Prince Edward County

Alchemy Artists Residency is all about food and the sense of community that is generated when people gather together to make and share good food. Naturally when artists gather together with a focus on food it is always a creative adventure. My experience in Alchemy 2023 did not disappoint. This is the third time I’ve participated with Alchemy in Prince Edward County. Each visit has been different as Alchemy’s program has evolved in response to the interests of the artists and the needs of local community.

Ontario’s Prince Edward County (PEC) is an old agrarian community in a rural setting, just sound of Bellville Ontario. The beautiful summer weather, long sand beaches and many farms and wineries all contributes to the charm of the place. There is something deeply restorative about the wide horizons everywhere. We entered the county at Carrying Place, the shortest crossing between two bodies of water as named by the original People in the area. We were mindful of the presences of the First Nations for millennium in this special place.

http://pectrails.ca/trail-info/history/first-nations-in-pec/

This year, my partner Dan Sharp, who is a painter, joined the group as a participant. I was paired with Thyme Again Gardens and Dan was paired with Broken Stone Winery.

What a thrill it was for me to be able to spend two weeks photographing such a dynamic couple as Lori and Lorraine at Thyme Again Gardens and see their life’s work in action. My inquiry is a continuation of the project that began last year Sowing the Future: Women Farmers + Eco Agriculture with Farmer and Artist Jess Weatherhead and Eco Poet Diane Perazzo. Sowing the Future is a survey of seven women farmers engaged in sustainable farming practices in the Ottawa area. This year I had the opportunity to make an in-depth study of one farm and the two women farmers who run it.

At the residency we had a weekend to get settled and to get to know the Alchemy participants through a classic Alchemy activity of making pasta featuring farm fresh county eggs. This year’s learning was ravioli stuffed with home made ricotta and served with sage brown butter.

Back at the residency we gathered most evenings to cook together and debrief on the days activities. The conversations were wide-ranging and always topical, touching on the new learning and the struggles of the day. Some days ended with a visit to the local beach where there are almost always waves to jump in.

As the days passed, a focus came to the various artists’ work. Dan began making and painting with the local “mud” from the winery he was paired with. Adriana gathered plants to see what colours they would offer for dying fibres. Patti made a series of cyanotypes with the local plants and taught some of us how to make a cyanotype. Annika experimented with ways of tinting her dumpling dough with colours found in the processes of wine and cheesemaking at her winery. I photographed the seeding, transplanting, planting, weeding, harvesting and processing of food and flowers at the farm.

The days were full and so were the evenings. It was an intense two weeks and a stark contrast to the mostly quiet days we have at home. It took some adjustment but was a very welcome time under the wide open skies of the County.

On the last day I asked the two farmers to work with me to make a staged composition that reflected the various activities they carry out in their gardens. The results ended up being what I choose to exhibit in their farm stand. I made an image that had seven versions of Lorraine working in her gardens. Tending Kin shows the repetitive gestures of caring for the plants. It’s a kind of compressed version of my time at the farm.

Sowing the Future is on exhbition at the Biblio Wakefield Library until April 2023

AN ARTS PROJECT ABOUT WOMEN FARMERS ENGAGED IN SUSTAINABLE FARMING PRACTICES IN THE OTTAWA / OUTAOUAIS REGION.

Please join us for a Community conversataion: Exploring the Intersection between Art and Our Relationship to the Land

SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2023 AT 2 PM – 4 PM

Biblio Wakefield Libary, 1-38 de la Vallèe de Wakefild, Wakefield, Quebec

This event is free and there is no registration required.

Please join us for an open conversation hosted by Alice Irene Whittaker about sustainable farming practices as seen through the lens of the arts and how both can work together. The farmers of Sowing the Future have inspired painting, photography and poetry and we invite you to listen to and offer your perspective on ways the arts can support of the local food shed in a way that enhances our physical, emotional and mental wellbeing in this rapidly changing world. 

Our Host, Alice Irene Whittaker, is a writer and environmental leader. She is the creator and host of Reseed, a podcast about repairing our relationship to nature. She has been published in national and international publications, including The Globe & Mail and Permaculture Magazine, and her book Homing will be published in Fall 2024. Recently she became the Executive Director of Ecology Ottawa.

Light refreshments will be served.

Sowing the Future is on exhbition at the Biblio Wakefield Library until April 2023

Biblio Wakefield Libary, 1-38 de la Vallèe de Wakefild, Wakefield, Quebec

SOWINGTHEFUTURE.CA

Women play a vital role in agriculture worldwide, yet they are often not represented in the collective social image of farmers.

Les femmes ont toujours joué un rôle vital dans l’agriculture de par le monde entier. Cependant, elles brillent par leur absence dans l’imaginaire contemporain.

This creative arts project features seven women who are farming sustainably on the traditional Algonquin Anishinaabe lands of the Ottawa / Outaouais Region. 

Participating Artists:

Barbara Brown – photo based artist

Jess Weatherhead – painter

Diane Perazzo – Poet

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Opening on January 3rd and running until February 5th, 2023 at the Ottawa School of Art

Artist Reception Thursday January 19th from 5:00 until 8:00 pm.

Byward Market Campus

35 George Street

Gallery Hours

Monday to Thursday | 8:30 am to 9:00 pm

Friday and Saturday | 8:30 am to 4:30 pm

Sunday | 12:00 to 4:00 pm

Gratitude to the Ontario Arts Council for financial support.

Artist Statement

Terroir gathers several bodies of artwork by Barbara Brown to navigate a new and yet ancient way for us to know ourselves as part of the natural world. 

The term Terroir is used by vintners to recognize all the aspects that contribute to the quality of wine, such as the sun and wind exposure and slope of the land, soil composition and the local weather, etc. Terroir invites us to adopt an elevated and highly engaged form of attention to the environment.

In her practice,  Brown seeks to collaborate in interconnection with the natural world.  Her Longscapes series expands the notion of landscape by elongating the photographic form until it becomes a “longscape”, presented in relationship to plants, allowing for a deeper, more intimate experience of the land.

Dust from the EarthBound series depicts the final step of returning to the earth. In this series of photographs we encounter a figure; a being that evokes the memory of a human now returned to earth. This concept is known in the cycles of the garden where decomposing plants of the previous season become food for next year’s growth. We too are part of this natural cycle. We are bound to the earth, nourished by it and finally return to it. This series may be seen outside the School of Photography Arts Ottawa (SPAO).

Portrait of a Field: Rochester Field is a project that tracks the emergence, flourishing and final destruction of a local “empty green space” just before the arrival of heavy construction equipment to build the new light rail transit line in the west-end of Ottawa. It is a record of what is now likely lost forever.

In wondering just how we are connected to both the earth and those who came before us, Brown constructs an image revealing the rooted system of a plant. She asks, can we recognize the enormity of the ancestry upon which we make our days and not only our human ancestors?  Ancestral Roots take its inspiration from the family tree which stems from an individual, then branches upward to parents and grandparents and so on. Yet this image is reversed with the green shoots as the current generation, supported by masses of roots representing layers of unknowable ancestors.

The Held Bouquets seriesre-introduces human touch by layering embroidery stitches on top of and within photographic images. Stitching slows down the making process and reflects the historic practice of learning embroidery stitches. These compositions are small in scale and are more intimate and familiar to the hand and the needle. In the same way as one learns the stitches of embroidery, these stitches remember flowers that have faded and fallen and recreates what is no longer graced by the full bloom of summer.

Masks are found in many human cultures around the globe as objects that allow role play and shifts of identity. This series of embodied masks arose from Brown’s practice as a forager, as she explored the forests and fields around her and, invites us to see through the eyes of another being in an empathetic and compassionate way. They greet your gaze and show you something of yourself and even function as a tool for transcendence that invites and allows a mental and physical shift as you consider what it is to be of a forest or a field.

Brown’s regard of the plant world in these ways is grounding and orienting. She is inspired by beauty in gardens, fields and forests. We need only look to our natural environment for models of how humans can be more diverse, accepting of newcomers and adaptable to change. Let the natural world that surrounds us in the garden, fields and forests be our inspiration.

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An arts project about women farmers engaged in sustainable farming practices in the Ottawa / Outaouais Region.

Women play a vital role in agriculture worldwide, yet they are often not represented in the collective social image of farmers.

Les femmes ont toujours joué un rôle vital dans l’agriculture de par le monde entier. Cependant, elles brillent par leur absence dans l’imaginaire contemporain.

This creative arts project features seven women who are farming sustainably on the traditional Algonquin Anishinaabe lands of the Ottawa / Outaouais Region. 

Ce projet artistique met en vedette huit femmes qui cultivent de façon durable, les terres traditionnelles algonquines Anishinaabe de la région d’Ottawa/Outaouais.

We are creating an arts exhibit which will tell the story of these dedicated farmers by presenting vibrant painted portraits, photos of their farming practice and poetic reflections about their experiences. 

Des portraits peints, vibrants de couleurs, des photographies de leurs pratiques agricoles et des réflexions poétiques représentent chaque femme 

SowingtheFuture.ca

Barbara Brown – photo based artist

Jess Weatherhead – painter

Diane Perazzo – EcoPoet

Opening Reception: Friday September 30th 2022 5 – 7pm
Exhibition: Saturday and Sunday October 1 and 2 from 10am — 5pm

Roots and Shoots Farm
SAINTE CÉCILE DE MASHAM, QC 

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Field Notes is an exhibition of seven temporary public art installations and one public reading in Hillier Hall. The exhibitions will be on display at wineries throughout Hillier, Prince Edward County, Ontario. To see the list of artists and locations click here: https://makealchemy.com/exhibition-2021.  Alchemy, 2021 Creatives in Residence, shared how their work brings artists and cooks into community settings. They examine how the making and sharing of art and food makes a difference on two fronts: in the community itself, and in the creative practices of their collaborating artists and makers. In their newest blog below, Alchemy takes you behind the scenes to meet one of their visiting artists – Barbara Brown.  Barbara spent two weeks creating a site specific piece that will be part of the public art exhibition, Field Notes, scheduled for the Culture Days Festival from September 25 – October 24.  She also spent four days in the kitchen contributing to Alchemy’s twice weekly suppers for 40 farm and vineyard workers. 

Alchemy: What was the most positive aspect of your Hillier experience this year? 

Barbara: There is something deeply restorative about being in this open landscape including the huge skies and the wide vista of the lake. I enjoyed being in the County, experiencing the deeply agrarian landscape and meeting people who have tethered themselves to the land through growing. 

Alchemy: How did this year’s visit build on your earlier experience collaborating with Alchemy in the County? 

Barbara: On my previous visit, I met people who were passionately engaged with farming but on a modest scale. During this visit, I got to know a grower/vintner couple who operate on a much bigger scale. While there are many similarities, the larger scale operations have much more at stake and each decision can have a large ripple effect. Growing at the level of a winery is not for the faint of heart.

Artistically, it was great to return to Hillier Hall for many days in a row. It allowed me to further develop the “longscape” work that I first began in the Hall in 2018.

Alchemy: Is there something you learned from your time in the kitchen that you can share with us?

Barbara: I can share two different observations –the first from my kitchen experience: 

Scaling up the volume of cooking and having a hard deadline for delivery certainly upped the stakes. It also shifts the timing as everything takes longer from chopping to cooking to serving. 

Alchemy: And the second?  Is there something you learned as an artist that you will consider incorporating into your own practice?

Barbara: I became aware of the degree of problem solving involved in both cooking and art making. I think this foregrounds a kind of flexible thinking that is healthy and leads to a multitude of possibilities and that’s how I experience art making as well.

Alchemy: What advice or insights would you offer to incoming visiting artists as they prepare for their residency?

Barbara: Come with a plan but also be ready to shift things up depending on what you experience here. Be open to incorporating new experiences into your practice. Don’t focus on making finished work as the time is very short once you are in the County.

The experience of developing new work on a tight deadline is very challenging but it does lead to getting things done. It takes time for the experience of being in the county to become somehow transformed and incorporated into an artistic output. Sometimes it’s beneficial to have the added pressure of a short timeline but not always. 

Barbara Brown’s installation
Image Credit: Dan Sharp (1), Barbara Brown (2)

Field Notes group exhibition September 25 through to October 24.