When you enter Julie Sabey’s home studio, one of the first things you notice is a deep, restaurant-quality sink. Admired by her fellow K’ómoks Valley artist friends, it’s one of the many tools she and her chef husband use every day – Julie in her studio and her husband in his restaurant just down the street.
As Julie constantly converts their dining room into a studio space and back, Christopher, who has spent 25 years retrofitting small spaces for maximum flow and efficiency, works with her to design and redesign her studio space based on the projects at hand. From suggesting orange table trays to move and store materials, to utilizing wheeled metro shelves for easy access, he helps her problem-solve each unique structural challenge.
Christopher even saved the floor protectors after emergency renovations in their old home, which now keep paint and gesso off their dining room floor. When Julie longed for a big easel but didn’t have the room, he suggested a simple sheet of plywood attached directly to the wall. Beneath it, Christopher installed a salvaged offcut from the restaurant’s kitchen floor reno to collect colourful drips, creating its own accidental, artful canvas.
This kind of resourcefulness comes naturally to restaurateurs, where useful objects are constantly lent out, reused, or gifted. For example, old tomato boxes make the perfect containers to transport small pieces to local shows and galleries. When those pieces sell and need to be shipped, a fellow chef pal supplies pizza boxes. Buckets once used to ferment local cucumbers were passed along to a potter friend, who now shares them freely.
Creating meaningful art and beautiful food requires far-reaching communities of support. These pursuits also require love and a deep commitment to each other’s craft. For instance, adding very large works to Julie’s practice meant rallying the trucks and SUVs of friends and family to pick up hefty stretcher frames and deliver finished art across Vancouver Island and beyond.
Christopher isn’t the only prudent influence in Julie’s life, either. Her mother experienced wartime rations as a child, so Julie grew up learning to reduce and reuse long before recycling initiatives and Instagram made thrifting trendy. These inherited ideas, combined with resources from COOKS restaurant, mean she uses signage boards as a surface for small paper projects, easily clearing them off the table when space is at a premium. Julie hastily tapes together pieces of cardboard to hold up reference photos, and precious tea towels end their lives as paint rags once they’ve lost their lustre. Milk crates line the studio edges to keep large pieces off the floor during final touches, doubling as a movable, secondary workstation.
After years of observation, Julie strives to take the things she loves about restaurants and apply them to her creative practice – hospitality included. When Comox Valley Arts asked her to host their monthly Crit Club, she immediately considered what makes a restaurant successful: a welcoming, useful space that encourages people to relax, have fun, and share ideas.
Together, Julie and the CV/Arts staff set capacity limits and intentionally arranged chairs and tables to allow clear pathways for grabbing snacks, using the restroom, moving art in and out, and presenting critiques. Thinking about how people physically navigate a room is crucial to making them feel at ease.
Of course, a chef’s love comes with high expectations. When handing over the sturdy deli containers that Julie mixes her paints in, Christopher gently encourages her to cut her tape edges straight when labelling them, rather than using her usual rip-and-tear method. And he’ll never stop trying.
Written by: Julie Sabey
Julie Sabey’s life has been shaped by a childhood spent in the Canadian North. During her formative years, she was exposed to the arts and culture scenes in Winnipeg and Vancouver. Her professional life as a writer and director meant her award-winning videos and campaigns were produced and viewed on screens. She longed to make things she could hold in her hands.
Since 2023, Julie has hosted ICONS, a deeply personal solo show, and exhibited alongside talented West Coast artists in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island. Julie lives and works on the Unceded Traditional Territory of the K’ómoks First Nation, also known as the Comox Valley, where she actively donates her art to help raise funds for causes close to her heart.
Website: juliesabey.com
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