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Showing posts from October, 2023

w h a t . h o m e coming to Nex̱wlélex̱wem/Bowen Island November 10

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I'm SO excited to finally be installing this immersive show in the community where it began. The first person to volunteer was my father. The next was my brother, and from there my video documentation of people talking about their experiences of home, belonging, and community spread into the wider community, and eventually to the mainland and Vancouver Island. What a massive learning process this was for me!! Not only the technical side of developing ways to intersect stories and landscapes by film, projection, and fabric, but learning to ask questions that promote the sharing of stories we don't often tell. I made many friends while interviewing for this work. And in an extreme stroke of luck I got to develop and exhibit the first iteration of it in Amsterdam! Which was odd, since all of the protagonists of the work are living in Western Canada. But the Dutch audience responded with passion, causing me to realize that it doesn't really matter where we live; feelings of bel...

What's for Sale this Holiday Season!

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It's holiday shopping time, which for me means it's almost my birthday... and that is when I finally get to discover what my partner bought for me at the Gibson's Public Art Gallery a few months ago!!! Woohooooo!!! I love supporting other artists, and I love when people support them in my honour. 🧡 So increasingly I'm realizing that my art is also a commodity, and of course I love to be supported in what I do!  People ask me what's for sale. Well... pretty much everything's "for sale", except my soul -- hahaha! But maybe you'd like a list of what's popular. I happily oblige. Here's a selection of things of various prices, to hopefully inspire your gift-giving, or just to fill your own home with some love and thought-provoking interest. To Purchase: Please contact me at emilyvanartist at gmail dot com to arrange for e-transfer (or cash) and pick up or shipping! Of course, if you'd like to visit the studio and see these works in person...

Disinformation and meanness. What is going on?!

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"Escaping the Nest" (detail)  E. van Lidth de Jeude It just hit me that maybe ten years ago I was worried about the rise of misinformation on social media. I saw it once in a while; people posting things from known biased sources, or just stating information they assumed was correct but wasn’t. Extensive fact-checking became more necessary than I had felt it was, before, since even trusted sources seemed infiltrated with presumption and error. Or maybe I was just becoming more aware.  Recently, though, it feels like disinformation is the norm, and complicated with some serious cruelty. On the bigger social media groups I’m a part of (chicken-keeping, canning, foraging, mushrooms, birds, education, etc.) it’s just absolutely normal for somebody to post a question and receive 30–70% wrong answers. It seems people have just become accustomed to stating an uneducated guess as fact. (And seriously — for canning, foraging, mushrooms, chickens, and schooling, this can lead to disast...