Stanley Park Environmental Art - Artists

Tania Willard

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

Tania Willard, Secwepemc Nation, has been working with Aboriginal youth, community, story and the arts for over 10 years. An honour graduate from the University of Victoria, her groundbreaking work with Redwire Magazine, a national Aboriginal youth magazine, led the organization to be one of the first independent Aboriginal youth run arts and media organizations. Tania has since transferred her skills and passion to her work as an artist and graphic designer, again the focus of her work in this field is the Aboriginal community, the arts, health and social justice. Tania has worked as an artist in residence with gallery gachet in Vancouver's Downtown East Side, a writer in residence with Native Women in the Arts and the Banff Centre fiction residency. Tania has worked with grunt gallery to coordinate their community arts conference and publication, Live in Public: The Art of Engagment and recent online gallery projects including Dana Claxton's retrospective and the First Visions site.

redwillowdesigns.ca

Artist Statement for the Stanley Park Environmental Art Project:

I am interested in being a part of the project because I am inspired by the possibilities of engaging with the diverse people who will be involved in the project and then also collaborating with the land. I am intrigued by what could be possible in a project like this and am interested in drawing on a number of my experiences and skills to honour the land that has given us so much and to be a part of the circle that will see the effects of the storm in Stanley Park feed a new generation of ecology in the park.

My concept revolves around the idea of the inter-connectedness of the ecology, and how this relates to the inter-connectedness of our relationship to the land and to each other. I am interested in the stories the trees would tell of their life, and how to share that with people who visit the Park. I am interested in celebrating that life and the process of the storm-felled materials returning to the earth and creating new life.