The language of how we describe experiences in the environment and computation are intertwined. The internet is described as water, social media as a mycelium network and navigating digital spaces as ‘surfing the web’. In turn, computational language has been used to describe the natural world. Close to home, Oliver Kellhammer described the original planting of Means of Production Garden as “an open source landscape…” In visiting artist, Sarah Holloway’s talk she will break down the term, digital garden and discuss the work of artists and critiques who explore the relationships between ecology and computation. From acoustic ecology pioneered in Vancouver during the 1970s to a memory garden for collective morning, the talk will examine how ‘new’ media has interacted with ecology and how these examples have influenced Sarah’s work growing a digital garden for Earthand.
Join us for this talk, What is a Digital Garden?, to better understand the project, Digitizing the Visceral: Making in the Spaces Between, and get an overview of the adjacent workshops being led throughout the month of July.
Digitizing the Visceral: Making in the Spaces Between, is a project lead by Sarah Holloway. Over the course of the summer Sarah has been mapping and observing EartHand’s two community gardens. Sarah will be growing an online garden for the community to access information on the irl gardens plants, harvests and happenings as well as community members’ ecological art practices and research-accessible from afar.
Join in and help us map the garden in real time, so Sarah Holloway can create a digital map for both sites! These are free events, sponsored in part by Vancouver Park Board: Arts Culture and Engagement Dept and EartHand Gleaners Society
What is a digital garden you ask?
find out July 7th 7.15-8.15pm, virtual artists talk with Sarah- get your ticket here!
mapping and site tours- small groups, preregistration is required
June 29 7-8.30 pm – fibre and weaving plantings tour and mapping/drawing with Sharon Kallis tickets here
July 6 7-8.30 pm – natural colour: dyes and pigments tour and mapping/drawing with Sharon Kallis tickets here
July 13 7-8.30 pm – food and medicine tour and mapping/drawing with Lori Synder tickets here
July 16 7-8.30pm – wood working tour and mapping/drawing with David Gowman tickets here
For more information about the project visit this web post
A series of nature and studio groups that meet virtually and regularly, to share and learn.
Led by skill holders who focus the lens to a specific area of inquiry, these sessions are opportunities to share seasonal delights and learnings with other like-minded individuals.
Skill holders act as guides and facilitators, leading the way for what is seasonally happening and relevant in the area of exploration. From technical demos and seasonal notes of interest for the first session each month followed by personal research time, and a follow up group share and a ‘ lessons learned’ exchange.
Like book clubs for nature and the studio, which club do you want to join?
Fees paid will go directly to support the facilitator, EartHands’ earned revenue is supported by BC Arts Council Resilience Funds this year. The guild programs are 3 months in length with a cost of $25/month payable as a single booking fee of $75.
These guilds are pilot programs we are happy to be offering as we experiment in how to be learning together while physically apart. Skill holders who are leading guilds may jump in and participate in each others sessions to make for some fun cross-guild pollination!
Participants will need a device with a working camera and microphone in order to participate and be able to access the internet while the group meets thru a zoom call instigated by the guild facilitator. Some guilds have a possible supplies list for things to consider wanting to have on hand for that area of inquiry. Look for lists at the bottom of each program description.
These are small, committed groups-register early to avoid disappointment!
Still to come for Autumn 2020: Gifts from the Salmon with Janey Chang and All Things Woolly with Nicola Hodges
Nature Connection: foraging summer’s sweetnesswith Sara Ross
Virtual Dates: Tuesdays, 7:15 – 8:45pm
July 14, 28, August 11, 25, September 8, 22
Do you recognize or have relationships with any plants that grow around us? In this Community Guild we will investigate micro-local seasonal wild foods: ways to recognize, harvest, enjoy, and preserve these gifts for ourselves and others…. find out more here and book your spot
Come and explore the Garden as you discover indigenous ways of knowing with Métis herbalist and educator Lori Snyder…. find out more and book your spot
Wet Felting Circle with Amy Walker
virtual dates: Wednesdays 7.15-8.15pm
Aug 12 & 26, Sept. 9 & 23, Oct 7 &21
For show & tell, work-shopping and feedback on your current or planned projects. For making fabric, garments, hats, sculpture etc. Open to experienced as well as novice felters… find out more and book your spot
The Dyer’s Garden in the Home Kitchen with CZarina den Ouden Lobo
Virtual times: Tuesdays 7.15-8.45 pm
August 4, 18, September 1, 15 October 6, 20
Starting with easy at home mordanting options like soybeans, leftover yogurt and pickling alum at-home dying with plants and ingredients found in the kitchen are explored in this group.
Virtual times: 7.15-8.45 pm First Tuesday, second to last Monday monthly
Sept 1, 21, Oct 6, 19, Nov 3, 23
Join Sharon for a processing adventure from green nettles in early fall through to dogbane, milkweed and retted nettles as each fibre plant comes into season for gathering….. find out more and book your spot
After involvement with EartHand over the past few years in Vancouver, Jaymie Johnson has recently relocated back to her hometown of Nelson in the West Kootenays, BC, on the traditional territories of the Sinixt (Lakes) peoples, with the Ktunaxa to the East, the Syilx (Okanagan) to the West, and the Secwepemc (Shuswap) to the North.
Jaymie is enthusiastic about applying the methods and skills she’s learned from her time with EartHand in Vancouver to facilitate eco-art programming and local fibre investigations in the Nelson area.
As she gets reacquainted with this land, she invites you to join her in the investigation of seasonal fibre resources in the West Kootenays’ backyards and gardens.
Jaymie will be hosting a free online series this summer for people living in and around Nelson who are interested in joining this exploration. Information and registration for this series and future Nelson events can be found listed here.
Please contact Jaymie at EarthandNelson(at)gmail.com to receive updates about EartHand programming in Nelson and for any other inquiries.
Jaymie’s initial involvement with EartHand was through a mentorship with Sharon Kallis in assisting (2016) and then delivering (2017) a community eco-art event series and installation for Border Free Bees. Jaymie was mentored in community-engagement methodologies and plant fibre harvesting and processing.
Since then, Jaymie’s main involvement with EartHand has been through her role as Stewardship Coordinator, in engaging community in tending EartHand’s two gardens that grow artist materials during the 2018 and 2019 seasons. She has also been a Guest Instructor, facilitating English Ivy weaving with SPES and stewardship and studio programming such as botanical drawing and mapping for youth and adults and in partnership with other Instructors. Jaymie has been involved in supportive roles with the Youth Innovations project in which she created signage for the gardens, and with the 2018 ‘Local Threads’ exhibition in supporting with community programming.
Jaymie has also been an enthusiastic participant in various programs and classes such as the Linen Growers Club, Fish Leather Tanning, Net-Making, Natural Pigments, Commuter Pack-Weavers Guild, and more.
And, get your materials prepped and jump in to join Dawn for an online weaving circle.
July 27Monday night- Virtual 7-9 pm, starts just after front line workers support cheer
Participants can work at whichever step they are at, have a chance to chat and share as a weaving circle with Dawn able to advise for any questions that come up.
1 session weaving circle online with Dawn Livera free, limited space-
Zoom link sent a few hours before session, please have a working camera and mic on your device to participate.
A great intro to learning fundamentals of plain weave and shaping- using easy materials you likely have at home.
Delivery cardboard boxes are perfect for this project but watch the first video and get ideas for what the materials requirements are- then forage for materials at home.
Dawn Livera is a visual artist primarily working in textiles and mixed media, with a focus on “freestyle weaving,” a style of weaving in which “there are no mistakes.”
Dawn studied weaving with a master weaver for many years and completed the Fashion Arts program at Vancouver Community College. She also has a BSc from UBC.
Community engagement is an important part of Dawn’s practice. She believes that making art should not be the private domain of the talented or learned few. Rather, everyone should feel free to explore their own creativity without worrying about whether their art is good enough.
This summer, visiting artist, Sarah Holloway, will be building a digital garden that ‘uploads’ the Means of Production garden (MOP) and Trillium North Park Garden (TNP) to a website. Acting as a digital counterpart to the physical gardens, the online version of MOP and TNP will allow for information and commentary on the plants and gardens to be transmitted from afar. Visual and text-based documentation of MOP and TNP will be displayed alongside an ever growing repository of local, ecological art practices provided by EartHand community members.
Sarah will be coding the digital garden using photographs, drawings and text descriptions – created with input from the EartHand community – in order to map and record MOP and TNP. The website will be a digital weaving of imagery and lived experiences in the gardens. The act of synthesizing the collected data is similar to the undulation of weft above and below the warp in a woven textile. We are calling out to our EartHand community members to help weave this website into reality.
The project will occur in two phases.
The first phase will begin in June 2020 and will involve on-the-ground mapping of MOP and TNP. With the help of community volunteers, these spaces will be translated into hand-drawn maps, drawings of plants, text descriptions/ID’s and photographs.
Sarah will use the information collected to interpret a map that represents the two spaces. This map will be used as the blueprint for the creation of the digital garden.
The second phase will be undertaken from July to September and begin by integrating the map made in the first phase with coding. Data collected earlier along with feedback from community members will be used to build the online garden. Through this internet-garden, others near and far can experience – online – the visceral experiences that a physical, growing landscape offers.
For more information on the project or how to get involved email Sarah at earthandmapping(at)gmail.com
Sarah Holloway is a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, studying furniture design and sustainability. Sarah is in Vancouver for the summer and EartHand is thrilled to have her explore this project to help her connect to this place, while weaving our gardens into an online format
Sarah says about her work: Blending traditional and contemporary fabrications, I seek to create a feeling of humanness through automated objects. The wellbeing of the people and the land I interact with through my work is of utmost importance and defines the parameters I work within. Letting go of my intentions on how something should look or act, I let the place significantly influence the methods I create within, by considering the vernacular and the welfare of it.
The language of how we describe experiences in the environment and computation are intertwined. The internet is described as water, social media as a mycelium network and navigating digital spaces as ‘surfing the web’. In turn, computational language has been used to describe the natural world. Close to home, Oliver Kellhammer described Means of Production Garden as “an open source landscape…” In visiting artist Sarah Holloway’s talk she will discuss how the linguistic connections between the natural world and computer science lead to exchanges of ideas between ecology and computation. Focusing on one such exchange, Sarah will break down the term ‘digital garden’. From acoustic ecology pioneered in Vancouver during the 1970s to a memory garden for the morning of those who have passed away from COVID-19 and police brutality, the talk will examine how new media has interacted with ecology and how they have influenced her own work in growing a digital garden for Earthand.
Over the course of the summer Sarah has been mapping and observing EartHand’s two community gardens: their plants and their harvestable materials. Sarah will be making an online resource for the community to use to access information on the gardens and community members ecological art practice and research.
Join us for this talk, What is a Digital Garden?, to better understand the project, Digitizing the Visceral: Making in the Spaces Between, and get an overview of the adjacent workshops being led throughout the month of July.
June 7th will very likely be our first in-person workshop in quiet some time!
After much consideration and conversations with our Park Board partners, we are aiming to go forward with this workshop that is happening over two consecutive Sundays June 7 and 14th.
We have dropped the max to 4, so we can 2 people at either end of a picnic table in our work bay and will have a process in place for hand washing on arrival and throughout the session, no shared tools or materials and masks will be worn at times that Sharon needs to be closer then a 2 meter distance to see work or demonstrate.
If between now and the workshop local circumstances change and we need to do this online, a series of zoom sessions will be planned and personal weaving time will happen over those same days and extend to ensure everyone completes their project with support.
Using Iris, cat tail and other soft fibres participants will weave either a hat or basket.
Over this two hour webinar, Sharon Kallis, founder of EartHand Gleaners, will demonstrate how to graduate from a three-strand braid to a wider, multi-strand flat braid. Participants are encouraged to braid alongside Sharon with your own home and garden foraged materials. Part of the session will offer demonstrations on how to turn braids into baskets with other fun and useful ways to use braids.
For this webinar, participants:
• Must be able to do a three-strand braid.
• Can use torn sheets, rags, plastic strips, blackberry skin and other garden/end of season yellowed greens such as daffodils leaves, dandelion and false nettle stems.
• Any garden gatherings that are ‘yellowed greens‘ will need to have been harvested and dried to shrink before webinar.Materials can be put in water for about 10 minutes then wrapped in a wet towel an hour before session to be ready for use.
• Should have a piece of string to tie their materials and a brace (table or chair leg) to tie to within view of their computer.
If there is one thing I am learning in all if this- adaptability is the key to my emotional resilience… making plans, changing them, then letting go and changing them again- all with grace and ease is the game of the day. I still catch myself occasionally expecting to just go out the door to solve a problem, then realize I need to make an appointment to go in that shop, put in an online order, then wait until it is my turn to be served.
Does this look familiar… for those that still use paper?
But- Is it possible I am a kinder person now then I was 3 months ago? I certainly expect way less of myself and the world around me. My patience is much higher, my awareness that others are struggling with daily challenges is heightened – everything goes through an internal filter now , and all of it so far for me has come out classed as a “champagne problem” in the grand scheme of things… the missed dental, doctor appointments and delayed eye exam- were those life and death?
No, so no worries!
I hope I can hold this new perspective forward as we move into out next phase of life returning to (a new) normal. And, I hope for you, that your filter is also saying “champagne problem” and your own challenges have not been heightened to horrible stresses in the scale of life or death.
For EartHand- all my beautiful plans were tossed out the window, my day-timer has never been such chicken scratch! Can you relate? I am actually enjoying just planning one week at a time- looking ahead no more then a few weeks, because… who knows?
Less planning based on where I THINK the garden season will be at from experience, and more following both what the gardens and other opportunities tell me to do in the moment- and making stuff on the spot as offerings to share. So with that, new opportunities for you to learn and explore on your own- with online support! I wish you well and look forward to seeing you again- in person or online. with best wishes, Sharon Kallis
Felting:
Super excited to have Amy go virtual on demonstrating felting on May 21st- check it out here
Weave Along Online Tutorial:
Sharon has created a weave along page to help get thru various steps to making a water bottle carrier and Karen Barnaby provided inspiring recipes for cold soups to fill those jars. Check it out here
Bonus! You can purchase a Gleaner’s Weaver Kit (while supplies last!)
for $25 and 1 future stewardship credit. Purchase here
Kit includes 35-40 yucca blades, 6 pineapple tops and several 4-5 ft canes of thick willow ready for bark stripping. Pick up your bundle at Trillium- Monday between 10am and 12noon May 18 or by arrangement.
BIRDS < BIRDS < BIRDS!
Sara Ross created some beautiful content for us to share online since we couldn’t be with her in the garden. She has shared some background about bird language and the practice of having a sit spot to develop a connection to nature and awareness of seasonal changes. Take a look at this website post and see the links to the youtube videos and more.
Trillium and Means of Production Garden both have perfect spots for selecting as sit spots with good perching rocks situated throughout- the gardens are beautiful right now and visiting is encouraged! Sharon and David have been maintaining the gardens and keeping view points more open then ever to assure ease of spotting others and maintaining social distance while on site- read the garden stories below for musing from Sharon on time in the garden right now.
Harvesting time! Did you know, you can be gathering dandelion stems from long grasses after seeds are produced, spent daffodil stalks and false or dead nettle stalks? All of these plants are in high number now, and chances are you find them in places people won’t mind you harvesting- ask neighbours about their daffodils! Just cut stems as long as possible and hang to dry until they wither, then they will be ready for soft basketry weaving projects with a quick soak and wrap in a wet towel. We hope we will be returning to small group stewardship sessions in later June, and should know more from Park Board soon!
Stories of the Gardens:
Both MOP and Trillium are really at their best this time of year- iris, lupine and centuria abound at either site. And best of all, the new growth greens everything up, revealing “new” view corridors. The green is not so overgrown right now to hide the beautiful sculptural bones from cropping and shaping as we tend the plants thru seasonal harvests. Spending so much time with David alone in the garden this spring has really brought home that perhaps the MOP garden and hillside is our legacy. This spring we have really taken on big projects; David has done in a day what we talked about for 10 years- he leveled the terrain at one of the lower fruit crop rows making it so easy to navigate, and the crop is now a raised bed! I have been working on extending pathways, opening up beds and weaving new fences- there is also what we call, “the beach” a fantastic new raised area between hazel and and willow, a platform for now until it is ready to plant. Seriously, go to Means of Production- you will be amazed at what is happening!
Sharon is working on a nettle garment, and hopes for your company working alongside her virtually. When we make for ourselves, are all those who have taught and shared with us not alongside as well?
In the spirit of community labour, Sharon and Amy invite you to join them online for these mid sized groups ( 12 places)
4 sessions- weave and braid at your own pace, have a chance to see how the nettle braiding is progressing and enjoy virtual company of others, hosted by Amy Walker.
Sharon acknowledges BC Arts Council for the production grant that has made this project possible.
Free tickets to hold your virtual place and get the zoom participation link
A Coat Cut is invocation and metaphor of precarious protection.
A Social Fabric is mitigation of the ravages gifted from industrialized consumption.
Everything about our clothing is relational; each garment a literal and metaphorical woven artifact that tells a story of our interdependence to others and this earth.
Yet currently, faceless makers of our garments work in far-off places and rising consumption levels seem a form of social hysteria.
But have humans ever been able to clothe ourselves independently, sustainably?
Many hands are required to stretch a leather skin, harvest the crop, shear and spin wool. Perhaps someone else did the dying, weaving or sewing.
An awareness of value, time, labour and resources existed for the daily objects we handled.
A Coat Cut: A Social Fabric is a work which proposes a response to our globalized reality through the technologies and methodologies of a past brought forward into the present.
This is a multi-disciplinary work encompassing:
contemporary craft and design – a wearable hand-made coat
social practice – skill sharing and cultural dialogue through hosted public events
documentary – highlighting both skill holders and relationships that make A Coat Cut possible to make, featuring conversational dialogue from public events.
EartHand Gleaners Society 