Belabored Day

Somehow, I've got to get excited about fall. Right now it just looms over me like a shadow of a mountain of unfinished paperwork. I've got to get excited about writing grants. (Well, being finished the grants will feel good anyway.) I've need to anticipate the hours spent researching and reading with a mug of hot tea and a couple of low-fat shortbread cookies. (I wish shortbread was low-fat.) I've got to be excited about fall cleaning, seed saving, exercising, PAC meetings, teaching, and rain. Oh yes, there will be rain. There will be walks to school in the rain, nutritious lunches to make while it's raining. And somehow in the midst of all this stuff I've got to make some art: writing, drawing, cutting stitching, pasting, and melting in the rain.




But fall is also about getting together with friends for potlucks and cocktails... hanging out with the moms, sharing our stories of elementary school angst and preparing nutritious lunches. There will be chocolate. There will be port. There will be trips to Coco et Olive for the two bite espresso brownies to quell the back to school blues. There will be the anticipation of planning for next summer. Sigh. Oh, and there will be lunch at that new Northern Italian place: La Quercia. I'm looking forward to that. Did I mention there will be credit card debt?

Fall, get ready for your close-up. You're on.

BTW, did I tell you I had a dream about doing a photo shoot with Michelle Pfeiffer?

A Super Day at the PNE

Super pink candy floss! (Yes, she ate the whole thing.)

You know summer's over when dusk falls on one of the last days at the PNE. (Actually, I really enjoyed the agricultural exhibits, which are the roots of a good exhibition.)

Voracious water fountain!

Candy apple! (Abandoned after one bite.)

Super corn dogs!

(I had a souvlaki.)

We danced to the beat of the Super Dogs nostalgic rock show.

Super dogs!

Everyone wanted to get close-up and personal with the stars.

Peter the Great!

Super Tractors!

Super topiary!

Visible hive!

Super chick!

We came. We spent way too much money. (30$ entrance fee for two!) We left with an empty mini-donut bag and deep-fried sugar-coated memories.

Prayer Flags for UBC Farm: Lori Weidenhammer

(These flags hang on the north side of the Heritage Orchard.)

Haiku Flags by Lori Weidenhammer

Biography:
Lori Weidenhammer is a performance-based interdisciplinary artist originally from Saskatchewan. She works with a variety of media including gardening, poetry, collage, and social interventions. She is interested in art as a conversation that transforms the relationships between the artist and the viewer and creates community bonds. works with students on identifying native plants, eating locally, gardening for pollinators (i.e. honeybees), and guerilla gardening. As her persona Madame Beespeaker, Weidenhammer creates a new tradition around the folklore of "telling the bees." This is Weidenhammer's third year as a volunteer at UBC Farm.

Artist Statement:
It was at UBC Farm that I first learned the meaning of the word "phenology" from a UBCstudent named Sarah Belanger. I am passionate about teaching children to be aware of the passing of the seasons, and in my research I realized that the art of haiku writing is the perfect form of creating that awareness. Haiku is a three line form of poetry (five, seven, and five syllables) that contains a seasonal word and often depicts a defining seasonal gesture. For my prayer flags I decided to write haikus inspired by UBC Farm. Written with attention to detail, marking the time and place of its creation, haiku can be used as a form of phenological data. While not traditional prayers per se, the haikus are created from a form of devotion, being written in a state of meditation, as one strives to be fully present in the moment. While my son was at the Farm Wonders camp, I headed out to the fields to write poetry about what I saw at the farm. I chose to install my flags near Sarah Belanger's research orchard as a gesture of gratitude for the way she has taught and inspired me at UBC Farm.

Copywright 2008, Lori Weidenhammer

Prayer Flags for UBC Farm: Nicole Dextras

(These flags are installed on the north side of the Heritage Orchard)

Cultivate By Nicole Dextras


Biography:
Nicole Dextras is a graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art in Vancouver, BC Canada, where she has been a sessional teacher at ECI for the past 8 years. She has created ephemeral art installations in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. This summer, her sculpture Shelter from the Storm will be on view at the Sculpted Green Exhibit in Bellevue WA, while photographs of her ice installations: Palimpsest, will be exhibited at 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland OR. Dextras will also be creating new eco-artwork for the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver until the fall. Her artwork has been featured in Canadian and American publications and she has been the recipient of national and provincial grants. Upcoming projects include ice installations at the Klondike Institute of Art in the Yukon and with Galerie FMR in Montreal, Quebec. Dextras’ environmental art focuses on the ephemeral aspects of nature and her practice follows the seasons, with ice in the winter and organic materials in the summer.


Artist Statement:
This project was realized during an art residency in Connecticut, where the country side is strewn with old rock fences. Many of these go back to the early settler’s first cultivation of the land. The installation consisted of letter forms that were filled with soil and planted with grass seed and then left to grow. I then created other words with the letters from Cultivate and placed them in various locations. This work reflects on man’s false assumption that he can dominate and control nature. Today we are faced with whole generations who grew up on this false premise and are so disconnected to nature that they do not realize even where their food comes from. The UBC farm is a vital part of our urban landscape as it helps reconnect us to nature’s cycles and reminds us that at the end of the day, nature always has the final word.

Copywright 2008, Nicole Dextras

Prayer Flags for UBC Farm: Michelle Weeks

(These flags are hung in the the trees to the east of the Heritage Orchard.)

Prayer Flags by Michelle Weeks

Biography:
Michelle Weeks is an Art Therapist at GF Strong Rehab Centre. Although she strives to divide her time equally between work and family, she finds her life "consumed" with the raising and nurturing of her young son. She studied Textile design in the late 80's and now mostly works in mixed media when she has time. Michelle loves to work on projects that have nothing to do with making money but is always happy if they can help to raise funds for important causes.


Curator's Notes:
Some of the fabric these flags were made from was given to Weeks by a dear friend of the artist, a woman who shares an affinity for the image of clothes drying in the wind on a clothesline. Other pieces of cloth, the stitched images of the bee and the rabbit, and from past projects by Weeks. Finally, there are also remnants of vintage embroidered napkins and tablecloths from a time when the rituals and presentation around food was respected and revered.

The black crosses are symbols of an ominous presence--the threat of losing UBC farm to development, and the red cross is a symbol of safety and assistance. There is a tension here, between the beautiful remnants of the past and the anticipation of the future of farming and the safety of food itself. We are reminded that prayer starts with intention and choice. Prayer is political--a remembrance of things past that informs the choices we make for the future.

Copywright 2008, Michelle Weeks

Prayer Flags for UBC Farm: Lois Klassen

(These flags are hung in the trees just east of the Maya in Exile Garden)

Small Creatures Pray by Lois Klassen


Biography:
Lois Klassen is a visual artist who is active in community-based art and collaborations. Comforter Art-Action is her ongoing community intervention in which artists, school groups, friends and family participate in making blankets for displaced people. In Archive City: Portraits of Lulu Island (Richmond Art Gallery, July 17- August 31, 2008), she has collaborated with artists Cindy Mochizuki and Jaimie Robson, to mount an archive of memories based on interviews with the people of Richmond. Her artworks, in textiles, book arts, performance and video installation, consider ecological and humanitarian issues. She has exhibited work at the Western Front and VIVO Media Arts Centre in Vancouver; a subway station in Berlin; a costume parade at the Havana Biennial; and numerous other sites.


Artist Statement:
"Dear God, I don’t know how to pray by myself..." begins one of the first prayers in Carmen Bernos De Gasztold’s 1947 collection Prayers from the Ark. I don’t know how to pray for myself or for the UBC farm in the form of Tibetan Prayer Flags or in whatever form the Mayan’s in exile might pray for their portion of this land. Still, faced with this task to hang a set of fabric flags to raise awareness of the fragility of this place, I feel I want to let it speak on its own. I want to let the Little Bird, the Bee, the Owl, the Ladybird and the Butterfly describe their small interests in this place. For me, their small interests mimic my small interest in having a local organic market in summer; in watching a displaced community pass on ancient agrarian practices to their displaced families; in having children from my community learn to garden and to eat garden produce; in having adult students learn about sustainability by getting their hands dirty, like I did when I was young…. Like the Little Bird and Ladybird, our voices and interests are small but not so different.

(Texts - Carmen Bernos De Gasztold, Prayers from the Ark, The Creatures’ Choir, Translation– Rumer Godden, The Penguin Poets, 1979)

Copywright 2008, Lois Klassen

Prayer Flags for UBC Farm: Brenna Maag

(These flags are hung in the north side of the Children's Garden)

Prayer by Brenna Maag

Printed with seta-colour on hand-dyed reclaimed fabric (old table cloths).

Biography:
Brenna Maag is a printmaker, sculptor and mixed media artist. Her most recent work, Observation of Wonder is the culmination of four years of observation and research into her relationship with textile practices, ecology and science. She is interested in creating work that uses found materials and that investigates our relationship with nature. Over the past four years she has really started to develop an interest in growing food which is starting to inform her art practice.

Artist Statement:
These Prayer flags are intended to inspire reflection on the basic requirements needed to grow food. They are a reminder that our food does not just magically appear on shelves in grocery stores or on tables at markets but is produced by an amazingly intricate set of relationships between seed, soil, water, sun, pollinators, labourers and the land. With these flags reverence for nature’s remarkable process and thanksgiving for her abundant harvest are released on the wind with much gratitude.

Copywright 2008, Brenna Maag

Prayer Flags for UBC Farm: Julie McIntyre

(These flags are on the south face of the cement building beside the Harvest Hut)

Neighbours by Julie McIntyre

Biography:
Julie studied at the Banff Centre, Alberta in 1986 and received her BFA from Queen’s University with a major in printmaking. She has had solo shows in 18 public galleries in Canada and over 40 juried exhibitions including 18 international credits to date. This past spring/summer, Julie's Bedtime Stories and Travel Stories series both involving printmaking and quilting techniques with paper were shown together at the Evergreen Cultural Centre, Coquitlam, BC. (May 8 - July 6).

Since 1983, Julie has been involved in teaching the arts to children and adults across Canada and is currently registered with Artstarts in Schools and the Artist In Residence program for the Vancouver School Board, as well as employed as a SuperSunday Animateur with the Vancouver Art Gallery and the relief course instructor at Malaspina Printmakers Society.

Artist Statement:
My prayer flags are hand-printed on an intaglio press using multiple woodblocks with oil-based coloured inks transferred directly onto unbleached cotton fabric. Other store bought printed cotton fabrics are appliquéd and strips sewn onto the edges to finish the flags. The imagery represents native animals of the area including crows, eagle, coyote, rabbit, horse, heron and humans along with the environment, (orchard, forest, marsh, mountain and pasture). The flags predominately highlight one of 5 colours (blue, white, red, green and yellow) to represent the Thibetan elements. It is hoped that these flags honour the tradition of Thibetan prayer flags with an authentic Western vision, and will carry a heartfelt blessing to this unique and threatened urban farm.

Copywright 2008, Julie McIntyre

Prayer Flags for UBC Farm: Robin Ripley

(These flags hang from the light pole to the west of the entrance to UBC Farm.)

Robin Ripley: Biography and Artist Statement

My work often re-examinations familiar things. Gathering, sorting and reconfiguration are all methods I use to explore my materials. My process speaks to the antecedents of craft and our inherent desire to sort, organize and understand. The effects of my ongoing interest in horticulture is also evident in several of my series. Most recently "Threnody," in which I am mending damaged leaves, addresses my concerns about our interrelationship with nature.

On a recent visit to UBC farm I was heartened to meet someone hand weeding. I was reminded of the impact of the many hours I spent crouching over a row pulling weeds. This experience taught me about the ecology of a site as I observed the weeds, insects, birds & soil . Perhaps my interest in detail and the composite nature of perception began here.

In an era of increased awareness about ecology and food sustainability the possible elimination of the experiential learning provided by UBC farm would be short-sighted.

My flags are made with landscape fabric combined with vinyl and fabric appliqué. The vegetables and fruits portrayed on them are grown at UBC garden. The back of each flag lists the names of some of the varieties available for each plant.


Copywright 2008, Robin Ripley

August Harvest

Coneflowers after the rain.

Cherry tomatoes, snow peas, cornflowers, Blue-Tinge wheat, and Dragon Carrots.


Wasp architecture.

Backyard Haiku