Sharon Kallis (she/they)

With creative roots in the making of site-specific installations using park waste and invasive plants, since 2015 growing one’s own wardrobe- and being a doula for others aspiring to birth garments from the land- has been the focus.

And always asking, In an urban contemporary life, what could clothing self-sufficiency and autonomy look like if made through a lens of respect and relationships to place?

Their work is most often facilitated through the community of EartHand Gleaners Society, a non-profit arts organization founded by Sharon that brings together land tenders and makers of all sorts for skill and culture sharing projects.

Plant to Garment queries is at the core of her work, with stinging nettle research beginning in 2008 and growing flax for linen in city parks starting in 2012. With other EartHand stewards, Sharon co-tends two urban public parks for Vancouver Park Board (environmental learning gardens) where artists materials are grown. Sharon is doing their own cultural work through land-tending and cloth-making and is working to understand the complexity of how to  be ‘a better ancestor’ as a settler descendant while living as an uninvited guest on the unceded land of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm nations.

The recipient of multiple awards and grants and a published author, she is most happy with her head down in the garden or studio working alongside other self identifying neuro-spicy queerdos doing more tasks at once then really seems wise.