meets all requirements for awesome

What do the deadly nightshades stand for?
Mad styles, bike lovin and eco-awareness?
Why yes we do!

Who else stands for these three pillars of awesome? Fia Cooper.

I met Fia during the east side culture crawl. It is an amazing event where shit-tons of vancity artists open their studios up for visiting, and you can check out art, meet and greet the artists and scope amazing studio spaces (jess and I often found ourselves appreciating the real estate more than the work....).

Fia has a studio in the ARC building, which is a fantastic primary-coloured-8-story-wonderland of studios and galleries. Fia's a metal worker by trade, but her work which really blew me out of the water were her amazing belts.

The way she told it, she had been making belt buckles and was racking her brain to come up with a material to make the actual belts. Then she spotted an abandoned bike tire tube on the floor and a big light blub went on over her head. She whipped up the tube, threw it through a sewing machine, hammered some grommets and VOILA!! Recycling made magic again!

She's coming out with the belts in a retail ready way eventually, I will keep you posted. But for now lets all just appreciate her radness.








Ps. disclaimer: I take liberties for the sake of quality story telling.