Long a fixture of markets, festivals, and street fairs up and down the West Coast, Cada sold her very first t-shirt at the inaugural Fremont Market in Seattle in 1990. In fact, she sold exactly one shirt on that fateful day, in the pouring rain no less, but the experience awakened something in her and that was all she wrote, as they say. The year following, Cada moved to Portland and left the corporate design world for good. Soon, she was supporting herself by selling her handcrafted clothing at about ten festivals a year, including Bumbershoot and Folklife in Seattle, the Oregon Country Fair, and others from San Francisco all the way up to Anacortes, WA. “I love open air markets and festivals,” Cada reflects, “They are good for humanity.” In speaking with Cada, it is clear she thrives on what she calls “the unlimited possibilities to meet people” provided by such communal events. 

As alluded to above, Cada has a background in corporate design. Growing up just outside Buffalo New York, Cada’s father was a noteworthy designer in his own right. He used to tease Cada for always drawing trees as a child. “You can’t build a career drawing plants,” was his refrain. While that ultimately proved to be false, Cada took his advice to heart at the time and obtained a degree in Graphic Design from the University of Cincinnati. After working with several notable firms in New York, LA, and Seattle, corporate work began to take its tole on her. “I was so cynical before,” Cada reflects on her time spent in a cubicle, “[After I left] that all faded away and I became a kinder and more thoughtful person.”

Cada thrived with the support of friends, many of whom followed her away from corporate work, and the community of other vendors both locally and beyond. In 2015, Cada made the intentional shift away from clothing to focus more on her painting and textile arts. Prayer flags using existing images of hers, one set of owls and another of trees, were already popular, so she decided to expand the line with images specifically crafted for this purpose. “I went through a bee phase for about a year and a half,” she recalls, “then it was salmon, and most recently the mountains of Oregon.” The research Cada does not only informs the artwork itself, but also speaks to her belief in environmentalism and the Earth as a spiritual center. The bees she chose to depict, for example, were all threatened in the United States, allowing Cada to slip some environmental education into her evocative artwork.

*Many thanks to Cada for her time and input on this article. Support your neighbors – Shop local!