Emily van Lidth de Jeude

Illustration by Taliesin River "You’d better prepare for the greatest inflationary wave in human history." That's the line that stuck out to me, near the end of umair haque's REALLY good article, " Why Everything is Suddenly Getting More Expensive -- And Why It Won't Stop ". If you haven't read this article yet, or aren't already familiar with the idea of the Great Inflation, and how we're now paying for the affordability of past generations, I recommend reading that article before reading this one.  umair's article was very helpful to my understanding of why our groceries are getting so expensive or why, for example, I looked into second hand electric cars a few years ago and could find plentiful good options under 9K, and now there are none. So we know the Great Inflation is happening. My question is, how are we preparing? Emergency kits and Go-bags are not going to cut it. Home preparedness is totally underway at my house. After this y...

One of the various road-collapses on the Coquihalla Highway in British Columbia. Photo used with permission from Douglas Noblet, of Wild Air Photography . Douglas has shared a series of these photos here, on Facebook . I was looking at these photos by Douglas Noblet, this morning, which seem to be mainly of the Fraser Valley, and highway collapses of the Coquihalla and the Hope-Princeton, and I found myself wondering how long it will take to restore our infrastructure. Months? Maybe years for the Coquihalla? (More on what's broken, here: North Shore News )  Then I realized that we're in climate free-fall, now. Any restoration is going to be hampered by increasing floods, blizzards, storms, fires, deep-freezes and heat-waves, not to mention the human issues like pandemics, supply-disruption, economic strife, labour and food shortages. Maybe the answer isn't how to get back to old-normal, but how we move forward instead of backward, and build new normal .  The flooded Sumas ...

"Mama Running in the Water"  photo by Taliesin River One of my favourite natural events is when the meadow floods. That's when the rain comes fast and the creek that normally flows through the alder forest comes out around the trees to run across the compact paths between long grasses, creating two- to thirty-centimetre-deep creeks that speed along, where in summer, bare-footed dogs and children run. In winter, I've run these temporary creeks in bare feet too. I know the feeling of the mud and wet grasses between my toes, and the fear of stepping in drowned dog poop. The joy of the immersion is too great to be daunted by the threat of poop. As I've grown older, though, I've come to appreciate the benefits of good rain gear and tall boots, which allow me to dive into my landscape without physical repercussions. Diving into landscape is something I've been thinking about a lot, lately: How, through residencies and travel and schooling or working abroad, arti...

(I open my mouth and) Nothing Comes Out Emily van Lidth de Jeude, 2016 Last night I attended a devastating meeting in my community. On the surface it was pretty run-of-the-mill: A bunch of councilors and a few municipal staff members slowly picking their way through various presentations, decisions, and amendments. They came to the end of the meeting having checked a few boxes, put a few requests to bed or to progress, and made a few small changes to the contentious bylaw that much of the population feels will rip the heart out of our community. As a member of this community for all of my life, I've been passionate about the things that tie us together. Some of those things are the big organized events, like our traditional summer festival and Remembrance Day celebration; the fishing derbies that used to happen when I was a kid, and the raft race. The events change over the years, but always hold us together, and are facilitated by a huge number of dedicated creative people, who lo...

This has been a hard, hard month in my province. We're reckoning with our responsibility regarding both climate change and colonialism (which are inextricably linked ). Our province is beginning to locate the remains of thousands of murdered indigenous children, at the same time as our towns, farms, wildlife and even humans burn, in the climate-change-fueled fires we're now accustomed to. And all the while we're trying to save the last remaining stands of old-growth forest on this land... with very little success, so far. Colonialism, capitalism, consumerism and industrial terrorism are huge foes and how can we not feel small and weak? Terror and hopelessness abound. Two generations of kids are growing up without hope. And now they're looking at their parents and seeing no reassurance, because we adults are scared, too. We have no idea how we're going to pull out of this one. I think the only way out is through.  Yes, to some degree, it's necessary to recognize ...

There's a rambling little debate going on in my community right now about what kind of mural should go up on the lock-block retaining wall that acts as the de facto welcome sign to our island. This wall faces the ferry dock, and forms the north side of the pedestrian walkway from the dock to the rest of the island. This is the plain concrete wall that, for generations now, has welcomed commuting adults and teens, newcomers and old-timers as well as untold numbers of tourists to our small island. Sometimes it sports blackberries trailing down to catch our shoulders as we pass by, sometimes obscene or public-shaming graffiti, and almost always an assortment of hardy edible weeds that pop out from its crevices. But most noticeably, it's a boring grey wall of concrete lock-blocks. The Nex̱wlélex̱m/Bowen Island lock-block wall, as it was once painted by local kids. Photo by Singne Palmquist Once this wall had a vast mural painted by kids from the local school--each block was painted...

Discovering a gigantic (and partially slug-eaten) mushroom here in Canada. My first outdoor art class was rather an accident. I was working with a group of kids from the American School in Wassenaar, the Netherlands, and decided we'd make a mural to revitalize the wall of a local underpass that at the time was covered with white supremacist graffiti. Taking the kids outside to paint the mural they'd designed was just the obvious next step in the process, and it required the city to drop off a ladder and high-vis barricades to keep us safe from passing cyclists. The city obliged, and we cloistered ourselves up against the wall and painted that mural. But really we had to stand back quite frequently to look at the job we were doing, which meant stepping out of the barricaded area, across the busy bike-path, and onto the unkempt grassy area beside the overpass. That's where we took breaks, where we sat in the long grass and weeds and chatted, ate our snacks, pondered the mu...

This video by Rage Against the Machine x the Umma Chroma brings up something I struggle with a lot in my own work and in the work of people I really respect, like RATM. You try so hard to help people see their own strength in changemaking; their own worth and their own ability to make postive change, then you look out at the crowd of people supporting you, and you know a large percentage don't hear the message. They go home shouting about it, but they didn't hear it. Maybe that's because they didn't go there to be educated--I get that. But we keep telling ourselves, as artists, as educators, as community organizers, that even if just one person in that crowd goes home and makes some kind of positive change, we've been successful, but how is that really enough? The most successful instagram post I've ever made was an in-progress shot of a dress that's about oppression of women; the objectification of the female body. In a very brief time it got thousands of v...