Stanley Park Environmental Art - Semi-permanent Works

Tania Willard

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

Entwined

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

Artist Statement:
This piece explores the interconnectedness of Stanley Park's ecology and how the different uses, experiences and perspectives of both indigenous and non-indigenous people, plants and materials are interwoven. Referencing native plant and material usage in the plaiting of cedar and in the dyes created from hemlock and red alder barks, as well as the oyster shell buttons, this work is a meditation on the cedar as a tree of life and asks this cedar to share its story.

Narrative, history and experience become a part of the narrative ecology in this work, indigenous place and history, colonial injustice, settler naming and place, urban migration, immigration, this land has known many stories. This work becomes an offering, an offering to the land, to this cedar and a giving of thanks, recognizing of Coast Salish territory and honouring this land that has become home.

Working in Stanley Park I was influenced by the many layers of history here, those stories that are embedded into the land. In Entwined the use of materials — for example the oyster shell buttons — reference events like the unearthing of the shell midden in 1888 at Whoi Whoi (Lumberman's Arch). The midden was unearthed and used in a mix with concrete to pave parkways. The midden was very large and thought to have been used for millennia, indeed this place is a special place for Coast Salish people. The digging and repurposing of the midden speaks volumes not only to this specific example of literally paving over of Aboriginal histories but to the state of Aboriginal injustice in Canada.

The ephemeral work, Birth was about exposing an interconnectedness of everything around us including ourselves to Creation and Life. Entwined is an effort to balance, to nurture and to heal. Positioning the work high in a cedar tree allows us to relate not only to a human scale but to a forest scale, where the Land is not subservient to us, the Land is us. Using materials from the park like cedar bark and red alder and hemlock barks, for dyeing the wool, allowed me to get closer to the land in Stanley Park.

The use of other introduced natural materials like wool and madder reference how natural materials are absorbed and assimilated into indigenous and other cultures as opposed to stereotypes that suggest Aboriginal people would do anything for things like iron and guns etc. The use of wool suggests West Coast Cowichan knits for the many generations of people, native and non-native, who worked the waters in fishing, canning or longshoring, with similar properties to cedar in terms of it's resistance to molds and it's ability to withstand the West Coast rain. Madder, the material used in dyeing the wool for this piece, was also used to dye the wool coats of the British Red Coats, so the red wool is suggestive of many layers, many strands of stories intertwined with each other.

Supported by an internal structure of cedar and natural fiber Manilla rope, this braid is cradled in a streak of decay down the cedar tree it rests in. The cedar itself is half decayed with an east facing strip of live bark keeping it alive. Nurturing this decay, the braid is an offering to this cedar and to the land around it, to the insects that will find homes here, to the crows and ravens who may be entertained by the shiny buttons or the birds who may pull wool for their nests, I give thanks to this land and to the Coast Salish people who have and continue to nurture the land.

I chose this location because of the powerful cedar and the growth of fir and maple around it but also because I could see the ocean from here. As much as the seawall is great, I sometimes feel like it creates a separation between the forest and the ocean. In Entwined I am attempting to bring it all together: ocean, forest, indigenous plant and animal life, the recognition of Indigenous lands, Knowledge and Place, and a sense of wonder and meditation on our place within that, our place in the story ecology.

Kusktemc (Thank you)
All My Relations

Read the ecological response provided by Robyn Worcester, Conservation Manager at SPES for Entwined

As part of our ongoing documentation of this project, photos of the artworks are being taken at different times of the year to capture the changes being brought upon by the works by the flora and fauna of the park, as well as the weather. Click here to view images of Entwined taken over time .