With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/950283
ApRIL 2018 BCBusiness 33 lIfE SToRY: By age seven, Vancou- ver native meredith Coloma had lived in Taiwan and rural Chile. She went to Chile with her Canadian mother, then an anthropology student, and her musician father, a former political prisoner of gen. Augusto pinochet's regime who had moved to the West Coast. Return- ing home, Coloma picked up the fiddle, touring North America with bands at just 15. "It was a way to get out of school and be paid," she says. In 2007, when she was 16, Coloma got accepted into an acting program at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York City. She didn't enjoy it, but after classes she hung out at a violin maker's shop. Back in B.C., she enrolled in the Summit School of guitar Building and Repair in Bowser. Coloma then convinced two master guitar builders, New York–based Roger Sadowsky and Vancouver's michael Dunn, to take her on as an apprentice. "I stalked them," she admits. At 19, Coloma began attending guitar shows, where she was one of the few female luthiers—and she noticed that most instruments looked the same. So she started making what she calls art guitars from non-traditional woods such as fir, walnut and reclaimed ebony. In 2016, Coloma co-founded the Vancouver International guitar Festival (VIgF); when it launched last summer, the gathering showcased more than 60 guitar makers, mostly from B.C. hand- crafted guitars are making a comeback, partly because the Internet has made them easier to find, Coloma says. "I feel like I've been one of the people to push luthiery back into the mainstream." THE boTToM lINE: Since launching her guitar business in 2013, Coloma has made about 120 instru- ments for European, U.S. and other col- lectors, along with some 500 prototypes for manufacturers worldwide. Over the next three years, she plans to create a line of acoustic and electric guitars built entirely with an environmentally sustain- able wood composite derived from mill off-cuts. Coloma's five-year goals include opening a guitar-making school in Vancouver. Through VIgF, she also wants to launch the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. National Association of music merchants (NAAm) conference. –N.R. m e R e D I t h C o L o m A Owner coloMa guitars Co-founder and co-producer VancouVer international guitar FestiVal age: 27 thirty unDer thirty