Handmade Deckle to Make Handmade Paper

Materials Required:

  • Stretcher bars (any two sizes or just one size to make square paper. The bigger the stretchers bars the bigger your final paper will be.) If two sizes are chosen you will need four bars of each size to create two frames.
    • Alternative: if you cannot get stretcher bars, two identical old frames will work as well without the glass
  • Mallet
  • Staple gun
  • Fiberglass or window screening material
  • Weatherstrip foam tape

All the materials above can be purchased at Canadian Tire or Home Depot with the exception of stretcher bars.

Stretcher Bars Continue reading “Handmade Deckle to Make Handmade Paper”

Farmers Market – Organic Produce

The farmers market at The University of Guelph sells fresh, local, organic produce that was grown either on campus or sourced from local fruit farms. By visiting the farmers market I was able to talk to some knowledgeable students and representatives from the HORT 3510 Vegetable Production course, who are also the ones that created this campus farmers market along with the Guelph Center for Urban Organic Farming. After speaking with a couple of representatives, not only did it inspire my final assignment but I learned the benefits of certain produce and what makes it organic.

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I asked Pat (a student and representative of the farmers market) several questions:

What makes vegetables organic? It is certified and it must be certified in Canada in order for it to be called organic. It is not about the food you provide to people but more about the way you grow the food. Organic is about knowing what is happening to the land and having a general knowledge of it. To be organic you can’t use synthetic sprays, for the most part you can’t use organic sprays either and you must have a lot of care for the soil. If you go to a conventional farm you will notice that the soil they use are terrible quality, the top soil layer is super thin, has no nutrient content, no bacteria, and no fungus.

If you go to the farm that grows the organic produce at the University, you will notice that they have a huge top soil layer, have a whole bunch of organic matter in the soil because they are putting back the organic matter in to the soil, have a huge cross section of different bacteria and funguses in order to have a proper environment.

For organic farmers it is about putting back in to the environment or integrating in the environment while conventional farms are more about taking things out of the environment.

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A general description of how the vegetables are grown:

The way that they are grown or the process behind it is that the University of Guelph buys their own seeds, put the seeds in to a small seed tray and grow them out. In the beginning of the year they put it in the greenhouse and let it grow there for the year. Once it gets to a certain size they pot it up or put it in a bigger spot or put it directly out in to the field (called transplant). Once it is planted out in the field they hand water it over irrigation, pay attention to it and let it grow out. If it is a fruit they try to protect its colony and if it is lettuce they attempt to protect it from pests and animals that come in and wait until it is ready and then harvest it.

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Which types of vegetables are beneficial to the body?

All of them! Certain vegetables like the bitter melons (pictured above) are good for the digestive system and it keeps your digestive system working properly. Eating tomatoes is supposed to help you deal with sun burns. Herbs like cilantro or parsley have a very high nutritional value. Herbs are extremely beneficial to the body because they are nutritionally dense and minerally dense thus, eating small amounts of them will do the job.

Vaughn Bell

Vaughn Bell examines the landscape, our connection and responsibilities to landscape, how we are affected and how we affect the spaces and places we encounter. Her interests include discussion of sustainability, property rights, public space and ecological function in the field of contemporary art practices. Her performances in public and installation works look into local sites, art histories, and cultures as a groundwork for site-based work.

The Portable Environments

garden-cart-bean(Portable Gardens)

pinecart(Portable Forests)

treecart-shade(Portable Tree)

greenhouse(Portable Greenhouse: Green for a Northern Winter)

One of Bell’s installation pieces entitled The Portable Environments requires the time, patience and effort of Bell because the plants require care and maintenance. According to Bell, she takes each plant on trips through the city; she waters, trims, cleans, monitors and documents them at the end.

For more information on Vaughn Bell click here

Rebecca Belmore

Rebecca Belmore is a multi-disciplinary Canadian artist born in Upsala, Ontario and is currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work addresses identity, place and history with the use of mediums like sculpture, installation, video, and performance. She is recognized internationally for her performance and installation work.

For more information about Rebecca Belmore click here

rebecca-belmore-making-clay-beads

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These images display Belmore using the clay dug up from Red River Valley to create “clay beads” which will be strung together to create a large blanket with folds. Thousands of hand-pressed clay beads will be created and the idea is supposed to reflect earth, water and sky.

Rebecca Belmore says, regarding this work: “‘So if you put fire, earth and clay together, you get ceramics…revisiting this idea of human beings that have always used the earth to make objects that were functional to them, to us…therefore this work is…about our human relationship to the land’”

Full article featuring this work and some of Belmore’s other works visit this link