On Saturday, December 17 from 10:30am – 5:30pm, join Massy Arts Society, Massy Books and JotikaArt for FLOURISH Together. Featuring Queer and Trans, Black, Indigenous and Folks of Colour, this market uplifts jewellers, sewers, visual artists, illustrators, painters and more whose work is rooted in community building and resistance.

The last FLOURISH was in 2018 and we had over 25 incredible vendors and hundreds of attendees! We are so excited to bring you a new iteration of the Flourish market and create this community gathering space! It will feature vendors in person at Massy Arts as well as feature online vendors.

Virtual Vendors:

@Sticky Mangos

Macayla Yan

Divya Kaur

Maneesa Veeravel

Emmie Tsumura

In-Person Vendors:

Odera Igbokwe

Femmeboyant Designs

JotikArt

Samonte Cruz

Bad Opal

Glu Fluid Acrylics

Grace Machine

Unya youth and staff

and MORE!

Venue & Accessibility

The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.

Register here! Entry is $0-$10 (no one turned away for lack of funds), open to all and required for entrance. The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.

Please read our Community Care page for more on accessibility including parking and floorplan, as well as our anti-harassment policy and community agreement.

Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory. N95 masks are encouraged and recommended as they offer the best protection, we offer 3-ply surgical masks at the door. We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home–thank you kindly.

Vendors

Odera Igbokwe (they/them/he/him) is an illustrator and painter celebrating the magic of the African Diaspora and QTBIPOC communities. Their paintings explore the magic of the Black imagination, and responds to the fractures that occur via diaspora and displacement. Odera will be selling a variety of artist prints, postcards, and zines from their classic archives along with newer work from The Spirit Child Collection. The Spirit Child collection is inspired by intersectional magic from the African diaspora, personal embodied mythologies, and metaphors from the collective consciousness . Instead of the journey of the Fool, this is the journey of the Spirit Child who goes on a voyage to create healing and access points to those affected by the rifts caused by diaspora and colonization.

Femmeboyant Designs is affirming jewellery that acts as armour and celebration for those of us on the margins. Earrings, collar chains and necklaces are handmade with wire word affirmations, crystals and radical love. Arti Mehta is the trans, queer, south asian, chronically ill creator behind the small jewelry biz. They are a trauma and somatics nerd, teaches meditation, and likes to play in nature when they aren’t bending wire.

JotikaArt by Jotika–a Queer, Chronically ill, Femme of Colour and a cis woman–leverages arts as a profound and powerful tool to support a coming back into our bodies. It can be an entry point, a doorway to more self-awareness of our nervous system, to creating greater connection to what safety and soothing and connection feel like in our bodies. Creating and witnessing others’ art have helped her cope with the effects of trauma, nourished & helped her survive some of the hardest times of her life. Her story telling uses various arts mediums that she weaves into one another. She is so stoked to be organizing this market alongside Massy Arts and center QTBIPoC artists!

Sticky Mangos by Pree is an interdisciplinary ode to extended youth. Being raised in a homophobic and transphobic household, these painted works act as love letters to Pree’s inner child–affirming queerness, disability and fatness–and acting as an antidote for all the ways we interalize the harm we’ve received

Samonte Cruz is a disabled queer, trans/nb, Filipinx goldsmith, artist and educator. They create handcrafted jewelry using traditional goldsmithing techniques; specializing in custom wedding & engagement rings for queer & trans folk whose love transcends the binary. Samonte has been busy in their studio making rings, pendants & earrings for folks who want to give the gift of shiny, pretty things this season! They will also be selling one-of-a-kind hand-enamelled pins, they/them pins, self-care swag & stickers, which make great stocking stuffers.

Bad Opal was created when Miranda–a mixed, queer, femme–spent too much of her time asking, “Could I put that on an earring?” Using polymer clay, leather, shiny swarovski accents, and resin, she creates special pieces for spectacular people. All dangle earrings are on hypoallergenic fish hooks for comfort, access and durability.

Glu Fluid Acrylics is founded by Verdann, an urban Indigiqueer fluid acrylic artist living and working on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. They have been creating fluid art and facilitating fluid art workshops since 2019. They are self taught and learned everything they known from YouTube. Glu creates one of a kind pieces that are inspired by bold colors and vivid movement.

Grace Machine assembles heart-felt and hand-made adornments from vintage and otherwise forgotten stones, retrieved from geologic deposits, childhood collections, and grandmothers’ drawers, brought together with loving intention.

Macayla Yan (any pronouns) is an emerging textile artist practicing embroidery, knit, crochet, and more. Ze are a counsellor, community organizer, workshop facilitator, and eldest cousin. Everything Macayla does is grounded with the belief in the necessity and power of individual, collective, and ancestral healing and liberation. It is a Cantonese settler currently residing on the Homelands of the Lək̓wəŋən Nation with ancestry from the tropical 台山 (Yan), 中山 (Lau), 澳門 (Lee), and 香港 (Pang). As such, xe is deeply grateful to the stewards of this land in ways that he cannot adequately put into words.

Divya Kaur is a queer disabled Punjabi interdisciplinary artist, learning writer, community builder, and anti-oppression professional living in diaspora on stolen Coast Salish territories including those of the Qayqayt First Nation. Her practice revolves around honoring the intersections, complexities, explorations and beauty of identity — especially through a lens of tenderness. Divya’s work has been featured in publications such as Room Magazine, SAD Mag, and Vancouver Pride Magazine; and she’s the co-creator of HIR: a community-driven South Asian LGBTQIA+ zine.

Emmie Tsumura is an interdisciplinary artist of Japanese descent, working in illustration, collage, and graphic design. Merging psychogeography with design research, she enjoys finding ways to reach communities outside of traditional art spaces, disrupting familiar/oppressive narratives, and exploring human and non-human relationships to consumption and urban environments. She is committed to decolonizing her practice and creating responsibly towards empowered, healthy, and just communities. She uses art and design as a tool to witness and document the precious, fleeting stories of our lives, to honour and celebrate them, and create moments of joy along the way. She has an undergraduate degree in Cultural Studies from Trent University, and completed a Masters Degree in Design at York University in 2015. She is currently based in Tkarón:to/Toronto.

Maneesa is a mad, queer, Tamil, gender fluid, survivor and creative storyteller working with a variety of physical, visual, intangible and digital mediums. Their practice reflects intergenerational wits, wounds and wisdoms as it pertains to land, body and the notion of home. Maneesa will be selling prints and shirts in limited quantities available.