EartHand Gleaners Society

art ~ ecology ~ people

  • Annual General Meeting

    Saturday Feb. 1st 1-4 pm

    Have you been a part of our community this year? We would love to have you join us for stories about the past year and the plans for the year ahead.

    We gather around a wood stove and Sharon shares stories of the past year- what has been learned and how our community is growing and evolving. Expect tea and snacks, laughs and hand work. Dress as if you were spending a day at a cabin somewhere up the coast.

    We are honoured to once again have access to the off grid eco-pavilion in the centre of Strathcona Community Garden for our AGM, it is a beautiful space to spend a winter afternoon

    Space is limited, we ask you to confirm attendance by taking a ticket as a form of registering.

    Registered members will receive AGM documents by email 1 week prior to meeting as well as clear instructions for finding us at the eco-pavilion.

    PLEASE REGISTER HERE BY JAN 25th, thanks!

    AGENDA:
    1. Welcome from the Board

    2. Acceptance of meeting chair

    3. Acceptance of agenda

    4. Acceptance of 2018 AGM minutes

    5. Executive Director report

    6. Financial report for 2019

    7. Proposed budget for 2020

    8. Business arising

    9. Election of 2020 board

    10. Adjournment

    Annual-Report-2019-2Download

  • Wood burn out spoons!

    We are super excited to have Delmar Williams back to teach with us this winter!

    Delmar is an incredible skill and knowledge holder and time working with Delmar is always worthwhile. This session is very special, Delmar is bringing his portable wood burning stove, we have a fire permit for the afternoon, and get to enjoy each others company for a winter afternoon around the fire learning carving principles with a common camping knife and finish the spoon bowl by coal burnout! Class is Saturday afternoon Feb. 8th, cost is $68 and includes old growth cedar provided by Delmar and a knife for class use. find out more and register here https://earthanddotcom.wordpress.com/events/cedar-spoon-carving-with-delmar-williams/

    Delmar Williams is from the Squamish and Lil’wat Nation. He has grown up within his community and with  elders who still speak their traditional language and sing traditional songs. As a child, his family would fish the Fraser River every year to sustain themselves through the year. He carries the ancestral name of Banksht from his mother’s family and  the name Xwepilkinem (his father’s ancestral name) which refers to the man who slayed the two headed sea serpent. He continues to learn and grow his knowledge around ancient technologies and ways of knowing.

    Delmar is a Big Game Hunt Guide in northern British Columbia and has worked with Outward Bound Canada as a professional guide for several years. Most recently, he has taught with the Seymour Longhouse program where instructors teach fire, cooking with fire, building tripods; making slahal sets (traditional native gambling game); hide tanning; basketry; and plant gathering.  In the North Vancouver School District #44 he teaches high school students about wilderness survival, fire by friction, and ancient technology.

  • #Treasuring Strathcona: Heart of the City Festival & Sewing Circles (2 & 3)

    Over the past 6 weeks we have been working together to create a collaborative textile artwork that will live at the community centre after our 2019 residency is completed. The piece is made from layers of cloth that were dyed and marked (by plants growing throughout the neighbourhood) during our summer Plant & Dye walks, MacLean Park Movie Night, the Strathcona Harvest Festival and more. These cloth pieces, along with salmon skin leather made by Janey Chang, were stitched together, and sewn upon, by dozens of community members and friends to form a map of the neighbourhood.

    The idea of mapping Strathcona in this way came out of conversations that were had over the course of the year, dialogues that explored how cartographies might be reimagined. The project evolved organically from the starting point of community asset mapping (ideas of maps and notes on paper), to painting and imagining “in the long ago” on wood (with Janey Chang and Jay Peachy), and celebrating the present with a mural on the shipping containers created by Alex Ramirez and the Summer Heat youth group. The final piece in this project, a textile map, is another iteration of these ideas, our intention being to reflect the many histories that are held in this vibrant place, a mingling of plant and animal presence alongside human life.

    This chapter in the Artist in Communities residency has been so affirming. Thank you to all who joined our sewing circle events, your time, skill and generosity were greatly appreciated. As part of the Lantern Festival on December 21, we will be celebrating the culmination of our residency at the Strathcona Community Centre. Join us and the Secret Lantern Society for a creative evening of community celebration!

  • Stitch and Strategize has begun!

    December feels the perfect time to have launched this project.

    As the season seems to push buying more of anything from all directions, it feels very inspiring and honest to sit with others and contemplate how to best fix or remake what we already have.

    Huge thanks to the Roundhouse Community Centre for hosting us in the lobby and to those that came out to mend with us!

  • Stitch and Strategize Events


    A Slow Clothing Collaboration

    Amy Walker of Makemobile joins Sharon Kallis, plus invited friends, colleagues and passers-by for Stitch and Strategize. Check out this page for more information about this project.

    Conversation and Clothing

    Fridays Dec 6, 13 & 20 9am-12noon   

    Roundhouse Community Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews

    Friday Dec 27 11am-2pm 

    Trillium Park , SW corner of Malkin and Thornton streets

     Sharon and Amy embark on a slow-clothing exchange; making and mending for each other, sharing skills and materials. Join them for conversations about textiles, listen to podcasts, learn mending and making methods and generally be inspired in ways to extend the life of your wardrobe. Free event, no registration required, some mending materials and tools available for use or loan during session if you wish to do your own hand work alongside.
    

    Stitch and Knit Socials

    Tuesdays  Jan 14, 21, 28 and Feb 4  7-9pm

    Andina Brew Pub, 1507 Powell Street.
    Free – registration required – see links below

    Join Amy and Sharon at Andina for social time in this lovely, well-lit room. Please take a ticket so we’ll know the size of our reservation. Participants are responsible for their own food/beverage purchases and we ask you to please order something from the food or drink menu. Bring your own project and enjoy EartHand comradery on these winter nights!
    tickets: Jan 14, Jan 21, Jan 28, Feb 4

    Fibre Field Studies: Looking at our local second-hand/waste stream cloth ecology
    

    Urban Cloth Reclamation 

    Tuesday  March 3 7-9pm

    Value Village 1820 East Hastings meet at front of shop
    Free – registration required –

    Join Amy and Sharon for an informal cruise of the Value Village aisles. Let’s look together for garments that make good candidates for refashioning- either as a cloth harvest or for pattern hacking. This is an excellent opportunity to learn how to scout a thrift shop  if garment hacking for patterns, yarn harvests or reading fibre labels is a mystery for you. Participants are responsible for making their own purchases.
    

    ….more Fibre Field Study trips to be announced.

    Paid programs and related credit opportunities

    Felting Local Fleece Exploration with Amy Walker- April 26 & May 23 $110

    Thursday May 14 11am-2pm, Felting Materials Production– free credit offering program

  • Salmon Leather: Bark tanning with Janey Chang

    $125 and 2 credits get your ticket

     2 Thursdays, Feb 20 & 27 6-9pm

    Date/Time
    Date(s) – 20/02/2020
    6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

    Location
    Maclean Park Fieldhouse

    Back by popular demand! This program continues to be one of our most popular so we are thrilled to offer it again this winter.

    Fish skin leather is an ancient skill that was once common among ocean and freshwater  communities in the Northern Hemisphere. It is a beautiful textile that can be tanned in different ways to create a strong leather for clothing, pouches, wallets, footwear and art. In this class we will use the bark tanning method resulting in soft, burgundy-toned skins. You will have an opportunity to prepare between 1-5 or more fish skins into leather depending on the speed you work.

  • Hazelwood Bows with Michael Mayr

    Location
    Maclean Park Fieldhouse

    Date/Time
    Date(s) – 18 and 19 /01/2020
    10:00 am – 5:00 pm

    Categories

    $350 & 3 credits class full

    Using Hazel wood, students will work with pre-harvested rods from Means of Production, learn the stages for preparing bow blanks, then like a cooking show transfer to cured and dried Hazel from   Hazelton BC to complete their bows while understanding all the principles including the process of tillering (bending) and stringing light-weight bows.

    This is a small class of 3 maximum. These classes are often in the range of $1500. Take advantage of this special opportunity to work with Michael!

    Class cost  includes all materials including an arrow from Michael.

  • Coil Stitching Basketry: Pine needles and Scotchbroom

    Sunday December 29th 10am-5pm $60 + 2 credits

    Maclean Park Fieldhouse

    get your ticket

    This basket is fun and relatively easy to make. Coiling can feel more like sewing than weaving, as pieces are wrapped together in a completely different fashion from twining or regular weaving. It also requires a lot less material to be gathered. We will be using a combination of  long pine needles and Scotch broom as the “foundation” and peeled, split English Ivy roots and other barks as the “stitch” material. These different combinations of materials present a beautiful, aesthetically pleasing contrasts of color.

    There will be a potluck lunch break, please bring something to share. There is an oven and fridge in the fieldhouse.

  • #Treasuring Strathcona: Sewing Circle (1)

    Last Tuesday we held our first sewing circle at the Community Centre. It was a cozy and fun evening as we stitched together the first layers of the Treasuring Strathcona legacy art piece with new and old friends.

    The foundation of the piece draws inspiration from Janey and Jay’s “in the long ago…” project that was made in collaboration with youth from the Strathcona Childcare Centre earlier this year (read more about the project here: https://earthanddotcom.wordpress.com/2019/04/30/treasuring-strathcona-garden-trails/ ).

    Janey, Jay and the kids wanted to imagine how the space of this neighbourhood might have looked and felt before European contact and what plant, bird, fish and animal life might have lived alongside the Indigenous peoples of this land.

    They used images of footprints to incorporate the idea of mapping place and being on the land. This is something we wanted to carry into the legacy art piece, a mingling of ancient and recent histories and depictions of plant and animal presence alongside human life.

    Treasuring Strathcona from its inception has been focused on the idea of mapping the neighbourhood and exploring how cartographies might be reconsidered, animized and decolonized. The final piece in this project will live at the Community Centre and our intention is for the work to map the many histories that are held in this vibrant place.

    Our next Sewing Circle is November 21st (7-9pm) and will be held in the Multipurpose Room on the 2nd floor of the Strathcona Community Centre. Come join us and add your mark to this collaborative neighbourhood art work.

  • #Treasuring Strathcona: World Food Day

    On World Food Day, Alex Ramirez hosted a stitching event at the Strathcona Community Centre. He was joined by stitchers of all ages and they worked on cloth that was collaboratively dyed & printed with food and medicinal plants harvested from the Strathcona Community Garden in September.

    Treasuring Strathcona will be holding a series of stitching circles in the coming months, leading towards the collective creation of a final art work which will live at the community centre. The dates for these circles are as follows: Tue. Oct 29 (7-9pm) – Activity Room (main floor), Thu. Nov 21 (7-9pm)  – Multipurpose Room (2nd floor), Thu. Nov 28 (7-9pm) – Activity Room (main floor). Come join us!