Protect

This past week was hectic in planning, packing and transporting work to be featured at the Grimsby Public Art Gallery  for the much- anticipated exhibition: This Land is OUR Land: the Greenbelt Dichotomy. 

Below is a series and statement that the director selected for the show.

One element of being part of a  public exhibition is that the director/curator has the last word on what is selected and where it goes. Some works intended for the show were edited out-and I have to accept that. This is part of the deal -not fun-but in the 'big picture' of this group show, where it is all about balance, her decision was sound.

I have also posted an intro video, although they hadn't finished installation and my lighting was not yet adjusted. I hope to remember to bring the camera to Sunday's opening when everything is pulled together.

 

 

Protect

encaustic collage triptych on panels, 8x30in, 2012

Statement to accompany work

Since the Greenbelt policy was implemented five years ago I have noticed more abandoned fields in rural Niagara. Once farmed and thriving with orchards and vineyards, these fallow fields are now housing wildlife. They grow milkweed for monarch butterflies, sweet wildflowers for our bees, and provide food and camouflage for many bird species.  

 One species of migrating birds, the Bobolink, are provincially listed as ‘species at risk’. For the past few springs, in open escarpment fields, I have had the immense pleasure of encountering these bold as brass yellow headed songsters. The unmistakable " bubbling delirium of ecstatic music that flows from the gifted throat like sparkling champagne," "a mad, reckless song-fantasia, an outbreak of pent-up, irrepressible glee," and "a tinkle of fairy music, like the strains of an old Greek harp."  Such exuberance –especially after making one of the longest migrations in the Western Hemisphere—a round trip of approximately 20,000-km  from Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina!

‘Ontario's Greenbelt is home to 78 of over 200 provincially listed species at risk in the

province, like the Bobolink, Redside Dace and Jefferson Salamander.

Since being established in 2005, it has prevented the conversion of natural and agricultural lands into sprawling residential development.

Despite this early success, this report highlights the need to strengthen existing provincial policies and laws to address on-going threats to the integrity of the Greenbelt from pressures like road development and aggregate extraction.’

David Suzuki Foundation