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Simone Elizabeth Saunders

@simoneelizabethsaunders

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Punch-needle• Textiles • Calgary-based • 🇯🇲🇨🇦• ENCOMPASS THE GALAXY BOOK - ORDER NOW 👇🏽

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“Every portrait carries a history – you just have to spend time with it.” – Simone Elizabeth Saunders

This week, we step into the vibrant world of Simone Elizabeth Saunders @simoneelizabethsaunders where colour, texture and storytelling come together through expressive punch-needle portraiture. ✨🧵

In this conversation with Creative Director Jo Wright @jowrightmakes, Simone reflects on ancestry, Black womanhood, and the gentle strength found in slow, intuitive making. Together, they explore colour theory, symbolism, and how rest and reflection shape a meaningful art practice.

If you’re drawn to process-led art, rich colour palettes and portraits that hold quiet stories, this episode is for you.

Watch on Facebook or YouTube, or listen on your favourite podcast app by tapping the link in our bio by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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a year ago

Life has been shifting in the most beautiful ways. I’ve learned that when you let go, when you trust the timing of the universe and have faith in the stars, everything that’s meant for you finds its way back.

This season has been one of transformation — of quiet surrender, deep gratitude, and new beginnings (in more ways than one 🌙). From Art Toronto to the growing life within me, I’m reminded that creation takes many forms — and that each chapter carries its own kind of magic.

Thank you to everyone who continues to walk this journey with me (and those who know what a journey this has been!)The path has been long, but the horizon feels full of light. Only beautiful things ahead. 💫

#ArtToronto #ArtistJourney #Gratitude #NewBeginnings #FaithInTheStars #TrustTheProcess

“She Holds the Sky”, 2025
“(Be)Longing Series”, 2023
📍Art Toronto
@cabcity 💛 taken in Toronto, Ontario by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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a year ago

The books have arrived! Encompass the Galaxy is here! I can’t describe the anticipation and the joy that I had heading down to the gallery to open the box and to hold a piece of my legacy in my hands!

This book has been a labour of love - I really hope that you can experience a copy of your own. It encompasses 40 of my textiles that I produced from 2020 to 2023 containing three bodies of work.

It’s truly such an honour for me to even comprehend that y’all could have a piece of me in your home, to travel with you, to share with your loved ones. I am so grateful to @contemporarycalgary for supporting this book and giving me the opportunity to create my FIRST BOOK!

📕 Encompass the Galaxy OUT NOW
📍CC 701 11 St SW Calgary AB
🤚 Can be purchased online LINK IN BIO
Or DM me for details.

#booksbooksbooks #artbook #artistjourney #Blacklove #encompassthegalaxy #outnow #booklaunch #canadianartist #simoneelizabethsaunders taken in Contemporary Calgary by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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a year ago

August musings: sustaining life, nurturing art, healing postpartum body, evaporating in the sun. 🌞

#momlife taken in Calgary, Alberta by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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2 months ago

Restocked in person and online 🎉

'Making Place: A Map of Black Calgary' is available to add to your collection of powerful stories that shaped Calgary's history.

Launched 5 March 2026 in collaboration by Calgary Institute for the Humanities with The Bookshop at Esker at Esker Foundation.

For decades, Black Calgary was mostly confined to undesirable pockets in the city core. Although the people resented these boundaries and the strictures that enforced them, proximity meant friends and family were always nearby. In the early-to-mid 1950s circumstances began to change, and greater financial security led to the scattering of community. Fortunately, the dissolution of Black East Calgary did not shatter the bonds formed among the members and descendants of the Black migration of 1910 who had left the northern farms to try and make a life in the Prairie cities.

This map ends in 1970. Around that time, immigration from the Caribbean and Africa increased significantly. Those populations have enriched our lives, and while a map tracing their contributions would be compelling, it would require much more space. This map focuses on the earlier years that made place for us all.

Each element on the map connects to at least one other, and the first events connect to the last. The Stampede Corral where Floyd Sneed triumphed in 1970 was housed on the same Exhibition Grounds where John Ware triumphed in 1893. In this way, we are able to follow the dots, recognizing that the survival of communities was not inevitable. Someone who walked ahead did the work.

Text: Cheryl Foggo
Artwork: Simone Elizabeth Saunders
Photography: John Dean
Editing: Jim Ellis
Design: Glenn Mielke by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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3 months ago

I’m honoured to be included in “Intersecting Threads: Art, Cotton and Intersectional Feminism”. My heartfelt thanks to Julia Skelly for bringing together such a thoughtful and important collection of voices, ‘drawing on Black feminist theory, queer theory, anti-colonial thought, and scholarship on the unhuman turn to explore the profound significance of cloth in contemporary feminist art’.

To have my work shared alongside artists whose practices have shaped the field, including @faithringgold @bisabutler and @deedsweaves is humbling. Their contributions have expanded the possibilities of textile as both material and language, and I am grateful to be in conversation with them through these pages.

Thank you, Julia, for including my work in this important publication. I’m filled with gratitude and excited to see how this book continues to inspire conversations around textiles, identity, history, and care.

#TextileArt #IntersectionalFeminism #ContemporaryArt #BlackWomenArtists #FiberArt @bloomsburypublishing @bloomsburybooksus by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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3 months ago

For women ♥️ #audrelorde
“The Messenger”
📍contemporary Calgary “u•n•i•t•y solo exhibition 2022
🏠 Alberta Foundation for the Arts by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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4 months ago

Wowow! What a beautiful, transformative spring this has been! 🌷

A season of surrendering and becoming. So much of my time has been devoted to nurturing my daughter, learning the rhythms of motherhood, and discovering new parts of myself along the way. The days have felt both impossibly long and astonishingly fleeting.

The tending of a new life. The reshaping of my own.

I’m excited for what will emerge when I return to the studio, carrying everything this season has taught me. I can’t wait to share what rises from these months of transformation.

For now, I’m soaking up these precious days, knowing they too are becoming part of the work.

📸:
1. @westernliving feature May/June issue!
2. Mini me
3. @westernliving - partial article 🤎
4. I love smelling new blossoms, eternal life!
5. Showcase in Toronto - @unitedcontemporary 🙏🏽
6. Motherhood is…
7. Dante Potato, forever loved 🕊️ by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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4 months ago

My soul dog, Dante, is with the ancestors. 🕊️

I know how many of you adored his presence in my posts, and how many of our friends loved him dearly too. I share my grief.

He is a piece of me. A reflection of unconditional love. My best friend, a light in every darkness, my steady studio companion through so many seasons of life.

Words cannot express what this beloved being means to me, or the depth of love I carry for him.

I am forever grateful to have walked this life with you, sweet boy.

By my side for 14.5 years, you survived a coyote attack, you had cushings for several years, a dire skin flare up in 2024, and now mast cell tumours (cancer) invaded your beautiful body. You heard my whispered prayers to stay by my side until a child was in our lives. And with the same patience and devotion that defined your every day, you listened. You steadied yourself, slowing your decline, and waited until our baby came home.

And then, as if your work here was complete, you told us it was time.

I will never be ready for this loss. But there is peace in believing you are waiting for me now, just beyond the veil, held by the ancestors, whole again.

Thank you for your love. For your gentleness. For your loyalty. For every quiet moment, every comfort, every lesson in devotion.

You were never “just a dog.”
You were family. You were soul. You were home. You taught me how to be a Mom.

Our love is without end.

Run free now, my Dante.

Forever a piece of my heart.

❤️

📸 there are hundreds of photos I want to share, but I don’t have the capacity to go through them, it hurts too much. These are from my latest photo shoot, a maternity shoot with my Potato, by a bestie Jon @agazestudio Thank you for catching this incredible moment bb. New life synced with old. by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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5 months ago

Unlocked - forever bestie

@devakaranm #ariesseason #babygirl #heartexplosion #newborn #onedayold by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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6 months ago

It was worth the WAIT!

So lovely to have been featured in Black Coppers magazine for 2025. It took a journey to get to me, but I’m a patient gal, it was worth the wait.

A beautiful spread of my hand-punched textiles adorn the pages, and I get a little teary eyed getting to see them on the pages in this way!

#textileart #magazinespread #blackcoppermagazine #blackart #punchneedle taken in Calgary, Alberta by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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7 months ago

Bookshop Event Launch 💫

Date: Thursday 5 March
Time:
6-8pm
Doors: 17:30

📍Esker Foundation
4th Floor
1011 9 Ave SE

How do we honour the historic contributions of
Black Calgarians as the city grows?

Welcome to an evening of dialogue, art, and history with Cheryl Foggo and Simone Elizabeth Saunders for the unveiling of Making Place: A Map of Black Calgary, part of the Calgary Atlas Project.

Cheryl Foggo is a playwright, author, and filmmaker telling stories of Western Canadians of African descent, while Simone Elizabeth Saunders is an award-winning artist celebrating Black womanhood and resilience.

We are looking forward to hosting them, we appreciate the trust in partnering on this important moment in Calgary's Black History.

We will be announcing our featured artist who will be performing soon!

Presented in partnership with the Calgary Institute for the Humanities at the University of Calgary.

The Full collection of the The Calgary Atlas Project Maps will be available for purchase at The Bookshop at Esker during and after the event.

Free admission and parking will be available.

Artist headshots:
Left: Cheryl Foggo, Photo: @miketanphoto
Right: Simone Elizabeth Saunders,
Photo: @cabcity

#MakingPlaceYYC
#BlackCalgaryHistory
#CalgaryAtlasProject
#EskerFoundation
#YYCArtsAndCulture A maroon poster promoting “Making Space: In Conversation with Cheryl Foggo and Simone Elizabeth Saunders,” featuring two portrait images and event details for the launch of Making Place: A Map of Black Calgary on March 5 at the Esker Foundation. taken in Esker Foundation by @simoneelizabethsaunders

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8 months ago