDougall, a globally known, 40-year screen printing veteran, and local North West Coast Indigenous artist Andy Everson.
“Basically what they did together was Andy and Andy founded an after-school program with a goal to teach youth how to screen print,” Flaherty explained.
This began in the community space of the friendship centre with a program called One Tribe.
“The idea was to bridge art and entrepreneurship,” she said. “Students learned about North West Coast art from Andy Everson, and then learned about screen printing from Andy McDougall.”
The students would then sell their wares at markets and other community events.
Flaherty noted the program was so successful it led to the incorporation of Wachiay Studio in 2015, giving them a dedicated studio space within the centre.
The studio received grants in 2020 that allowed even more growth that allowed them to expand, especially in their education offerings, as well as facility-wise.
“We got a big grant to do some renovations,” said Flaherty. “Some studio upgrades, equipment upgrades that has really allowed us to expand our capacity as well.”
As for the future of Wachiay Studio, Flaherty noted the goals are usually guided by who is on the team and their unique skill set, and what the friendship centre is looking for to support folks.
“This entrepreneurship piece especially has been a huge part over the course of the pandemic. Being able to give people the tools to work from home, or to be less reliant on a job,” she said.
“Where we want to keep growing now is in our community development, and building a community of printers that don’t just interact with us but interact with each other.”
photos@comoxvalleyrecord.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter