About this Event
“Throughout history, communities have turned to the collective intimacies of quilting in moments of need. The absorbent qualities of quilts enable them to hold trauma and joy– sometimes simultaneously. The nature of a quilt as a useful heirloom promises that intergenerational care derived from the past will continue to exist in the future.”
–from Jess Bailey “Many Hands Make a Quilt: Short Histories of Radical Quilting”
In this workshop, participants will be invited to explore and share their climate feelings and anxieties about an uncertain future, while also holding space to celebrate their ecological joy and connection to nature. Designed for artists and non-artists alike, the group will first be led through a variety of mindfulness exercises based on the work of eco-activist and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy.
From there, participants will be shown how to make paint from natural materials, and we will work with pigment made from wildfire ash collected from burns across so-called British Columbia. Participants will then be guided through a variety of prompts using our homemade wildfire ash paint to explore their thoughts and ideas about their connection to the natural world, as well as the feelings that arise in the face of the ongoing changes we are seeing across the landscapes we know and love.
Finally, we will use our painted explorations to create a collaborative art project together, using collage to piece together a paper quilt. Reflections on the day will close out our workshop, and participants will go home with a container of their own wildfire ash paint to further their artistic explorations with this material.
Anyone who is unable to pay for the fee can make a request to waive the fee. Please send an email to [email protected]
Liz Toohey-Wiese is a settler artist residing on the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. She is a graduate from the MFA program at NSCAD University. She completed her undergraduate degree in painting at Emily Carr University, also undertaking coursework at the University of Victoria and the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. She has taken part in solo and group shows across Canada, and has undertaken artist residencies at the Sointula Art Shed (2019), the Caetani Cultural Center (2020/21/22), Island Mountain Arts (2021), the Similkameen Artist Residency (2023), Artscape Gibraltar Point (2023), and the Klondike Institute for Arts + Culture (2024). Deeply interested in the history of landscape painting, her paintings explore contemporary relationships between identity and place. Her most recent work explores the complicated topic of wildfires and their connections to tourism, economy, grief, and renewal. She is a full time faculty member in the Fine Arts department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
Event venue & nearby stays
Fort Langley Community Hall, 9167 Glover Road, Langley, Canada
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.