Quilted Connections: Creative Acts for a Changed Landscape

“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”

Vancouver Artist Liz Toohey-Wiese will be leading an art workshop for participants to explore ecological grief and connection to nature. Designed for artists and non-artists alike, participants will be shown how to make paint from natural materials, and we will be processing pigment made from wildfire ash collected from burns across so-called British Columbia. Participants will be led through a variety of prompts, using our homemade wildfire ash paint, to explore our thoughts and ideas around our connection to the natural world, as well as feelings that come up in face of the ongoing changes we are seeing across the landscapes we know and love. Finally, we will be using our painted explorations to make a collaborative art project together, piecing together a paper quilt to be on display at the Slocan Fieldhouse.

Liz Toohey-Wiese is a settler artist living on the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Deeply interested in the history of landscape painting, her paintings explore contemporary relationships between identity and place. Her recent work explores the complicated topic of wildfires and their connections to tourism, economy, grief, and renewal. She is the co-editor and creator of the artist book "Fire Season" and a professor of Drawing and Painting at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

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