Postcards: Andrea Vander Kooij

Andrea Vander Kooij is an Ontario-based textile and performance artist. Andrea and I first met at the 2000 Fibreworks exhibition, a national Canadian exhibition of fibre at the Cambridge Gallery in Cambridge, Ontario. Andrea and her husband Alan Groombridge co-knit a piece for the show where one knit half a row and then passed it to the other to knit the other half. Andrea was an experienced knitter and Alan was a rookie. The piece, called Tension, illustrated the differences between their knitting styles. Half the piece was loose and the other was tight. Brilliant. The above postcard from 2005 announced a series of performances in Montreal for her MFA degree from Concordia. Andrea knits, collects, embroiders, cross-stitches, performs, makes quilts, and has painted an acrylic fingernail or two for art's sake.