BOTANICAL RECLAMATION

The Botanical Reclamation project celebrates the resilience of wild plants through naturally dyed textiles. A series of naturally dyed flags give voice to undervalued and mistreated plants and the ‘Sad Spaces’ in which they thrive. These ‘Sad Spaces’ include the Lafarge Quarry, the Eastview Landfill, the Eramosa River, and the Ontario Reformatory lands.

These spaces share a common thread: reclamation. Despite everything that has happened at these sites—everything that humans have inflicted upon these lands—plants have returned with great persistence. Demonstrating radical power through generative disobedience, these plants share their wisdom in the simple act of being themselves.

DYE PLANTS IN CURIOUS SPACES - ONLINE ARCHIVE

Between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox, I built relationships with, and gently harvested, 29 varieties of plants in ‘sad spaces’ to create 45 distinct natural dyes, resulting in hundreds of shades of local colour. These are all documented and archived on this free community resource website.

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INSTALLATION: A FLAG FOR THE PLANTS I

The Botanical Reclamation project began in the summer of 2020. The project originated within the 41 acres of land on the old Lafarge quarry in Guelph. The first installation for this project happened at this site, with a flag mounted on signposts that once held the original proposal for the development of this land.

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INSTALLATION: SEWING STEWARDSHIP

w/ Jenna Kessler & Christina Kingsbury

Bringing to the forefront the topic of soil remediation and the long-term ecological, social, and historical impacts of industrialization, these three artworks employ textiles, plants, and text to engage the public in thinking about what it means to care for our soil and in turn for our environment and each other. 

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COMMUNAL INTERVENTION: A CEREMONY IN DEFIANCE FOR THE PLANTS

Naturally dyed fabrics were pinned up by community members across the entrance to the former Lafarge Quarry, after more destructive construction work started on the site in August 2021. This gesture echoes the typical installation of orange ‘flags’ on telephone wires around construction sites, as a signal of caution and boundaries to trucks and other active machinery.

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WOVEN TIMELINE

A handwoven timeline of dye plants. The cloth’s warp was broken into sections based on the phases of the moon and month demarcations between the Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox.

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INSTALLATION: INFINITE BALANCE

A series of 8 naturally dyed patchwork flags, arranged in a quarter turn of a circle. These flags were installed in a former agricultural field in the former Ontario Reformatory lands.

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