Interview with an artist

Ruth de Vos is quilting kids and creation

Textile art is perhaps not the typical career choice for someone with both science and engineering degrees, but Australian artist Ruth de Vos says there are “surprisingly many engineers-turned-artists in the world!”

A New Thing
200 cm by 150 cm
The eucalyptus tree is known by its fruit. A Christian life, too, is one of growth, of maturing in fruit-bearing faith. How beautiful when the transformation from old nature to new nature manifests in ways that cannot be contained internally, like the vibrant eucalyptus blossoms that cannot be contained within their hardwood shells, and burst forth exuberantly for all to enjoy.

Ruth has enjoyed arts and crafts, particularly sewing, for as long as she can remember. It was in high school art class that Ruth was introduced to quilting as an art form, and she was hooked. She knew right away that this was something she wanted to pursue further. Ruth recalls, “I think I spent as much time on my art homework as on all my other subjects combined.”

But it wasn’t until she became a mother in 2003 that she began playing with quiltmaking techniques more seriously. Children turned out to be a major inspiration and subject for her art as well.

“As a mother, I was privileged to experience my little children discovering this wonderful world for themselves, and it often struck me how much joy and wonder they experienced around the little things that we can so easily take for granted as adults. I have put many, many stitches into capturing and sharing that childlike wonder through my artwork!”

Ruth also loves to capture the uniquely beautiful Australian flora, where she finds “so much beauty in each leaf, nut and flower.”

Not Even Solomon
147 cm by 180 cm
These vibrant blossoms were dancing on their pale stems with no regard for the more sombre foliage surrounding them. The frivolity of the blossoms, contrasted with the line and form of the tough and sturdy leaves, displays the beautiful attention to detail in God's creation.

It’s clear from the titles and descriptions of Ruth’s art that her view of the world is informed by her faith in Christ. A eucalyptus tree is a jumping-off point to consider fruit bearing in the Christian life. Vibrant blossoms remind Ruth of Scripture verses, and yet another piece reminds Ruth to “embrace the beauty and wonder of the world has made and trust in His provision and care.”

Ruth lives with her husband and six children in the beautiful Perth hills of Western Australia, where they enjoy views of eucalyptus trees from every window. She works almost full-time in her home studio as a textile artist, quiltmaker, and illustrator. A drawing table is set up in her lounge. There is a vintage sewing machine, always ready to stitch, in the living room, and a “whole lot of sketching happens poolside while supervising my children during the summer months.”

On any given day, Ruth says there are a million ideas floating around in her mind, so the challenge for Ruth is not so much where to find inspiration, but how to decide which idea to run with next.

In 2007, Ruth won “Best of Show” at Western Australia’s QuiltWest. A year later, she held her first solo art exhibition. Some ten years after that, Ruth ran her first piecework workshop. More recently, Ruth launched Creative Piecework, a quiltmaking class. Indeed, there’s no shortage of ideas and avenues for Ruth to share her work with others.

To find out more about Ruth and see samples of her work, and maybe learn more about quiltmaking, visit her website, or follow her on Instagram.

Wind of His Words
129 cm by 171 cm
This textile artwork is a response to the final chapters of the Book of Job, where God speaks from the whirlwind, reminding us of His sovereignty over all creation. The imagery of children playing in the rain captures the innocence and joy found in the natural world, even amid life’s storms. Just as God sustains the rain, the clouds, and the wind, He sustains us through every season of life. This piece serves as a reminder to embrace the beauty and wonder of the world He has made, trusting in His provision and care.

News

Canada just about had a ballot as tall as you

On August 18, voters in the riding of Battle River–Crowfoot will go to the polls to elect one of the 214 candidates on the ballot. This is the largest number of candidates in Canadian history to compete for a single parliamentary seat, far surpassing the previous record of 91, which last occurred in the Carleton riding during the 2025 election.

Pierre Poilievre was one of the 91 names on the 2025 Carleton riding ballot.

Why are so many people running? Well, 201 of the candidates share the same official agent, Tomas Szuchewycz, and seem to be part of a protest group, called the "Longest Ballot Committee” (LBC). While the LBC may have some connections with the old satirical Rhinoceros Party (best known for its pledge to repeal the law of gravity), this time they are at least pretending to make a serious point.

I say pretending because if they wanted to make a serious point, you’d think they would try to get the word out. But only 24 of their 201 candidates bothered to submit a website to Elections Canada, half of which linked only to YouTube music videos about the candidate. Another candidate's page stated, “I’m doing this out of spite” and said little else. Only a half dozen or so attempted a policy statement. And the LBC’s Bluesky page vaguely stated they wanted “decisions on election law” passed on to “an independent, non-partisan body, such as a citizens’ assembly to decide.” And how might someone get onto such a body? Appointed? If so, by who? Or elected? By what process? No ready answers could be found.

The real reason for this flood of candidates can be traced to a 2017 ruling that struck down the $1,000 deposit requirement. The government defended the requirement as a way of heading off frivolous candidates, but Justice Avril Inglis rejected that argument. She pointed to the 27 Rhinoceros Party candidates who had run in the 2017 federal election and “apparently caused no harm to the integrity of the electoral process.”

But 27 joke candidates spread across the country is very different from 200 running in one. The 2025 Carleton riding ballot, with 91 candidates (see picture), was one meter long. With the prospects of a two-meter long ballot this time, Elections Canada has gone with a write-in ballot. As a National Post article put it, “what would have been Canada’s longest-ever ballot has become its shortest-ever.”

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, running in this riding and now up against Long Ballot Committee candidates for the second time this year, made three suggestions that would stop the LBC from running hundreds of candidates again:

1. Raise the bar for candidate nominations by requiring 0.5% of the population in any given riding to sign, not just 100 people (that would work out to about 400 people on average)
2. Require that each signature in support of a candidate be exclusive, with no signatory permitted to endorse more than one candidate in the same election
3. Restrict official agents to representing only a single election candidate at any given time

While the LBC’s fuss is worth reining in, we shouldn’t want a lot of restrictions on who can run – too many restrictions could become a means for already organized big parties to squelch any smaller challengers from getting off the ground (like the Reform Party back in the late 80s). The third suggestion could hurt the Christian Heritage Party, which has a serious message to share, but not a lot of staff to go around.

So, what’s the smallest change that could be made and still be effective? What could help, but not squelch? All that would be needed is Poilievre’s second suggestion. The 201 LBC candidates likely used the same 100 voters’ signatures again and again, but this change would have required them to get a total of 20,100 different people to nominate their candidates from a riding in which there are only 85,000 eligible voters.

Ballot photo is adapted from a photo by Harry Kusumah Hidajat, and is used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Editorial cartoon at the top was created with ChatGPT