Blog

  • GUEST EDUCATOR: Chris Earley

    GUEST EDUCATOR: Chris Earley

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    Interpretive Biologist Chris Earley speaking at the University of Guelph Arbouretum

    What a perfect day to be a naturalist!

    Today we took advantage of the gorgeous weather on our hike with Chris Earley at the University of Guelph Arbouretum.

    Armed with our nets and peanutbutter jars, our team forged the forest looking for insects to identify.

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    We discovered many species of insects including spiders, moths, beetles, and two different dragonfly varieties: White Face Meadow Hawk and the Autumn Meadow Hawk. Earley explained the difference between dragon flies and damsel flies, which are often mistaken for each other. We identified a spotted spread wing damsel fly with cobalt blue eyes.

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    Andrea analyzing a male Autumn Meadow Hawk

    Earley emphasized the importance of working with art and science in unison, to better understand and appreciate the natural world around us.

    Other interesting things we learned today with Earley:

    • How to hold a frog
    • How a wood frog hibernates in the winter
    • How dragonflies mate
    • How to use a “Beat Sheet” to capture insects from trees
    • How to carefully handle insects with a net
    • The natural order of the arboretum

    Here you can watch our hilarious attempt to make bird calls with our hands!

  • Gareth Moore

    Gareth Moore

    Gareth Moore is a Berlin-based artist who was born in Matsqui, British Columbia, 1975. His works are largely conceptual and often investigate the world around him. Moore’s aesthetic is quirky and playful. He collects objects, ideas, and markings to form his installations. He is interested in the idea that objects carry hidden stories, focusing on the relationship between the accidental and the intentional; the real and the imaginary.

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    This is an image of Moore’s “My Clothes in the Woods”, 2009, Berlin.
    Source

    View photographs of Moore’s solo exhibition “A Burning Bag as a Smoke-Grey Lotus” at La Loge in Brussels. These images are accompanied by a visceral press release by Moore that is very much worth the read.

  • Futurefarmers,  Soil Kitchen, 2011

    Futurefarmers, Soil Kitchen, 2011

    This is a Futurefarmers public art project. For this project they asked citizens for soil samples of their neighborhood in exchange for free soup. This project collected over 350 soil samples and served 300 bowls of soup per day. In addition to the soup for soil exchange Futurefarmers also conducted free workshops including wind turbine construction, urban agriculture, soil remediation, composting, lectures by soil scientists and cooking lessons. For more information visit: http://www.futurefarmers.com/#projects/soilkitchen

    Philadelphia 2011

    Venice Architecture Biennale

  • Annette Messager

    Annette Messager

    Annette Message is an accomplished artist from France with a practice that spans over the course of nearly four decades, whose main interest lies in ‘outsider’ art (amateur/children’s art). Her work includes the mediums of photography, sculpture, drawing, installation and even needlework. She chooses to use modest materials in her pieces, such as clothing, bandages, stuffed toys and so on, to create forms and shapes that suggest the complexity of human life and the shadowy ‘other’ in us all.

    Her piece “Les Depouilles (Skins)” in 1997 showcased a series of children’s clothing and toys that she had taken apart, removed the stuffing and pinned up on the gallery wall. When commenting about the work Messager explained that she wanted to explore the similarities between what she saw as the final result on the wall and the shapes found in a Rorschach print.

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  • Futurefarmers

    http://www.futurefarmers.com/

    Here you can see there installations, projects, and exhibitions.

    Futurefarmers is an international  artist collective practicing a form of cultural  activism that exploits the interactive potential offered by  new media and public spaces.

  • Richard Long | A Line Made by Walking

    Richard Long | A Line Made by Walking

    Richard Long, sculptor and land artist is responsible for works such as ‘A Line Made by Walking’. He uses photography to capture the work he has done on a landscape. ‘A Line Made by Walking’ was created while he was travelling St. Martin’s. Long walked forwards and backwards on the field until the turf was flattened.

    http://www.richardlong.org

  • April Hickox: Invasive Species

    April Hickox: Invasive Species

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    Through her photography, April Hickox explores the themes of human intervention in a natural landscape, outlining issues of site and place. Growing up on Toronto Island, and living there for most of her life, she saw this car-free alternative community of 750 people grow and change as metro Toronto began impacting the landscape on both a long term and short term basis.

    http://www.aprilhickox.com/index.html

  • The Lightning Field

    The Lightning Field

    The Lightning Field is a long term installation made by Walter de Maria in the desserts of western New Mexico in 1977. The installation is made up of 400 polished stainless steel poles each standing 20 ft and 7 inches (6.27 meters) tall, and about 2 inches (5.1 cm) in diameter. The poles are positioned in a grid-like manner, each 220 ft (67 m) apart from the other.

    Although this installation attracts lightning, experiencing this work of Land Art does not depend on its occurrence. The Lightning Field is intended to be experienced over an extended period of time. For this reason, Walter de Maria offers the opportunity to rent an overnight cabin which can accommodate up to 6 guests during the months May – October.

    If you’re interested in experiencing this amazing work, here is a link to the Visitor Information page on the Dia Art Foundation website (they commissioned this piece):
    http://www.diaart.org/sites/page/56/1301

    and it’s cheaper for students 😉

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    Panoramic video of The Lightning Field because its difficult to find a video because copyright

  • Rebecca Belmore -Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother (1991)

    Rebecca Belmore -Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother (1991)

    This work was developed in response to the 1990 “Oka Crisis,” or Kanien’kehaka resistance, when the Canadian army violently suppressed a small Mohawk Nation trying to defend its ceremonial and burial grounds from becoming a golf course. It was first used in 1991 in a meadow in Banff National Park where people’s voices, spoken through the megaphone, would echo back nine times. In 1992, Belmore toured the work across Canada to a number of sites where Indigenous land claims were being asserted and justice was being demanded.

    Here is a short video that features some of her work, Speaking to Their Mother can be seen at 2:13: 

    http://www.jmbgallery.ca/eventsKWE.html

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  • The Canary Project – Jon Santos

    The Canary Project – Jon Santos

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    The Canary Project is comprised of “art and media that deepend public understanding of the anthropocene.”

    An installation by Jon Santos titled “Sublimation of Ice”  consists of “Photographs of ocean landscapes alternate with mountain glaciers in a video loop that meditates on the transformation and redistribution of water – an issue at the core of climate change. The video is paired with a staged melting event in which 300-pound blocks of ice slowly turn to water.”

    http://canary-project.org/2010/08/sublimation-of-ice-2/