Articulation's Salish Sea Biosphere Study Sessions

Jellyfish in the Shaw Centre for the Salish Sea.

Articulation has had 2 week-long study sessions exploring Vancouver Island's coastal areas. The first was in 2007 and based in  Duncan while the second was ten years later in 2017 and based in both Sidney and Tofino. All areas are within the Salish Sea biosphere boundary which is the overarching concept tying this study together.

Sunset on Chesterman Beach.

The Salish Sea biosphere is a vast area of interconnected habitats where living organisms are found -  in the geosphere of soil and rock, the hydrosphere of lakes, rivers, and oceans, and in the weather systems in the atmosphere.

Articulation members walking the trails on the west coast - Wendy Klotz, Leann Clifford, Amanda Onchulenko, Donna Clement.

Researching in Vancouver Island's Maritime Rainforests involved walking the trails, recording sensory experiences in a journal, taking photographs of both minute details and the soaring grandeur of ancient trees, and reading both fiction and nonfiction with forest settings.

Lunch break while looking out to the sea.

Articulation members experience the same visual stimuli and discuss what they find and see during the week together.

Leann Clifford ready to go look for whales.

Watching the sunset from the beach.

Donna Clement explores mud flats while the tide is in.

Leann Clifford and Ingrid Lincoln and jellyfish.

Shaw Centre for the Salish Sea is an ideal place to learn about local sea life.

Taking the ferry out to Sidney Spit. Amanda Onchulenko, Leann Clifford, Ingrid Lincoln, Donna Clement.

After a shared experience spent exploring an area and keeping the broad concept in mind, Articulation members go back to their individual studios to produce bodies of work that reflect their individual responses their experiences. It is always a treat when the resulting work is exhibited to see how each artist visually translates their particular area of interest.

For more about Articulation's Salish Sea project check out Articulation's website and blog here and here.

Also, Donna Clement's blog here

Whakaari/White Island New Zealand

While in New Zealand, we did a unique trip. We went out to Whakaari/White Island, New Zealand's most active volcano. There had been several earthquakes and a volcanic eruption the week before so we wouldn't have been surprised if our tour was cancelled.

The first challenge was to get over the bar and out to sea.

No problem. Just a gentle swell.

Here we are outfitted in our safety gear - a hard hat, to be worn at all times and a gas mask around the neck, to use at leisure (when feeling overcome by the fumes).

The sea stayed calm for the journey and no one was seasick (as in 'threw-up').

According to our guides, it was already a good day.

Next challenge - getting from the RIB to the rust poles they called a ladder by timing the swell and the step/stretch/leap just right.

The sea co-operated with only a smooth light swell.

We were supposed to be listening to our guides giving us the safety briefing but most people were already hooked to their cameras.

And most of us had our masks on already. The acidic air caught in the throat, made eyes water and noses run. We were handed boiled sweets/lollies to suck on as relief for our acid etched throats.

Steaming fumaroles and boiling mud.

This what our guide warned us about. "Stick to the trails and don't stand on a mound - it could be a thin crust of ash covering a fumarole." (My Spell check wanted to know if I meant 'funeral.')

With the most recent eruption happening last week there was grey ash everywhere and steam continually drifted through our group. It was difficult to see where the actual path was.

Peoples' cotton t-shirts were getting bleached.

The centre of the island is now a lake of acid.

This is a colour picture/photograph - not a black and white. 

If we saw glowing white steam we were instructed to move away because it was sulphur dioxide.

I Googled it - 

What are the most important things to know about sulphur

 dioxide in an emergency?

Emergency Overview: Colourless gas. Suffocating odour. VERY TOXIC. Fatal if inhaled. Corrosive to the respiratory tract. A severe, short-term exposure may cause long-term respiratory effects (e.g., Reactive Airways Dysfunction (RADS)). CORROSIVE. Causes severe skin burns and eye damage. May cause frostbite. SUSPECT MUTAGEN. Suspected of causing genetic defects.

eeeek!

Sulphur was mined on the island until last century when and eruption killed all 10 workers.

The remains of the operation are a fascinating study of corrosion.

The strongest materials are eroding the fastest - steel and concrete while wood and rubber seem to be being preserved.

Rusted equipment

Steel and wood.

The last challenge - getting across the sea to home.

No problem - the sea was mirror calm. So calm albatrosses couldn't get the lift they needed to take off from the water and were marooned until the breezes started up again. 

A bonus was seeing literally hundreds of sea mammals - dolphins, porpoise, whales.

Such an amazing trip. A 'must-do' on any NZ trip.

Vancouver Island Circumnavigation

The Captain

Guipse Bay, place of an early 20-century utopian Danish settlement, now abandoned.

The knitting grows.

I am observing, sketching and photographing the boundaries between different elements.

Ocean Beach - Shed 4, Jacobson Point, Brooks Peninsula

One of the best surfing beaches on the West Coast of Canada, so the book says.

Though plastic is the main type of debris on these west coast beaches we also saw this huge vehicle wheel, the wheel of a plane, and rubber boots from Japan.

The day was a little chilly while the sun burnt exposed skin. 

My solution.

Sketching with water-colour pencil crayons and sea water.

Circumnavigation: West Coast Vancouver Island

By the time we were on the west coast my knitting had grown much longer.

And I was working my way through the pile of stowed books. They included a few about and by Emily Carr because this was the country she traveled through and worked in.

Kerry Mason Dodd's book 'Sunlight in the Shadows. The Landscape of Emily Carr' is full of photographs of places Emily visited. It gave us clues as to where Emily visited and we were able to stop at a few of those places.

Emily Carr, Indian Church', 1927, oil on canvas, 108.6 x 68.9cm. Art Gallery fo Ontario.

photographed from Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall's 'Carr, O'Keeffe, Kahlo. Places of their Own.'

Emily Carr did sketches for this painting when she visited Friendly Cove, Nootka Island.

We anchored in Friendly Cove, puttered ashore and went in search of the church. We learnt from the resident warden that particular church burnt down in 1954. The above church was built as a replacement 2 years later on a new site further towards the point. It is now a museum for the local First Nations band's collection of artefacts.

Also in Friendly Cove is the Nootka Light Station.

Emily Carr sketched the light station buildings during a later visit, in 1929. 

I found this image in Doris Shadbolt's 'The Sketchbooks of Emily Carr. Seven Journeys.' 

Reading about Emily Carr, Georgia O'Keeffe and Frida Khalo, 3 artists with intense connections to nature and long attachments to specific places, helped me during the month at sea to look longer and deeper at the water, land and sky that is home and a source of inspiration for my work. As a result, I have a sketchbook of ideas to work with.

Circumnavigation: Things To Do When Not Actually Sailing

Sketching in Roller Bay, Hope Island

Roller Bay, so named because the round stones roll in and out with the waves making such a distinctive noise.

Picking up debris on what should have been a pristine beach. I collected a bag of stuff to incorporate in a work about the world's plastic garbage issue.

And there was always knitting when not required by the skipper to pull my weight.

Vancouver Island Circumnavigation - What I did this Summer

This summer Ron and I went on a big expedition. We explored the island we live on.  Travelling on our sailboat we took a month to circumnavigate Vancouver  Island.

We saw many beautiful sights including much wildlife: orcas, dolphins, sea lions, whales, sea otters, seals, bears, and birds - none of which I was able to capture adequately with  my point 'n' shoot camera.

I got lots of knitting time in. I read most of the books I stowed on board.

I did lots of quick sketches to make me really see what I was looking at.

My sketchbook is full of inspiration and ideas for future works which will keep me busy in my studio over winter.

CACSP'S ArtSea Festival, Sidney

The +Community Arts Council of Saanich Peninsula organises an annual festival celebrating the arts in the seaside town of Sidney, Vancouver Island. Many different events are happening, including the +SidneyFine Art Show and an evening of music, ArtSea Gala: Art in the Schools Fund Raiser . Both are held at the +Mary Winspear Centre.
Many Sidney businesses participate by hosting artists in their shops. The artists display their work, conduct demos and get down to work making art. Here is the schedule show which artists are where over the time of the ArtSea Festival, ArtSea Festival Artist Demos .
This year, during the ArtSea Festival, I am going to set up my studio in +Lilaberry Home Decor, a fabulous shop in Sidney's main street
I'll be there everyday from Saturday 18th to Saturday 25th October, from 10:30 to 5:30 p.m., working away on a number of different projects I have on the go and displaying some of my work.
If you are in Sidney over this period, I do hope you can drop by Lilaberry for a visit.

Articulation's Victoria Study Session Continues

On the ferry, crossing to Saltspring Island for the day: to visit Articulation member, Shannon Wardroper's home and studio, to check out potential gallery space and time for a little retail therapy. 

Stitches Fibre Art Supplies, http://www.stitchesfibreartsupplies.ca/ very kindly opened up their store just for us, even though it was Sunday.

Continuing our study of railway hotels across Canada, we took a tour of the Empress Hotel.

This is the view from a 6th floor corner suite looking out over the inner harbour.

A table in the present day Empress tea room, set for their famous afternoon tea.

On the tour we learnt the tables were made from the original hotel floor boards after it was replaced.

Articulation taking the harbour ferry from the Inner Harbour, below the Empress hotel, up to the Upper Harbour.

We got off at Point Ellice House where we walked the grounds and toured inside the house with its intact, original contents. All chattels both inside the house and in their archives are thoroughly cataloged making it a perfect place to research the Victorian era in Victoria.

Leann Clifford

We did stop for afternoon tea while sitting out on the lawn but passed on a game of croquet.

We toured Fisherman's Wharf with its floating restaurants and floating houses that make up the village. 

We continued our driving tour around the Victoria peninsular, stopping and walking the historic sights, including Ogden Point breakwater without a breath of wind and barely a ripple of water.

After a week exploring and researching in Victoria we have returned to our respective studios across Canada to make a body of work for exhibition some time in the future.