Katie Hart Potapoff, Dundee, Scotland
Biophilium Research Leader

Katie Hart Potapoff (She/Her) engages in a non-hierarchical approach through an interdisciplinary practice, working intuitively across processes and mediums such as drawing, installation, creative writing, fibre art, printmaking, metal casting, and clay sculpting. At the centre of her practice research is an exploration of the space in-between. She sees the creative process as an on-going and reciprocal dialogue; a liminal space of possibility to exchange ideas, shift perceptions, an invitation to inhabit a space that remains undefined.

Inspired by ideas of gathering, Potapoff’s recent work with fibre is an exploration into Ursula Le Guin’s essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which borrows from anthropologist Elizabeth Fisher’s theory that the first ‘cultural tool’ was a gathering bag rather than a weapon. The organic fibre forms provide shallow depressions, pockets to hold gathered treasures. Some are empty, simply holding space, others enclose gold-leafed seeds.

Katie is currently completing her practice-led PhD at DJCAD, University of Dundee. She was recently awarded an Explore and Create grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to fund her residency on the Isle of Iona. Her website is www.katiehartpotapoff.com and she is on Instagram @hartofkatie

Ashlee Mays, Pigeon Forge, TN
Biophilium Research Leader
Director of the Museum of Infinate Outcomes

It is one thing to say something, it is another thing to write it down, and it is a completely different thing to carve, engrave, design, and print that same thing. My work focuses on these symbols that signify our human desires, and their motion. Their motion through both their mechanization of production, and the way they disseminate into banality.

Many of my pieces move from place to place, sometimes through space and sometimes through ownership. Printmaking provides the conceptual spine that supports my interdisciplinary practice. My art pieces are almost always interactive, asking the viewer to physically place themselves in this portrait of connectivity.

Nowadays we do not rely on movable type to get us our daily news. It seems that we no longer rely on the accuracy of the artist’s hand to illustrate scientific information. Printmaking mobilized the first information revolution. We are experiencing another one, and this one did not appear out of thin air. I am looking to expose the seemingly invisible lines that connect our day to day experiences with a larger mechanism. It appears to me that Botanists are sometimes doing the same thing.

The parking ticket you got last week, the souvenir from your last vacation- these artifacts all have a complex history. They quietly shape an experience that you are actively participating in.

Annie Temmink, Charlottesville, VA

I am an artist deeply connected to the theme of consciousness, with a particular interest in inner archetypes and how we set our true nature free. My work often involves intricate headwear and dance or creatures constructed from refuse. In my current practice, I am eager to engage with those who have varied knowledge about the plant world to expand my own potential to work with plant matter and its wisdom, and how to use it to expand human consciousness and conscientiousness of materials. I am thrilled to read about this program and am wholeheartedly committed to joining and using what I may learn to enrich my community.

Danielle Petti, Waterloo, Ontario

The harsh truths of our effect on climate and biodiversity evoked fear and triggered a desire to grasp the earth and create with it, to make sense of what it means to be human. Over the last three years, I have explored these themes through research, foraging for colour, and painting. Noticing that natural materials provide a wide range of colour and complexity was my initial step into making artwork sustainably and mindfully; two features that are important as we navigate an environmental and societal precipice. Slow contemplative processes (making pigments from rocks) quiets the mind and makes the process itself salient. I am informed by nature and my colour palette is limited to the earth within reach, forcing me to use composition and material more creatively. I try to make viewers feel the same interconnectedness I feel when spreading dirt across canvas with my hands. I am interested in the intersection between art and science; how research in geology and ecology informs my artwork and allows me to approach various projects through a scientific lens. Part of my work is driven by motherhood and generational knowledge; how can we unearth lost memories of a once-known balance between human and environment? This is especially noticeable in my figurative works. My abstract earth pigment landscapes on the other hand are created with the intention of evoking contemplativeness and wonder for the natural colours of the planet.

Monika Kinner,
Saskatoon / Jackfish Lake (both in Treaty Six Territory)

Samantha Schwartz
Brooklyn, NY

I am a Mexican-American interdisciplinary artist, and like all organic structures, I am in constant flux. I envision futures that are borderless, shape-shifting, river-like, matriarchal, anti-cartesian, fertile for chistes (jokes), warm communities (and climate), scientific, healing and imaginative.

Have you ever seen ash fall from an active volcano? It is like sugarcane burning for harvest.

There are tensions between harm and harvest, sweet and sweat, earth and birth. I hold these tensions close to my heart. Volcanos and maize are recurring motifs that I continue to explore as an artist. The volcanos swell with lava, bright red craters a reminder of the potential for catastrophic eruption. Corn grows across borders in the Americas, becoming symbols of migration, labor, nourishment, and abundance.
I use industrial materials such as plaster, concrete, and electricity, in harmony with corn husk, water, palo santo, shells, and bacteria. I want to swim to the edge of borders, climate disaster, and linger in our strangeness. My work is umbilically connected to themes of female desire, sensuality, spirit, and a striving for care.

Doris Lamontagne, Ottawa, Canada

My art reflects on the interactions between beings in adjacent environments. It highlights the contrasts and similarities between beings and exposes the dynamism that emerges from these relationships. Whether ecological, geographical or cultural, my art makes an attempt to illustrate the dynamic nature of these worlds: attraction versus opposition.

In this series of five prints, I explore “panpsychism” which entails that all things have a mind or a mind-like quality. All things share these mental qualities: feeling, inner life, subjectivity, and perception. All things experience pleasure, pain, visual or auditory sensations, etc.

In my research, I investigate the possibility that one destiny of a being affects the destiny of all beings. Call it ecology, Gaia or holistic, everything is connected: the equilibrium between the forces of attraction and opposition keeps us breathing.

Kenzie Adair, Tulsa, OK

My most recent body of work is informed by Ecofeminist philosophy, which links the commodification of the natural world with historical subjection of women and minorities. I am interested in the physical and intellectual separation of the body from its native environment that might result from our reliance on unsustainable resources, the pervasiveness of synthetic materials, and increasing investment in digital spaces. The dissonant belief that we are independent from other living organisms is necessary to continue these practices that serve human life at the expense of the environment. In this work I layer synthetic materials and digital imagery with abstract bodily forms and organic elements to create a relative space, free from imposed hierarchy. In this space, relationships between the body, its environment, and outside influences are revealed for new consideration.

The formal components of my work include various representations of nature and the body, which range from realistic to highly-simplified icons. I start by layering patterns made of sewn or digitally printed fabric. Minimally processed organic elements, such as dried flowers and raw wool, are crossed with industrial materials, such as epoxy resin and polymer fabric, and applied to the surface. Abstract figurative shapes derived from life drawings break up patterns and establish the dominant composition of each piece. The resulting works are medium-scale paintings dense with patterns of botanical and figurative forms, finished with contrasting tactile surface applications

Bailey Fritz, Maryville Tennessee

I create intentionally decorated functional pottery. After studying sustainability as an undergraduate, I felt inspired to create pieces inspired by flora, fauna, and symbols from my upbringing as a queer person in the south. Ceramics have a certain permanence that single use objects do not - utility, longevity and reuse are vital to combatting our ecological crisis. With the loss of species across the globe, I am drawn to display and preserve the keystone and threatened species of Appalachia. Similarly, I am interested in preserving cultural symbols of craft and domestic objects from the south. In the same way that many species are overlooked, queer culture and people in the south are often invisible, yet vital. The extent of my arts education has been through craft school work-exchanges, community classes, and hours spent practicing in my local community studio; my practice is fueled by community, ecology, and craft as a whole.

Alyssa Ellis, Calgary, Alberta
Expedition Leader

Ellis is an Albertan born artist who has an ongoing love affair with botanical poison. She studies, documents and seeks out poisonous plants that can be found growing naturally within the province of Alberta. Through the process of her work, she studies the relationships between plants and people, and the dependence one has on the other.

“I’m in a constant ongoing, revolving and dissolving love affair with botanical life. We work together, play together and by all means narrate together in order to further develop our complicated relationship. While multidisciplinary in nature, the experimental research of our stories fluctuates between textiles, drawing, performance and installation. Despite always connecting back to the idea of plant storytelling, I strive to do nothing more than to unearth stories that delve into nature’s darker side.”

Linda Staiger, Palmyra, VA

My work as an artist focuses on the connection between humans and nature, and more specifically the integration we can feel as living beings when we are in nature.  My participation in the outdoors includes kayaking, backpacking and gardening.  In my work, I try to capture those moments of beauty and mystery that I feel.  Because of my training, I am grounded in physical form and,  therefore, my work is in the genre of realism, attempting to direct the viewer’s attention onto the natural world in which they might be observing or participating in.    

My undergraduate work was in physiologic psychology, which focuses on the relationships between living structure and mechanisms and the sensing, feeling, actions and interactions of beings.  

I use a number of media, including print-making, drawing and ceramics, but primarily work as an oil painter. 

 Laura Ahola, Pocatello, ID

I pay close attention to the world around me, from politics to science, so that I am not only
prepared to respond in my work to issues but so I can differentiate in what demands my attention as an artist. Currently, I am responding to climate crisis. Extensive reading into geology, plant physiology, algae, history and climate science inform my body of work. Merging the ambiguous with scientific data results in layers upon layers of paint, metaphors and imagery in my work.

I am planning to be on sabbatical from my current teaching position at Idaho State University next Fall 2021. As part of my sabbatical, I have reached out to collaborate with two algae
biologists. Both scientists have enthusiastically agreed to guide me through their research and work with me, my goal is to use my painting as a way to communicate their research. I have studied botany and plant physiology on my own and this research has been incorporated into my work.

Sarah Nguyen, Columbia MO

Storytelling is central to this series of cut-fiber panels. The blade-cut, intricate compositions are mostly landscape based and feature symbolic motifs—flora, fauna, and an ever-­changing moon—to elicit childhood memories of myths, fables, and folklore. The large sheets are hung from the ceiling and away from the wall so that directed light casts strong shadows behind them, a nod to the flickering, fire-lit rituals of our paleo ancestors. Fiber cutting is a means of making drawing three- dimensional for the lacy panels entice us with their complexity and content.

Katie Hart Potapoff

Katie Hart Potapoff (She/Her) engages in a non-hierarchical approach through an interdisciplinary practice, working intuitively across processes and mediums such as drawing, installation, creative writing, fibre art, printmaking, metal casting, and clay sculpting. At the centre of her practice research is an exploration of the space in-between. She sees the creative process as an on-going and reciprocal dialogue; a liminal space of possibility to exchange ideas, shift perceptions, an invitation to inhabit a space that remains undefined.

Inspired by ideas of gathering, Potapoff’s recent work with fibre is an exploration into Ursula Le Guin’s essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which borrows from anthropologist Elizabeth Fisher’s theory that the first ‘cultural tool’ was a gathering bag rather than a weapon. The organic fibre forms provide shallow depressions, pockets to hold gathered treasures. Some are empty, simply holding space, others enclose gold-leafed seeds.

Katie is currently completing her practice-led PhD at DJCAD, University of Dundee. She was recently awarded an Explore and Create grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to fund her residency on the Isle of Iona. Her website is www.katiehartpotapoff.com and she is on Instagram @hartofkatie

Stephanie Hill, Wakefield, QC 

I grew up in Cornwall Ontario Canada, spending summers at our cottage on the Saint Lawrence River surrounded by extended family and miles of life filled wetlands. It’s no coincidence that much of my work focuses on family and relationships, both with others and with the natural world. I graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) and was privileged to partake in the college’s off-campus program in Florence, Italy. Inspired by Medieval and early Renaissance masters, my work uses symbols and mythologies to reveal a powerful and rich story. Painting is an emotional and intuitive experience for me and I often portray water, trees, flowers, animals, and insects to create a world where dreams, unconscious desires, and the divine come into play. I tend to work with oil on linen, yet also enjoy drawing on paper with watercolours, oil pastel, and pen and ink. I see my art as a deep expression of aliveness and transformation. I hope to bring those who encounter my work on a compelling and delightful journey of self-discovery that reveals the ever-changing dance between the world around us and the one within. I currently live in Wakefield, Quebec on the Gatineau River.

Jenna Marks, Dartmouth NS

Having grown up in Nova Scotia, a region that is no more than an hour from the ocean in any direction, it is no surprise that Jenna Marks’ animated films are heavily influenced by her deep-rooted connection to water and nature. Her home’s rural seclusion, yet diverse social economy, gives her a vulnerable, honest and unique voice in Canadian cinema. Jenna’s influence from her time as a team Canada sprint canoeist is also present through imagery of liquid, her connection to her body and inner dialogue that comes from hours and hours of solitary training. No matter where she is in the world, Jenna finds a sense of “home” in the meditative touch of water beneath her.

Isabel Winson-Sagan,
Santa Fe, New Mexico

A lot of my work lately has used the fleeting nature and movement of natural phenomena, such as water. I’m very influenced by the land art of the Southwestern United States, and have done several installation pieces that were designed to degrade. I also use water and ink to print unique abstract art in a process called “suminagashi.”

Meggan Joy Trobaugh, Seattle

Meggan Joy (Trobaugh) is an emerging exhibiting fine art photographer and digital collage artist, who is currently located in Seattle, Washington. For the last few years, her work has focused on digitally combined flora and fauna, as well as various found objects, in a modern interpretation of a 16th-century painting technique by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The finished work being a woven web of details, isolated on a black background - forcing the viewer to soak up the shape vs. the familiar elements that created it, or vice versa, depending on how close they look. The work reveals a subject that could never exist in the real world, made of thousands of her own photographs. Sometimes taking up to two years to complete, the finished works have been well received internationally, and Meggan was awarded an Honorable Mention by the International Photography Awards for her winning entry, "Warmth" which was completed in 2016.

Alyssa Ellis, Calgary, Alberta
Expedition Leader

Ellis is an Albertan born artist who has an ongoing love affair with botanical poison. She studies, documents and seeks out poisonous plants that can be found growing naturally within the province of Alberta. Through the process of her work, she studies the relationships between plants and people, and the dependence one has on the other.

“I’m in a constant ongoing, revolving and dissolving love affair with botanical life. We work together, play together and by all means narrate together in order to further develop our complicated relationship. While multidisciplinary in nature, the experimental research of our stories fluctuates between textiles, drawing, performance and installation. Despite always connecting back to the idea of plant storytelling, I strive to do nothing more than to unearth stories that delve into nature’s darker side.”

Stephanie Andrews, Berkeley California

Stephanie Andrews is a multimedia artist, experience designer, and instructor at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts.  She often creates art games, tactile spaces, and playful participatory installations that respond to emergent, speculative, and contemporary issues with levity and sentimentality.  Stephanie brings to her art practice an interdisciplinary background spanning software engineering, interaction design, public policy, social work, and community organizing.

Hidenori Ishii, Astoria, NY

My work investigates the paradoxical dichotomy of civilization and nature through the interdependence which lies in between. It reveals a tenuous axis on which the two worlds serendipitously coexist, merging past and future onto a single plane.

Abstractions in painting and installation invert binaries of nature and camouflage, disaster and neglect, artificiality and object. They are characterized by such negations; images materialize from obstruction and walls eradicate structure. Just as the visible and concealed fluctuate, the work wavers from completion - as though it is still growing, eroding, or waiting for the reflection to break on the water’s surface.

Combining mechanical and gestural modes of image-making, I reproduce control and circumstance in a mimicry of cause/effect in nature. Built with layers of alternating transparency, the paintings take on a quality much like reflective glass, at once materializing interior and exterior. In that likeness, I present the unconscious as physical reality. Flowers define space and atmosphere, inducing the haze of a dream or psychosis. Vacant mirrors replace landscapes as contradictions of the sublime and superficial.

The narrative of my work exists within a margin of disbelief, reminding viewer that fiction diverges from fact. My earlier project, IcePlants, was a direct response to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown, and considered how beauty might persist as landscape turns mutant. The possibilities presented in my work suggest how we might connect political ecology and social consciousness to face our current climactic crisis.

Ana Barrera Garcia, Madrid, Spain

My life as an artist began when I was a child and my parents applied for me in a weekend art school in a small village Northern Spain. My inspiration was drawn to a close when I moved to Madrid to get my Agricultural Engineer degree.
I got a permanent job position and I decided to come back to my art. I chose painting with watercolor for the first time and I fell in love with this medium. Since then we are having a faithful relationship.

Discovering how much my life changes with art, I founded an art atelier at a Single Mothers Residency in Madrid where as a volunteer I shared my art with children having particular needs. In that moment I realized that art therapy exists and works. Then, I follow the process of being a Gestalt art therapist with the goal of consciousness expansion through the use of creative and artistic resources.

My life is flowing with creating works of watercolors, not only in painting, but designing coin purses and pencil cases as well. Creating emotions interpretations of art from themes of my life experiences, everyday items, travels, and nature, I am in constant need of exploration with color, shapes, and atmospheres. I enjoy sharing my knowledge and my personal excitement of the arts through teaching and conducting art therapy sessions

Meggan Joy Trobaugh, Seattle

Meggan Joy (Trobaugh) is an emerging exhibiting fine art photographer and digital collage artist, who is currently located in Seattle, Washington. For the last few years, her work has focused on digitally combined flora and fauna, as well as various found objects, in a modern interpretation of a 16th-century painting technique by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The finished work being a woven web of details, isolated on a black background - forcing the viewer to soak up the shape vs. the familiar elements that created it, or vice versa, depending on how close they look. The work reveals a subject that could never exist in the real world, made of thousands of her own photographs. Sometimes taking up to two years to complete, the finished works have been well received internationally, and Meggan was awarded an Honorable Mention by the International Photography Awards for her winning entry, "Warmth" which was completed in 2016.

Mary Abma, Bright’s Grove, ON

My work is rooted in the land. For years, my practice has led me to combine my artistic expression with knowledge gained through scientific exploration. Botany has been at the forefront of my artistic practice for a decade, now. I work on comprehensive projects that explore the interconnections between our natural environment and our lives. Through my works, I have learned the basics of botany, developed a passion for plants—especially trees, and have become dedicated to creating series of artworks that explore the impact of our actions and inattention which contributes to the destruction of our forest ecosystems.

I recently completed a four-year project through which I mourned the loss of our native ash trees due to the emerald ash borer. I am currently looking for inspiration for my next major project. My works always involve research and collaboration with scientists and other professionals whose insights give deeper meaning to my work. The “Germinate” residency is exactly what I need right now. Exploring the natural environment in Gatineau, and opportunities to speak with other professionals about the botany of the area will certainly influence the direction that my work will take over the next several years.

Rachel Holmes, London, UK

I am a british mixed media artist working with digital and phyiscal media, and performance. I am interested in the “world of the dead” as the site of possibility mediated through dream, and odysseys of migration between the world of living and the dead. The “dead” or the possibility they represent, appear in my artworks in the motif of dolls, and more recently plants. Part of my practice involves excavating a  dream language by developing a theory of picture, illusion and ritualistic performance in the context of feedback from the natural environment.
I have been awarded a scholarship for my PhD project at Kingston School of Art, engaging in this field of research in my project “The Body Without Identity”.
In taking part in this research program I would like to develop my knowledge of botany and plants, particularly in how it can relate to my practice.

Mika Aono, Eugene, OR d.com/home.html

I have been an obsessive collector since I was a child; shiny acorns, smooth pebbles and dragon fly wings... Still today, every time I see a rusty nail on the ground, I put it in my pocket. I dream of what it was before and what it might become and re-membered them. To "remember" is to put back together, to make whole. I'm interested in giving broken, cast-aside things new life. I want to find meaning in the meaningless. This compulsion seems a pointless gesture, yet it is precisely this "odd" behavior that reveals who we are. I explore the humanness of absurdity and futility through laborious processes, finding value in failure.
Seems like slowly but surely, humans and nature are becoming things that exist at opposite ends. When? How? My idiosyncratic actions are a way for me to genuinely pay attention to my surroundings and cope with the sadness I experience.

I have made work that was inspired by fractal structures. I imagined the patterns being one of the keys to solving the mystery of inter-connectedness among all living things.  I cherish serendipity. In ever changing, shifting landscapes, I'm seeking a way to exist with nature in equilibrium.

2019

Field Expeditions

Ellis is an Albertan born artist who has an ongoing love affair with botanical poison. She studies, documents and seeks out poisonous plants that can be found growing naturally within the province of Alberta. Through the process of her work, she studies the relationships between plants and people, and the dependence one has on the other.

“I’m in a constant ongoing, revolving and dissolving love affair with botanical life. We work together, play together and by all means narrate together in order to further develop our complicated relationship. While multidisciplinary in nature, the experimental research of our stories fluctuates between textiles, drawing, performance and installation. Despite always connecting back to the idea of plant storytelling, I strive to do nothing more than to unearth stories that delve into nature’s darker side.”

Naomi Renouf, Channel Islands

As a textile artist and painter, I am constantly inspired and awed by the beauty of the natural environment. Although most of my work is a reflection of the coast, the countryside and the flora of my native island, I have travelled widely and produced work representing many different locations.

My work is an expression of my emotional reaction to what I see in a world we should be taking better care of. I strive to produce something which is more than simply a visual representation of the subject matter. I take photographs as a reference but usually rely mostly on the images inside my head and by utilising these, the tactile and visual qualities of the materials I use and also the unpredictable things that occur during the process, I can interact with the work in a spontaneous way.

I sometimes work with textiles alone and occasionally I just use paint but at other times I combine the two. Painting has influenced the way in which I approach textiles and conversely the way that I paint has been affected by my use of textiles. For me, the tactile qualities of textiles can often say more than paint alone.

Laara Cerman, British Columbia

Laara Cerman’s work explores the intersection of art, science, history and the themes of impermanence, a return to nature, and the fragility of life. She creates her photographs by capturing multiple digital images and then pieces them together in postproduction, a skill she has mastered through working as a freelance retoucher in the commercial photography industry. 

Currently, she creates her digital images using a regular, flatbed, office scanner rather than a sophisticated camera. Paradoxically, the crude scanner produces images that appear hyper-real in part due to their macro and larger-than-life clarity that emphasizes extreme detail one would normally have difficulty seeing with the naked eye. The images have an extremely narrow depth of field and low luminosity, an affect that cannot be achieved directly through studio lighting or with a camera. This makes the subject appear floating in a black void of space, creating a feeling akin to a momento mori.

She is currently focused on documenting the wild plants of British Columbia for one of her more recent series Codex Pacificus.

Jo Tito, New Zealand

I am a full time Māori artist, indigenous to Aotearoa, NZ. My creativity is a collaboration with nature and my ongoing project Earth - Water - Light - Stone is a merging of nature with photography, paint, words and digital media to share stories of connection that speak for the environment and for humanity.

My current projects include: Walking in Circles - a creative collaboration with Inuit artist
and film-maker Stacey Aglok and an ongoing relationship with Intercreate - an organisation that nurtures art, science, technology collaborations with a focus on environmental issues.

I am also a passionate gardener! I document the growing of my garden through words and photography which you can see on Instagram or Facebook . My garden is my spiritual space for healing, reflection, learning and creativity - everything is there. Many of my ideas and learning come from growing my garden and contemplating with nature. I
also have a small nursery at home where I grown native trees for regeneration and many medicinal plants both native to Aotearoa and of other lands. I value my Taranaki and Te Arawa ancestral roots. I am inspired by the lives that my ancestors lived and the inspiration that they lived with nature. They had such a respect for nature that is intrinsic and deeply embedded in our art forms and language. Our language is so beautiful, it all connects back to nature and so I draw on this knowledge in my quest to create art that speaks for the environment.

Rocio Graham, Calgary

I have always been connected to the land and I find comfort working with nature in my art practice; this connects me to home and defines my identity. Inspired by artists like Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jan De Heem, and other Dutch still life masters; the garden is my muse.

Most of my work starts the moment I plant a seed and continues as I nurture it through the stages of maturity, flowering, and decay when it becomes soil for future plants. Mine is a labour intensive process that allows me to explore the landscape as a physical and mystical space where time and nature become my creative allies. I use organic materials that are methodically planned, nursed, and harvested according their aesthetic qualities for later use in my compositions; similar to how a painter uses pigments to create. From seed to harvest, to the creation of a still life, a year can pass. Allowing time to pass keeps me attuned to nature’s cycles. I have found many parallels between the landscape and my inner garden; an inner landscape that shifts and ebbs with the seasons.

Kyo Maclear, Toronto

In 2017, I published a hybrid memoir titled Birds Art Life (Doubleday Canada.) My challenge in writing this book was to focus on the small, unspectacular and the non-pristine. I wanted to test the boundaries of nature writing—what is it? Who does it? Who is it for? For example, one constraint I set myself was to do all my nature trekking within the boundaries of Toronto. I was hoping to tap people into the understory of the city. The invisible, all that we cannot see, is very attractive to me. I’ve come to realize we grasp only a tiny fraction of what’s actually going on around us—and this is to our, and the living world’s, great detriment. It’s not an exaggeration to say we are disastrously disconnected from the more-than-human living world.

The book I ended up writing is structured around excursions with a unique nature guide—a musician named Jack Breakfast. Over the next 12 months, as I accompanied him through seasonal shifts and migrations, on a shambly odyssey around the city, through lousy weather and near-accidents, I began to learn the names of the birds I saw. For the first time in my life, I felt myself tangibly connected to the elements and the wild side of the city. I began to wonder if the core lessons of birding could be applied to other aspects of life.

Writing the book made me think more deeply about friendship and the possibility of taking our time and giving our time freely to each other. It also made me think about ‘bird time’ as opposed to ‘survival time’. And by ‘survival time’ I mean the time of ‘not stopping,’ of ceaseless agitation in servicing one’s precarious occupation. ‘Self-optimising’… ‘Faster better stronger’… I think what risks becoming completely trivial and almost incommunicable amid the haste of our historical moment is the feeling that arises when we pass time together—say, for instance, in a “Parliament of Owls”. I am interested in reflecting on what happens when we become bounded together, temporally, in a community, when we come to love and fight for things together that are other than or greater than our individual selves and self-interests.

Jane Tingley, Kitchener, ON

At its core – my installation practice is as concerned with traditional sculptural questions such as the coherence of materiality and the arrangement of objects in space, as it is with the viewers’ embodied experience as they engage with the art work. I am interested in creating environments that function metaphorically, in discovering new ways of addressing embodiment, and thinking about how the body can have meaningful interactions with technological environments or systems. I use materiality and the physicality of the installation as a metaphor, and create sensory rich environments that allow for meaning to emerge through experience and exploration.

Alongside my Installation practice I have also work collaboratively on different projects
including wearable robotics, gestural games, and my recent Internet of Things inspired
distributed sculpture. These new works draw on expertise from multiple disciplines in an effort to create aesthetic experiences that push the boundaries of interactivity and playfulness, and offer an experience to the viewer that is accessible both intellectually and technologically.

Beyond my studio practice I also curate exhibitions. My curatorial interests lie in showing work that critically engages with technology and its intersection with human experience. I am equally interested in interdisciplinary collaboration as impetus for critical creation, as I am in the aesthetics of interaction between the art object and the participant/viewer.

2018

Field Expeditions

Based in the Central Victorian Highlands, Australia, and closely surrounded by National Park, Michelle Stewart is deeply engaged in the bushland that inspires her practice. Working with glass since 2008, she is working towards a minimal impact with her practice through experimentation with material. Michelle uses recycled materials and particularly glass to explore the theme of the natural landscape and the premise of human impact within it. Through casting and pâte de verre techniques she explores delicate interrelations between species. Primarily working in the jewellery field she also presents installation, small sculpture and environmental art.

Victoria Smith, MA

I find inspiration for my Kirigami designs from biological and ethnographic patterns and many designs combine the two.  As a scientist, educator and artist, I am grounded in process and interested in creating artwork based on a collective, immersive experience.  How do I tell visual stories that engage others and make them care about a place or life they have never been to or experienced?
In museums, objects and tangible experiences are used to engage and establish emotional connections with visitors to inspire, teach and entertain.  We protect what we care about.   My initial project idea is to create a visual story of life in different ecological niches and the human relationship between them using traditional paper cutting and Kirigami techniques.  I’ll document observations, biota, and patterns while in the field using illustration and photography, then use them to create a collection of paper cuttings.  Through pattern and style, the goal for each piece (or collection) will invoke a reaction that stimulates conversation.  Based on the experience, I realize my project may change, but that is also part of the creative process!

Claire LaFontaine, Milwuakee

My current body of work consists of a series of monoprints, made using collected plant material, that are named after the GPS coordinates of where each plant was found. Plant specimens are collected on walks through natural areas intertwined with the urban landscape of Milwaukee, WI. I put these plant materials through a press, squishing them onto a sheet of Plexiglas which I have inked up with black oil based ink using a brayer. This destructive process transfers the impression of the plant into the ink while simultaneously destroying the plant and releasing its fluids. After removing most of the plant material, the impression in the ink that remains is run through the press again, this time transferring the image to paper. The result is a visual landscape in ink. My intent is to document my experiences of being in nature while also creating work that inspires further investigation and observation of these organic forms. There is an abstraction that occurs due to the process that creates depth in each piece in unsuspecting ways, which for me references the many layers of plant matter that exist in natural areas. This series of prints is about rediscovering one’s place within the ecosystem and recognizing the importance of green spaces in our everyday lives.

Blake Evans, Zurich Ontario

From a young age I’ve always appreciated being on the land, foraging, climbing trees and walking along the shore of Lake Huron, inspired by the myriad of plant life special to each environment. This has influenced my strong desire to explore the natural world physically and spiritually shaping my artwork to be reflective of my concerns for the health of the land and water. Currently I am a Youth Committee member, and Media coordinator for the Neechee Studio collective in Thunder Bay which allows me to connect with a wide range of Indigenous and non-indigenous artists who also acknowledge the realm of flora and fauna.

Colour choice is important for me as I find communication can be exchanged through this universal element.

My current sculptural works using ceramics and crocheted plarn (plastic yarn) highlight species of marine birds as they connect to the colonial history of the exploitation of resources on this continent. I have also used paper molding to create multiples to speak about my concern of the logging industry’s effect on the woodlands.   My drawing tool is mainly chalk pastel, and my work portrays the spirit of corn and the evolving agricultural practices used to cultivate the plant for the human diet. Insect life on my drawings is represented with an element of watercolour painted collaged pieces. I focus a lot of energy on the balance and movement within the compositions of my work, which I borrow from my yoga practices. I am passionate to continue to learn from plants as they benefit human health and embody their teachings in my artwork.

Amanda Besl, Buffalo NY

My most recent work depicts the paradox of preservation and suffocation. Remnants of botanical debris are visible through the translucent ‘skin’ of the plastic that contains them. These culled, severed bodies appear suspended in an ambiguous matrix, possessing a quasi-fetishistic nature while simultaneously suggesting some darker, possibly arbitrary form of curation. This hierarchy of selection – an essential activity in gardening – I liken to America’s current turbulent political climate, in which distinctions become lost in confusion and distortion. Nothing held in stasis can exist indefinitely without evolution or stagnation. The title of the series “I will try not to breathe” references an R.E.M. song. This group’s use of music as a platform for social change was influential while creating this body of work.

My process began with the extraction of my garden’s botanical flotsam and its placement into translucent plastic yard bags. I meticulously photographed these materials as subjects for my oil paintings. The resulting suggested movement straddles both hyperrealism and abstraction. I have also experimented with a highly glossed surface finish, which I intend as both a reference to the filmy substrate holding the actual clippings and as a further seduction. In my earlier painting and drawings, I explored the history of the plants I grew. I referenced the language of flowers and experienced equal amounts of excitement and aggravation while drawing these plants from life, which would move over the course of the drawing process. I interjected myself into these works by wrapping my subjects in the disembodied tangles of my hair from my hairbrush. This element contributes to the simultaneous experience of attraction and repulsion in my work.

Hua Jin, Montreal

I am interested in nature, in its constant changing quality, the circle of life and death.
I started to contemplate the idea of change, of the passing time and the evanescent quality
of existence, following the death of my parents.

And as a Chinese-Canadian artist, the influence of oriental aesthetic, religion and
philosophy inherently rooted in my way of thinking and my development as an artist.
My works are inspired by traditional Chinese literati ink paintings. Chinese artist
contemplate the philosophical ideas of existence through the subject of nature, the
landscape of mountains and water. My works aim to emphasize more the spiritual side of
the landscape rather then representing an actual scenery.

Through the lens of Buddhism and Zen philosophy, through the subject of nature, I use
photography, video, installation and drawing to contemplate a worldview that embraces
the concept of transience: of time, of life and of material things. I aim to gain insights into
life, death and of the nature of being through the study of nature, of its rhythm and its
inclusiveness.

Laura Lewis, Austin TX

My illustration work aims to capture a glimpse into other worlds primarily using plants and color to guide a piece’s specific mood. I believe plants can be directly correlated with emotion and I explore that in each of my works. Research and scientific accuracy are the foundations with which I like to build environments from, mostly from observing the nature we have here on this Earth. I find it endlessly fascinating, and I am reaching a chapter of my life where I aim to learn as much as I can about botany so I can better understand the subjects I draw and the worlds I am creating. One of the most vital underlying messages in all my work remain rooted in environmental preservation.

Sonja Hébert, Vancouver

The cycle of life, death and rebirth as impermanence plays a primary role in my work both thematically as well as in my approach to my practice of drawing and installation. It has led to my questioning the conundrums related to how and why I make things in a consumer society. 
I am convinced that a healthier relationship to the plant communities will lead to a better relationship with each other and all life.  This philosophy has become pivotal in my life as I build a language in my art practice centered on human connection to land and more specifically to plants. It has become an undercurrent on which I build my themes.
For several years, I have been striving to build a deeper relationship to the plants in my immediate surroundings through wild foraging and through my installation works using roots and grasses. Plants have provided humans with food, medicine, shelter, and building materials for boats, wagons and chariots. Through my research, I’ve come to understand plants as the basis of civilizations through massive agriculture of cereal crops like rye, wheat and corn.  
Gathering this understanding through science is a main springboard of inspiration for both my drawings as well as my installations. I strive to render poetically what I learn through science. I see art as having the capacity to safeguard against the over fragmentation of knowledge often experienced through the scientific lens by highlighting the interdependence of all life. 

I am a visual artist working in lens-based media, primarily photography. The central themes of my work are place and cultural identity in contemporary life. Engagement with place through my studio work allows me to forge meaningful connections to my community.

Narrative, transience and transformation are inherent in the medium and processes of photography and over time they have manifested in my work as recurring themes. My formal strategies can change from project to project. Sometimes I employ documentary methodologies and use representational techniques. In other instances I use ambiguous, altered and layered imagery to evoke metaphysical realms.

The recent body of work that I have attached as part of the application for the Biophilia : Germinate residency is Garlands, a suite of large-scale prints and an HD video piece. These baroque elaborations connect with deeper and enduring aspects of human experience through beauty and continuity. In this series of pigment inkjet prints on Belgian linen, blooming plants are metaphors for cycles of death and regeneration as well as poignant remnants of human presence. Many of the flowers I use as source material are bulb-forming lilies acquired as pass-along plants. Their cultivation provides me with a sense of place and connection with the past.

Amber Bond, Toronto

Many of my visual artworks concentrate on the human body. They examine its physical and figurative processes. Illustrating the body as having been anatomized enables me to dissect how it is that these parts are treated allegorically. For instance, although the human heart is simply an organ intended to circulate blood through the body, it is often romanticized as a vessel for everything kept secret or held dear. I attempt to examine this metaphor with clear-cut visuals of electric hearts and tactile representations of open heart surgery, using hand-sewn felt, wire and plastic. 

Recently, my artistic processes have involved a rediscovery of my roots as a Métis individual. This has consisted of many endeavours: learning and making use of traditional crafts, such as beadwork; creating acrylic paintings to communicate aspects of my personal journey; and the formation of my sustainable business, Treecycle Toronto, which operates on an indigenous philosophy of conservation, turning previously-loved Christmas trees and fallen branches into housewares, artwork, jewelry, and cosmetics. As such, the prospect of engaging further with nature as a means to enhance my artistic practice intrigues me greatly.

Guylaine Couture, Montreal

The artist juggles subjects that question us: cancer, ecology, mourning and landscape. These themes ask for introspection. She delicately drafts the message, analyzes the meaning of words and images as well as developing the final form of the book with accuracy. The process requires time, reflection and several models in order for the desired result to be achieved.

Using old books, collage, drawing and manual printing, she tries to give a new direction,  a second life to all kinds of material. Each book attempts to create a fusion between the contents and the container while questioning the manipulation of the object by the reader.
To create a book allows for an exchange with the reader both by the text and by the manipulation of it. Slowly browsing one of her artists’ books is an experience, a conversation,  a relationship with her and her concerns.

Tracie Mae Stewart, BC

My work as an Arborist, project designer, IPM, and food grower informs my art making practice. Questions arise daily over food security, pollinator collapse, climate/ Ocean change and the connectivity of all, fueling my efforts to raise social awareness. My role of guardian, caretaker and educator, as well as artist; experiencing the fullness of being immersed in the environment leads me to create multi sensory socially engaged installations. These diverse art practices enable me to engage various publics and communities educate and invite engagement. These questions fuel my art practice. Answers arise through art.