In the Garden of Exquisite Unknown exhibition
Pinned collection of ephemera with written text 640 x 305 cm l 252 x 120 in
330+ pinned organic ephemera
echoing the artist’s studio walls, with hand written text (see below)
Photography Toni Hafkenscheid
A collection of ephemera on 52, 5″ reclaimed plywood shelves
“Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.”
~Robin Wall Kimmemer, Braiding Sweetgrass
In 2019 I created an installation titled All the Minutes of All the Days that consisted of twenty-eight half circle wooden shelves, each showcasing an element from nature. There were animal bones, seed pods, branches, bird feathers (and wings), all surrounded by large-scale bio ink drawings and branches propped up and laid askew. In the centre of the back wall was displayed a stop motion film of two pheasant wings appearing to move around each other in dance-like formation. As a darkened room, it was distinguished from the rest of the exhibition, conjuring a sort of magic that I often feel while exploring in nature.
Fast-forward several years later, living in a different country, I felt that similar elements would weave quite nicely with the theme of In the Garden of Exquisite Unknown. I cut fifty-two half circles from reclaimed plywood with the local library’s laser cutter and continued collecting pieces of interest from my surroundings. Numbers and the poetics of place play important roles in my work, often denoting time passing. Thus both these pieces bring together the construct of time: twenty-eight days, and fifty-two weeks.
Inspired by Robin Wall Kimmemer’s 2013 book Braiding Sweetgrass, with its deeply sensitive discourse on living on and in union with the land, this gesture of display and the reciprocity of observation attempts to entice viewers to look closely, to see as unique and valued each piece that sits stoically on display. To ponder them as gifts and to think quietly of the ways that we can appreciate and show respect for their preciousness and beauty as part of a greater, inclusive whole.
Photography Toni Hafkenscheid
Collected & dried root masses with plant intact
I have always been intrigued by what lies under the surface, and further, what may be guiding growth that we cannot see or even sense at all. I began collecting these root masses before I had a studio, and before plans for this exhibition began to take form. I knew I loved looking closely, and I knew that when I photographed and shared them, others did too.
Part of my role as an artist is to share and to gather broadly while treading softly. This gathering of plants, pulled from their place or found already expired, speaks of a small portion of the mystery of nature’s magnificence, just touching the surface of what we perceive transpires out of our sight as well as our minds.
Photographs by artist & Toni Hafkenscheid
K U N G H I T I S L A N D F I N D S
Artist in Residence Gwaii Haanas – Haida Gwaii Museum & Parks Canada | July 2017
Kunghit Island – 2 hours – 891 pieces of plastic waste
337 of those are micro pieces under 1.5 cm
We cleared the most southerly point of Gwaii Haanas, Cape St.James, then headed north toward Kunghit Island. The day was calm & sunny, Staas guided the boat to Boyles Point, a remote beach where restrictions were in order to stay to one area due to a mysterious finding. We discovered fresh bear scat as we walked up the beach toward to woods so we stuck together, hiking to an isolated beach on the south side of the peninsula. I planned to rest on the beach -we had been on the move for a few days and I wanted to take this two hour stopover to soak up some of the spirit of what I had seen and felt on Gwaii Haanas.
I ate a little snack then wandered toward the water, bending to pick up a bright blue piece of plastic, then another. When I tired of bending, I sat on the sand and pulled at the clumps of seaweed baking in the sun. After only a few minutes it became obvious that this secluded place was not immune to the worldwide issue of plastic waste. For two hours I covered about 35% of the sandy area, bending and sitting to collect what I could of the washed up waste. I hardly noticed two ravens following me, making plays for my bag. I placed a few pieces of driftwood over my things, my heart heavy with the implications of what I was experiencing.
The following week, myself and the two other Artists in Residence were welcomed at the Haida Gwaii Museum to disseminate our ideas, thoughts, photographs and our creative ramblings of our time in Gwaii Haanas. I had no previous plans for the plastic waste that I had found six days earlier except to count it, however once I started to sort it, I found myself revisiting the feelings that I had experienced on the beach: overwhelment, sadness, fascination, disappointment. I took on what felt like systemic emotions, or what I thought ought to be the correct way of dealing with the scourge of plastic waste. I colour sorted, laid out in columns on cream coloured crepe fabric and counted. To my astonishment, in that blip of time -two hours- I had collected 891 pieces of plastic waste, 337 of those pieces were under 1.5 centimetres.
The following five days at the museum were something of a revelation to me. As an artist and as a person completely in love with and concerned for our natural environment, I found the conversations with museum guests interesting beyond the numbers, beyond the facts, and beyond the future. Every single person that talked to me felt responsible. Each person wanted to talk about the problems and many were disturbed that this would somehow happen in Gwaii Haanas -sacred land, land that had been home for centuries to indigenous culture, countless people who were raised with ‘yahguudang’ (respect) as the main precepts for how to live their lives.
The children I spoke to went immediately to trying to solve the existing problem but were willingly guided to ideas around prevention and behaviour modification. Parents were actively concerned, grandparents seemed even more upset than the younger generations. I heard stories of involvement in small as well as massive clean up projects, of fear of climate change from those who had been evacuated from their homes and land due to some of the hundreds of forest fires that were raging through the province of British Columbia. And myself, I told the story again and again: Gwaii Haanas, Kunghit Island, one person, two hours, eight-hundred and ninety-one pieces of plastic waste.
My take away from this experience continues to unfold. British artist Tony Cragg did something very similar in 1978 and almost 40 years later, I make this action as a clear thread of my time in Gwaii Haanas, and of being aware of the experiences of this being human in a world of consumption. I am still unsure what will happen to these plastic pieces but I do know where my challenges lie: aestheticizing one of the most pressing issues of our time, ignoring the issues, becoming over dogmatic; making pretty out of waste. All this sits and squirms in my mind as I move on to my next Artist in Residence position at Earthskin in New Zealand.
Haawa (thank you) for every piece of rubbish you pick up and for each time you find a way to avoid making more plastic waste.
Flâneur’s Walk | Collected ephemera |
In situ, Lamorva House, Falmouth Uni | 2015
| Mounted one at a time over the course of my seven week work period at Lamorva House studio and exhibited as is for the MA/MFA grad show in the same space |
Part of my investigation into Day-to-Day Aesthetics requires a constant and consistent awareness to surroundings. A tuning into the stories, the sounds, human clues and even debris is a way of moving through space rather than settling in or being oblivious to it. I record with camera, phone, zoom field recorder; by sketching, taking notes, and finally, by collecting. By bringing the outside in, it allows the texture and sensibility of my surroundings to permeate the work as it develops. I refer back to the collected ephemera as ideas gather momentum and significant elements end up in the finished pieces either specifically or as a core to a theme. In this way, I am a creative detective, always on the prowl for signs, clues and source material; looking for evidence that can make a body of work coherent and provide depth and strength to the aesthetic narrative. By singling found objects as unique, they are being elevated to the level of the handmade. Bringing them into the studio, then in this case, into an exhibition space somehow draws exponential attention to each piece in particular but also to nature as a whole. How could I walk along a beach, pathway, back lane or wooded area for minutes or hours and not notice the intricacies that surround me? How can I -will I- continue to ignore what gems are right under foot? And, as an artist, can I offer the viewer a psychometric connection to the work, a sensory involvement no longer limited to pieces made under the label and purpose of ‘art’? Reactions to Flâneur’s Walk were astounding to me, with many people counting it as their favourite of the six separate bodies of work in my Tender to the Sea exhibition, and this, over and above the pieces of art that took months to complete. I consider this to be a percipient win on behalf of our environment and an outcome that further fuels my desire to collect, create, install and make work for those who participate and interact with both art & nature.