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Tess Gobeil was born and raised in Vancouver, where she currently lives. When not making art or planning the next project, she can be found listening to a podcast, tending to her plants or sewing clothing for herself.  

Tess completed her Bachelors in Fine Arts at Concordia University (Montreal, QC) in 2015. After returning to Vancouver in 2016, she began cobbling and dove headfirst into shoemaking and leatherwork. A lady determined, she continues to further her skills through classes at Brooklyn Shoe Space, Langara College and Vancouver Community College. Finally, she is also is a member of the SSIA and BC Tradeswomen Society.

Professionally, she focuses on shoe repair and shoemaking. Working in a combination of the two fields encourages her to develop new skills, while flexing the creative problem-solving muscles required to work on old ones. With the pandemic that arrived in 2020, Tess began to add new skills to the toolkit once again. These have included more broader leatherwork, as well as tailoring leather garments, machine tufting of rugs and mending and darning services.

Tess’s personal work often starts as a thought about process and the act of art making. She is drawn towards things that fall under the category of hand-crafted; be it hand sewn, hand bound, hand drawn, etc. This is reflected in the mediums that she gravitates towards- textile works, shoemaking and leatherwork.

Portraits by Rob Campbell, Garrett Riffal and Adele Thomas (on behalf of Vancouver Magazine’s 30 Under 30)