Pulp Fiction in Vancouver, is giving us a hardcover book discount of 30% if we pre-order at least 15 books. If you live in Vancouver, and would like in on this deal – regardless of whether you plan to join the reading group or not – please follow the instructions below:
Send an e-transfer for $30.00 to Sharon at earthandgleaners(at)gmail.com to secure your book. Please make the security answer “Worn”.
Send an email to earthandgleaners(at)gmail.com with your information. Please include:
Name
Phone number
Confirmation that you’ve sent an e-transfer for $30
Once you’ve paid and emailed your contact details, EartHand will follow-up with pick-up details.
Important Notes:
Order deadline: extended to September 10th at noon
Expected delivery date: late September
Book collection: Tuesday Sept 27 is the tentative pick-up date at Trillium, there will be options to pick-up on different days as necessary
EartHand will send reimbursement cheques if we don’t reach the minimum order of 15 books
We will be accepting up to 25 orders
If you’d like to be among the first notified of new programming, including this reading group, please sign-up for our newsletter here.
Last year we found this weaving intensive was a great way to draw the summer to a close, so are repeating it with 3 nights offered to come out and weave with others. Bring your unfinished projects to continue work or start something new. There will be a variety of plant materials currently being gathered from our gardens for use, and bring any favourite materials you are enjoying to share experiences with others.
New weavers need to register for the Monday night for basic instructions, anyone with basic experience is welcome to show up, refreshers will of course be offered!
Rebecca carding wool with keen community membersnext in line-waiting for shearing on Barnston island
It feels so good to gather in person again!
We have some outdoor open studio sessions planned, as well as community events that you will find us at over the summer months, as we share skills and methods for processing both nettle, flax for linen and wool fleece for spun lines that will be dyed and woven as a part of our artists in residence 2022 projects.
Bring your own picnic and projects, meet other fibre enthusiasts and enjoy an evening in the park surrounded by wools, linens and dye plants in progress to becoming cloth.
Spinners’ Walks: Join us for a morning walk in the gardens for spinning, ropemaking, and observations as we slow down while we move amongst the plants, seeds, birds, bees and insects. August 14 at Means of Production and August 21st at Trillium park.
This year we are busy trying to keep up on the fast growing plants in both our gardens, and finding times to meet in person- often in our smaller research groups that have come together for our Braiding Threads research project. As well, our artists in residence Anna and Meagan are meeting up with Sharon in the gardens or at our outdoor studio at Trillium Park now with regularity and exciting projects are afoot.
A part of our busy-ness behind the scenes involves David Gowman making two looms for outdoor community spaces! As a part of Meagan’s residency time, she has aided us to site a Salish style loom in the lupin and nettle garden. The top beam is from a cottonwood tree that had volunteered on site and that needed to be removed- we are happy to put this offering of wood to use back in the garden, and dye pots will be be created throughout the summer from the results of seasonal garden stewardship.
The loom will be installed in such a way as to allow the weaving and horizontal bars it is stretched on to come off and go in storage between weaving session, and sometimes be warped up in such a way to encourage community passers by to add along.
David installing the loom
The second loom is now situated in the Hastings Folk Garden on East Hastings Street, and artist and community weaver Cait Hurley of Gentle Geographies, alongside Daniela Guerrero-Rodriguez and Hives for Humanity will be connecting with us to activate that loom. The threads that Cait and Daniela are weaving in this community are a part of the larger Braiding Threads research project investigating growing governance and community care with cloth/clothing as the medium for opening up new connections and conversations.
The loom was warped for the first time by Jen Hiebert and Sharon Kallis as a part of the National Indigenous Peoples Day Celebrations in the Hastings Folk garden on summer solstice. Cait, and community members from Hives for Humanity hosted a beautiful event for the first community weaving. If you wish to visit this loom, the garden is located at 117 East Hastings and is open to the public on Wednesdays from 1 to 3 pm.
And, garden work continues! If you wish to join us in the gardens, we meet regularly at Means of Production on Wed evenings and on Tuesday evenings you will find us at work at Trillium park. Reach out at earthandgleaners(at)gmail.com if you would like to get involved and join us.
“MOP” on a summer eveningTrillium park in the lupin and nettle patch
Smudging ceremony conducted by Meagan Innes and Jamie Thomas. Photo by Rebecca Wang.
The Braiding Past Threads to Present Place BIPOC Artist Research Cohort has commenced its workshops in late May.
After an on-line info session, the cohort gathered in-person for the first time for a Plant & Fibre-Based Workshop led by Sharon Kallis at Trillium on May 23. The cohort had a tour at the Trillium Garden and was introduced to nettle and fireweed processing by practicing on plants from past harvests from the garden. Many of the artists made their first ropes by natural plant fibre at the workshop.
Fibre processing. Photo by Rebecca Wang
Fibre processing. Photo by Rebecca Wang
Garden tour. Photo by Rebecca Wang
On May 30, the cohort had a Land-Based Workshop led by Squamish woman, educator, and multidisciplinary artist Meagan Innes, who is also the 2022 artist-in-residence with EartHand, and her partner Jamie Thomas, born and raised snuneymuxw tun mystiimuxw, from the Nanaimo First Nation. The workshop started with a smudging ceremony offered by Meagan and Jamie, where everyone introduced themselves and their relation to the land gathered on. Then the group took turns to hold a small Squamish weaving basket brought by Meagan and Jamie and spoke about what the basket made them feel and think about. The afternoon ended with a heartfelt gift exchange between Meagan and the EartHand community. Below are a few of the many beautiful moments during the workshop.
Land-Based Workshop. Photo by Rebecca Wang
Land-Based Workshop. Photo by Rebecca Wang
Land-Based Workshop. Photo by Rebecca Wang
Land-Based Workshop. Photo by Rebecca Wang
Moving on we have seven more workshops in different themes (more info in this post) planned for the summer and many celebration and community events that offer the cohort members paid opportunities to connect with other EartHand community artists and engage with the public. Cohort members have shown keen interest in participating and we are excited to see how the themes being explored can weave into a future community project.
ARTIST BIOS
Lex Battle was born into a multicultural family in the small town of Prince Rupert BC. Being a part of the Nisga’a Nation, her diverse native heritage is rooted in the Village Gingolx, “The land of skulls”. While residing in Vancouver Canada as a practicing artist; her multidisciplinary work of sound production, writing, and experimental film, engages in an ongoing conversation with the natural world and spiritual practices.
Sidi Chen is a queer performance artist in diaspora whose interdisciplinary practice explores the concept of “Queer Worlding” that intersects arts, natural sciences, community development, and queer theory. Through his practice, Chen intends to mediate and negotiate an alternative relationship between the bodies that are human, ecological, and planetary. Chen obtained his BFA from the University of the Fraser Valley with the honor of distinction in 2018 and is currently studying in the Master of Fine Arts Program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Tori Clark is a gitxsan Wet’su’wetten woman from British Columbia and spent five years of her life knowing and living with a Haida family. With them she learnt how to weave with cedar and it was one of the greatest experiences of her life! Since then she’s always had a hunger to learn more and she’s hoping that this program does just that for her. Tori watched her boyfriend’s mom use a giant loom and make a gorgeous corset for her daughter’s graduation. Honestly nothing would make Tori happier than being able to making a piece by herself!
Born shortly before the tumult of the Romanian revolution, and currently living on xwməθkwəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ lands, Ada Dragomir works across media feeling most at home somewhere between spoofed youtube videos and serious sculptural objects. By harnessing the power of absurdity and irony to point to uncomfortable political realities, her practice primarily addresses questions of productivity, value, and labour. A graduate of Emily Carr University (BFA 2020), and Langara College (2018), Ada has participated in a recent residency at Unit/Pitt and a solo show featured in the 2020 Capture Photography Festival.
DanielaGuerrero-Rodriguez is a decolonization educator, facilitator, and artist who uses a healing centered approach in designing programs and leading dialogues where unlearning journeys can take place. For over two decades she has worked locally and abroad on community building efforts in education, mental health, and the arts. These experiences and her M.Ed. in Arts for Social Change support the creation of compassionate and intersectional learning environments that combine a systemic understanding of the society we live in with creative liberation practices for building our new future.
Yasmine Haiboub is an artist and facilitator currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia, the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She is an interdisciplinary artist focusing on community engagement and sculptural works. She engages with her immediate surroundings through performative gestures, interactive sculptures and mass accumulation of familiar objects that create new narratives in public and private spaces. She is mainly concerned with creating intersectionality through self-awareness, care, hospitality, and self-proclaimed authority. She also uses storytelling as a tool for documentation of the self and artistic practice.
Kristin Man is an interdisciplinary artist and author of two publications. Born in Hong Kong, she imagines being from the planet of Venus, living in diaspora on Earth and has affinity to the seven seas. She writes in English, Chinese and Italian. Kristin holds an IB from UWC of the Atlantic in Wales, a BA from Brown University and an MBA from Columbia University in the US. Her artistic research has led her to a deeper yoga practice via teaching which in turn influences her artwork.
Tiffany Muñoz (she/siá) is a mixed race, multidisciplinary artist and experimental filmmaker, of Filipina/x and Scottish/English-Canadian settler descent, currently based in so-called “Vancouver, BC.” She creates sculptural objects, illustrative DIY printed matter, and analogue/new media moving picture and sound. Muñoz’s practice is informed by a multi-layered visual language of absurdist, visceral, abstract narratives that explore personal, intersectional diasporic cultural identity and the esoteric. She holds a Diploma in Fine Arts from Langara College and a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art & Design.
Xiangmei Su is a multimedia artist from China who now lives in Canada. She received her BA in Visual Art at UBC. She works with installation, painting, photography, and video. Su has exhibited several solo and group shows in both China and Canada. Her first solo show (The Wind) was exhibited in Changshu Art Museum in China in 2012. Now, Su is an artist-in-residence in Dr. Sun Yet-Sen Classical Chinese Garden from January 28th to June 30th, 2022. Her current solo show (Intangible Thread – Part Two) is presented at the Garden. She has published two catalogues. In 2020, she was invited for a Tedx Talk, Becoming Who I Am. In 2022, she was invited to be an Exhibition Advisor for West Vancouver Community Art’s Council’s Jury for Exhibitions at the Kay Meek Art Centre.
Michelle Sound is a Cree and Métis artist, educator and mother. She is a member of Wapsewsipi/Swan River First Nation in Treaty 8 Territory, Northern Alberta and she was born and raised on the unceded and ancestral home territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is a multidisciplinary visual artist and her art practice includes a variety of mediums including photo based work, textiles, painting and Indigenous material practices. Her artwork often explores her Cree and Métis identity from a personal experience rooted in family, place and history.
Rebecca Wang 王晨釔 is an artist and curator based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations (Vancouver, Canada) and in her hometown Hangzhou, China. Her multidisciplinary practice investigates the absurdity ingrained in the structures that uphold the everyday which is often characterized by capitalist consumer culture. Through nuanced personal, communal, and fictional narratives, she hopes to destabilize the default ways of knowing, perceiving, and existing that disconnect one from their belongings and surroundings. Rebecca holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and a BBA from Simon Fraser University.
Stay tuned for more exciting events of this year’s artists-in-residence program, including Meagan Innes weaving on an earth loom at Trillium that will be built by David Gowman, and crossover events between Anna Heywood Jones’s natural dye research and other EartHand programs!
Anna Heywood-Jones
Anna and her son at Trillium Garden- Willem’s sweater was made by Nicola Hodges and uses wool dyed from the plants surrounding Trillium park
Anna Heywood-Jones is a settler artist and educator based on the traditional, contemporary and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations, colonially known as Vancouver, Canada. Through her work, Heywood-Jones explores the complex relationship between human and botanical spheres, often articulated through textile materials and processes. Additionally, her artistic practice is dedicated to exploring the slow loss of her father and the recent birth of her son. She holds an MFA degree from NSCAD University, a BFA degree from Emily Carr University and a diploma in Fibre Arts from Kootenay School of the Arts.
During her time as an artist-in-residence with EartHand Gleaners Society, Anna Heywood-Jones plans to collaboratively create handspun and handwoven textile swatches made with plant fibres grown by EartHand and wool raised by Barnston Island producers. During the summer and fall seasons, the swatches will be dyed with the many colour-bearing plants growing at Means of Production and Trillium North garden sites.
Image courtesy: Anna Heywood -Jones
Building on previous work done on the east coast (Tinctorial Cartographies), Anna wishes to create a textile record of the relationship between the animals, plants and people that circulate within the EartHand fibre-shed and community skill-shed. This project promises to be part scientific experiment, part learning tool and part poetic exploration. Throughout the spring and summer there will be crossover events between Anna’s work and other EartHand programs. Stay tuned!
Meagan Innes
Meagan and David at future loom site
Meagan Innes is a Squamish woman, an educator and a multidisciplinary artist. Meagan completed her MEd around examining connection to place, kinship and to spéńem (plant) s7eḵw’í7tel (siblings) péńem (plant things). She is waking up her Ancestral skills by exploring reshaping pedagogy to embody traditional ways of knowing and being. She completed the First Nations Language Program at SFU and is a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Sníchim speaker. Meagan loves to work with her hands, utilizing traditional materials and objects to create cultural works that are utilized for their intended purposes. Her practice includes weaving with a variety of natural fibres, animal hides, and plant materials as dyes and pigments.
Meagan and Sharon exchanging gifts at the Rose Hips + Stories event fall 2021
Meagan has worked alongside Sharon on many projects including nettle research through the Squamish Language program. She will work as an artist mentor and Squamish knowledge holder during her time as the artist-in-residence with EartHand in 2022. Stay tuned for more exciting projects that Meagan will be doing with EartHand this summer, including weaving on a loom that will be built into the garden.
The Museum of Surrey has a fantastic textile focus with a wonderful library and vibrant series of programs for teaching about textiles; so we are thrilled to be helping them take that energy and focus to the gardens outside!
Are you a Surrey resident – a senior or youth – interested in learning more about connecting plantings to a textile practice? We will be working on getting the gardens going throughout the spring and summer of 2022 and are looking for interested volunteers to join the team.
Join us for the final virtual gathering in our popular series Cultural Territories 101
Thursday May 12 7-8.30pm.
This time around Nicole will invite guests to research, learn and discuss pertinent topics that affect these Nations and their sovereignty. Nicole will be leading light discussion around the plants, fibres, weaving and cultural practices of each Nation while also discussing how current day colonialism has come into play. We are excited to welcome people from all knowledge levels and group participation/discussion is highly encouraged. This is a space to learn, listen and share and we look forward to having you.
Free, online program with limited space to allow for conversational group-
A device with camera and audio and internet is required to participate in this program. The session is not recorded.
Nations in discussion: Nisga’a, Tsimshian, Haida, Tahltan, Gitxsan.
The North Coast Region is comprised of the Traditional Territories of the Coast Tsimshian along the Skeena River and surrounding its delta; the Haida on Haida Gwaii; the Tlingit along the coast north of Prince Rupert; the Nisga’a along the Nass River Valley and its delta; and the Tahltan along the Stikine River and further inland. The Coastal geography is made up of fruitful oceans, vast temperate coastal rainforests, and deep fjords that quickly give way to drier mountainous climates further inland. The region houses many large rivers including the Nass, Skeena and Stikine. (taken from BCAFN website)
sign up here for your free ticket, a zoom link and any pre-work requests will be sent a few days early.
Program Host: Nicole Preissl was born and raised in Burnaby but is Sto:lo from Leq’a:mel First Nation. Her great-grandmother was Squamish from X̱wemelch’stn and great grandfather from Katzie. Nicole is an active alumna and Emily Carr community member (BDes, 2019), passing on her knowledge to others through workshops in the Aboriginal Gathering Place. Nicole has been actively involved with EartHand as an emerging skill-holder since 2018, learning while sharing: weaving, spinning, stories of place and most recently the Cultural Territories 101 program.
Thank you to BC Arts Council and EartHand Community Donations for the Support of this program.
The hillside at North China Creek Park before Means of Production Garden began, artist renderings of a future garden and initial plantings- circa 2002.
Join us virtually- as we attempt to live stream a talk and tour of the garden now with Oliver Kellhammer in NYC. Oliver is the artist who began the garden working with Environmental Youth Alliance, with support from Community Arts Council of Vancouver and the Vancouver Park Board.
Many people in the city – artists and non artists alike- can trace their learning about growing art materials and making from what is in season, and building a relationship to place back to the Means of Production Garden and the opportunities that it has provided so many artists and community groups over the last two decades.
Join us for an informal walkabout and show and tell of what is happening in the garden now!
Oliver Kellhammer is an artist, writer, and researcher, who seeks, through his botanical interventions and social art practice, to demonstrate nature’s surprising ability to recover from damage. Recent work has focused on the psychosocial effects of climate change, decontaminating polluted soil, reintroducing prehistoric trees to landscapes impacted by industrial logging, and cataloging the biodiversity of brownfields. He works as a part-time assistant professor in Sustainable Systems at Parsons The New School for Design in NYC. People in Vancouver may be familiar with some of the projects he has initiated over the years, including Cottonwood Gardens, Healing the Cut-Bridging the Gap and Means of Production Garden.
Kellhammer has lectured and given artists talks on bio-art, ecological design, urban ecology and permaculture at universities and cultural institutions throughout North America and abroad, including University of Texas (Austin), Pratt Institute, NYU, Rensselaer Polytechnic, OTIS College, University of Oregon, Emily Carr University, Smith College, University of British Columbia, Bainbridge Graduate Institute, University of Windsor, Aalto University (Finland) Tohoku University (Japan), and many others. He divides his time between New York’s Alphabet City and rural British Columbia.
Nicole Preissl has done such a great job putting together resources for those that have participated in our Cultural Territories 101 series, we didn’t want this collection of links to get lost
If you missed Nicole’s last Cultural Territories 101 conversation, or just wanted to follow up on some of the reading, here is a fantastic list of the many resources and articles she compiled in her research.
Our guest from the Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwaka’wakw nations was Valeen Jules, a queer carver, birth worker, radio producer, youth outreach worker, spoken word artist, community organizer, workshop facilitator, and filmmaker with a passion for nation building and QTBIPOC liberation. Valeen is reconnecting with their roots and continuously learning from the land and ocean. Valeen has a lot of titles that don’t pay enough, but their favourite jobs are being an aunty and being the greatest bad influence to their friends. Causing trouble and being an example of radical self-care each day is just another step towards their sovereignty for their nations and for their communities. This was a fantastic session and we hope to have Valeen back with us again!
Here is the prework that was sent out to participants
We are pleased to announce that we are launching a pilot program named Braiding Past Threads to Present Place, where eleven BIPOC, equity-seeking artists will gather ten times with skill holders from EartHand community from May to September this year to develop their own Ancestral Cloth projects and collectively identify unique challenges and opportunities in bringing the Ancestral Cloth model to different communities.
This BIPOC artist research cohort is comprised of Lex Battle, Sidi Chen, Sozi Tori Clark, Ada Dragomir, Daniela Guerrero-Rodriguez, Yasmine Haiboub, Kristin Man, Tiffany Muñoz, Xiangmei Su, Michelle Sound, and Rebecca Wang.
This group of artists all have some connections to fibre and textile art in their practices and are at different stages of their careers. By bringing them together, we hope to foster a supportive environment for them to share personal investigations into ancestral cloth traditions and provide opportunities for them to go on leading workshops for the EartHand and a wider community.
The gatherings will be offered in five themes: land-based work, fibres and plants, spinning, dying, and weaving. There will be two sessions on each theme to make up the total ten gatherings.
The community skill holders who will work with this BIPOC artist cohort are: Anna Heywood-Jones, Jen Hiebert, Cait Hurley, Meagan Innes, CZarina Lobo, and Sharon Kallis.
This project follows the “Ancestral Cloth Research Methodology” that emerged from paid online Ancestral Cloth Guilds (ACG) over 8 months of the pandemic. The inquiries of the program include
What is our relationship to the land where we live; where we access plants for colour and fibre — how do we deepen our roots and better understand/respect traditions connected to this place?
Who were our ancestors? What stories do we know about where they lived regarding textile traditions and the plants with whom they were in relation? Do those plants live here too?
What skills are needed for processing, spinning, dying and weaving; how can we build personal technical capacity to turn the plants/animals in our midst towards woven threads that our ancestors might recognize?
EartHand Gleaners Society 