The Mary Garnham Andrews Collection

Banff artist and Master weaver Mary Garnham Andrews has long been regarded as a gifted teacher and is a leading Canadian weaver. Mary first discovered a loom and began weaving while she was employed as a Senior Counselor at the Taylor Stratten Camp in Algonquin Park, Ontario. She continued to explore the art of weaving while living in Quebec and later went on to study in Korea and Japan while serving with the Canadian Red Cross. She enrolled at the Banff School of the Arts in 1948 and again in 1952 and studied with noteworthy individuals such as Harriet Tidball, Mary Sandin and Ethel Henderson.

Mary served as the Director of Handicrafts for the Grenfell Labrador Medical Mission for six years and worked for the Ontario YWCA as the Director of Handicrafts. She played acritical roll in the development of a Home Weaving Program for the Ontario, Provincial Government, and was asked by the Royal Ontario Museum to do research on woven coverlets of Picto County.

Mary moved to Banff in 1962 and was responsible for setting up the weaving studio in the Textile Department at the Banff School of the Arts where she taught weaving year round for the next fifteen years. In 1972 Mary was awarded her Master Weaver Certificate by the Guild of Canadian Weavers and is among a very select group of Master Weavers in Western Canada. Since her retirement, she continues to be an active member of the Banff community.

Mary works regularly at the Banff Public Library and has made an exceptional donation of her life's work and an extensive library of weaving books to the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. Mary and I met in 1996 and before long we were working together on the organization and cataloguing of her collection. The collection is comprised of approximately 600 weaving samples and finished works, weaving looms, over 2000 slides and several hundred books and periodicals on various related subjects. This is an invaluable collection documenting the work of an extraordinary artist and teacher.

— Lori Ellis, Coordinator of Art Collections

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