At The ArtWay, located on a creative stretch of 15th Avenue at Fraser and Kingsway that includes Collage Collage and Spool of Thread, the credo is everyone's an artist, and its role is to give its students the tools to bring out their creativity.
When artist and teacher Denna Erickson opened The ArtWay in 2010, she was taking a big leap of faith. She'd been a high school art teacher for 20 years and a practising artist since she was in her teens. Leaving a secure job with benefits to open Vancouver's only studio offering specialized art instruction was a bit scary.
Every year during the Culture Crawl, visitors to Denna's studio “would inevitably ask 'Do you teach adults?'” Denna explains. “And I used to put on shows with the kids I taught. One day when I was hanging a show in the school cafeteria, one of the teachers came by and said 'Wow, this is amazing, do you ever teach adults?' That was the final spark I needed.”
