Stanley Park Environmental Art - Ephemeral Works

Tania Willard

John Hemsworth, Peter von Tiesenhausen • Davide Pan, T'Uy'Tanat Cease Wyss • Shirley Wiebe • Tania Willard

Click thumbnails for full-size images. Photos: Paul Colangelo.

Artist Statement:
Influenced and inspired by branching structures and the symbiotic relationships expressed in structures and organs like roots, rivers, arteries and the placenta, this piece explores these associations and how they link to culture, community, land and life.

Drawn to areas of the Park I hadn't yet explored, I started down Cathedral Trail and was immediately struck by the amazing root systems overturned during the storm. Looking at the root systems, I was struck by how they resembled the branching of vessels in a placenta and how they themselves are organs facilitating many of the same functions for life as the womb and umbilicus. My partner and I had just had our first son, Skyelar, and when I looked at this root system I felt it as if it was a part of me; I felt the land through to my core.

In Indigenous concepts of land, language, storytelling and culture are all closely intertwined with the land itself. As a person of mixed Aboriginal (Secwepemc Nation) and non-Aboriginal heritage, I am also very aware of Vancouver and Stanley Park as the unceded territory of Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish peoples. I wanted to relate to this land and to give thanks for all the beauty that I have enjoyed here in the traditional home of the Coast Salish peoples. There are so many stories in this land, Aboriginal stories before this land had English names, animal stories, stories of change, of upheaval and stories of birth and survival out of that upheaval; stories of transformation.

In learning more about the park in the initial orientation with Parks Board staff and Stanley Park Ecology Society input, I was amazed to learn about the hidden parts of forest ecosystems like mycorrhizal fungi and how this fungal organism connects the whole forest and cycles nutrients between plant species and more. This vast network under the surface of the earth is like the blood vessels of the forest. Having recently experienced pregnancy, I was moved to think of how connected we all are through these types of symbiotic relationships all around us. Indeed, in contrast to ideas of "survival of the fittest" and life as competition, there is a weaving of symbiotic relationships through every part of our world from mother and child down to micro-organisms in the earth.

For this piece I worked with a large, upturned rootball with an exposed root system. I stripped a layer of bark off of the root system to create a higher contrast and emphasis on the roots. Although the tree and root system are dead, the rootball itself has created new habitat. While working with it, I was awed by the new roots shooting through the soil on the underside of the rootball. Life is sprouting all over, stimulated by the devastation of the windstorms, ferns grow around the base of the rootball as well as patches of growth in the soil that is still held together by the roots. Suspended vertically like a wall, creating this view of the forest we do not normally get to see.

We are exposed to the mystery of life here. We are all connected to the land in some way or another.

Visit this work located on Cathedral Trail, just north of North Lagoon Drive.
Detailed map of Stanley Park

Read the ecological response to this work provided by Jarrid Jenkins, Public Programs Manager at SPES.