Arts and Entertainment

Fabienne Good’s creative journey, displaying unique work at Headwaters Arts Gallery

June 24, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

The Wanderlust show at Headwaters Arts Gallery in the Alton Mill Arts Centre ends this coming weekend on June 28. But the last weekend in June still offers the chance to enjoy the grounds and the ambiance of the Gallery, the artists’ studios and the experience of visiting the Alton Mill.

Of the 32 artists participating, Fabienne Good, of Grand Valley, was happy to speak with the Citizen about her work on display.

About the theme Wanderlust, she said, “It’s kind of just that quiet sense of wanderlust for what lies beyond the familiar, that urge to explore, where far from home or just a little nook in your backyard that you previously hadn’t paid much attention to.”

Her submission to the show is a new weave tower, titled “Echoes of Change.” Her artist’s statement discusses her line of “Echoes of Change.” It explores the connections between the natural and the constructed. Good builds the pieces from intricately woven paper, seeing that the sculpture evokes geological formations as layered, timeworn, and shaped through gradual change.

Allowing herself to be guided by a repetitive, intuitive process, she realizes that the work follows its own path of making. That realization brings her to reflect on the blurred boundary between human influence and what is perceived as natural, where erosion becomes generative and change itself becomes a method of formation, shaped by a quiet sense of wanderlust for what lies beyond the familiar.
This one in the Wanderlust show is smaller than her others, but it too conveys the same sense of how the familiar can be seen again as something more.

“In fact, this is part of an ongoing series,” Good remarked. “’Echoes of Change’ was made at the same time as ‘Echoes of a Changing Landscape’ [and] is currently still on display in the 45th annual Insights exhibition at the Wellington County Museum and Archives.”

For Good, in her life of earning several degrees at an assortment of universities and consequently teaching the subjects she studied, one of her main concerns is to enthusiastically promote creativity. Thinking of children still at home and then in schools, but for all ages, people can benefit and enjoy creativity on so many levels.

For example, Good commented that she is running a workshop at the Alton Mill on June 28 about Cyanotype sun-printing, a way of making pictures without a camera, using only the sun.

When she was working with the Erin Arts Festival, she and her business partner, Darlene Hostrawser, were there with their Dufferin Foraged Inks, a line of handcrafted inks made from locally collected plants, nuts and berries. The inks are designed not only as creative tools but also to encourage people to discover the beauty and inspiration all around us, often in overlooked places.

By producing ink from seasonal shifts and everyday plants, participants will gain new perspectives and ideas for pursuing this type of mindfulness activity in their own spare time.

This company aims to remind people that creativity can go hand in hand with nature. Good and Hostrawser also sell their inks, whimsical wooden ornaments, hand-painted cards, and their popular postcard kits.

For Good, wanderlust speaks very much to her life. Although born and raised in Dufferin County, Good has spent plenty of time abroad to expand her knowledge of many matters with an emphasis on art and design.

She lived in Switzerland for 10 years to earn her Master’s in art and design. She stayed on to teach in both German and English. To appreciate possible humour in that linguistic knot, she told the story of teaching words of emotion from German to English during an English class she was teaching.

“There are few words expressing emotion in German,” was her comment, “but so many in English.”

Good returned briefly to Ontario, only to continue on to B.C. and, from there, to Singapore just as the COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide. There she was for the full two and a half years, learning and teaching a very wide range of designing – everything, it seemed. Still, the Singapore government was maintaining strict protocols for COVID measures.

Now home again and busy with workshops, shows, and marketplaces with her foraged ink, Good nevertheless thinks about legacy and what the world will be for the children that are following us. She observed a seeming reduction in the teaching of critical thinking and in the kind of effort to learn that youngsters need to stretch and develop their minds.

Her philosophy is to promote creativity.

“At the Erin Arts Festival, when we put a leaf on the sheet to make a cyanotype sun-print picture, they were so surprised to see the sun make a picture of a leaf.

“It was wonderful,” Good said.

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