Dispatches from the Alfresco Science Machine

Welcome to my newsletter! You’re receiving this email because you signed up online or at an event (IDS Vancouver or Artist Project Toronto), or you requested updates from me about my work. Some of you (long-time friends, relatives, friends of the family) are protesting, “I didn’t sign up for this!”…I’m sorry, I added you to my mailing list with flagrant disregard for spam laws. If you prefer to receive updates elsewhere, or not at all, you can unsubscribe at any time - no hard feelings!

Otherwise read on for news about upcoming exhibitions, project updates, and where I’m off to next!

Terra Nova National Park “Art in the Park” Residency, Newfoundland

The last time I was in the maritimes was almost 20 years ago on a 3-day business trip to Campbellton, New Brunswick in the dead of winter, so it’s probably safe to say this trip will be significantly more fun! I am incredibly excited to be in Newfoundland right now spending a month as Artist in Residence in Terra Nova National Park! This program is jointly run by The Rooms (St. John’s major public gallery), and Parks Canada. I don’t have my camper with me, since Parks Canada provides accommodations (and wow, what a long drive), but my trusty scanner has made the trip with me, along with supplies for cyanotype and lumen printing, and a few of my favourite Holgas. I’m particularly looking forward to learning more about how Parks Canada has been reintroducing wildfire to Terra Nova, after many decades of fire suppression, exploring what various sites look like before and after the rejuvenating force of wildfire has passed through. I’m also going to spend about a week on the other side of the island exploring Gros Morne NP, which has been on my bucket list for a long time. As always, gratefully accepting suggestions for best chowder/lobster/coffee/iceberg-spotting-locations etc.

Deep Dark Forest Notecards and Journal available to pre-order from Chronicle Books!!

I am very excited to finally be able to share something that has been in the works for years - I have a beautiful boxed notecard set coming out in August, published by Chronicle Books in San Francisco. I just received my advance copies and can’t wait for everyone to see these out in the real world. Chronicle is also publishing a matching journal, AND a wall calendar for 2025! You can pre-order them now online, from a variety of sources, but if you have a favourite indie bookstore or museum gift shop near you, they might turn up there soon too.

The collection of images in this set are from my travels around Western Canada the last few years, so you’ll see plants and mushrooms from the forests of Vancouver Island, the Kootenays, the Rockies, and Central and Northern Alberta.

I’ll be doing some giveaways on social too, but right now I have 2 notecard sets to give away to some lucky newsletter readers! Just send me an email with the name of your favourite indie bookstore/gift store (so that I can add them to my list of great places to visit, but also so I can drop them a note encouraging them to stock my cards), and I’ll draw 2 winners. Shipping is on me, if you’re in Canada or the US.

Thank you so much in advance for your support, I hope you’ll pick some of these up for yourself, or as a gift for someone who loves being out in nature as much as I do. And if you see them out in the wild, please send me a snapshot!

Iceland!

Workshop: Ströndin Studio, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland

I went to Iceland for 2 weeks this spring to take part in Nætursól – NightSun, an alternative processes in photography workshop taught by Dianne Bos and Sarah Fuller of the Institute of Unusual Studies. I spent hours wandering around the most beautiful moss-covered cemetery in Reykjavik, walked through an Arctic Tern colony on the way to see Puffins, and got to meet all kinds of new plant species. I was so lucky to be part of an amazing cohort of very talented and inspiring artists, and the setting was gorgeous, with the studio right at the water’s edge on the fjord. We made lumen prints, cyanotypes, anthotypes, and I built a multi-aperture pinhole camera out of a cardboard box and a pop can, that after much trial and error I got working on the last day of the workshop. At the end of the week we put on an open studio day and invited the locals to come see an exhibition of all the work we had made during the workshop.

Lumen prints with seaweed: plants are dipped into a solution of water, washing soda, and vitamin C, arranged on black and white photo paper, and exposed to the sun. These prints aren’t developed in the darkroom, they just go into a fixer bath. I loved this process, and can’t wait to explore this more on my trips to the east and west coasts this year.

Winter Garden cyanotypes: my sister Helen wrote an epic post-apocalyptic poem about a lone human living in a greenhouse, tending to the few remaining plants that are clinging to life. I’ve wanted to make a visual art version of this piece for years, and have tried all kinds of iterations, but this year I got my hands on a boxful of old gardening manuals at the CBC Reads book sale, and brought some pages along to experiment with during the workshop. The poem, along with pressed garden plants, contact printed using cyanotype onto these pages, finally feels like the right direction.

Here’s my multi-aperture pinhole camera at work! One of our instructors, Dianne Bos, is an expert pinhole photographer, so I was lucky to have her advice and expertise on building and troubleshooting this. I’ll be building more of these cameras over the next year, using the patterns of holes that bark beetles pierce in tree bark as the guide for the pinholes, and photographing some of Northern Alberta’s forests that have been subject to huge beetle outbreaks.

Our end-of-workshop open studio exhibition, featuring work made by the workshop attendees, with all the cameras we built displayed on the table in the centre.

On now: ‘For the Birds’ June 16 - Oct 15

If you find yourself in Banff this summer or fall, stop in at the Whyte Museum to see a group exhibition that I’m part of, where 6 lightboxes from a recently completed project ‘it must look beautiful from up there’ are being shown for the first time. I’ve been documenting birds that have died as a result of window strikes in Calgary for several years now, and each of these prints is a high-resolution scan of one of these birds, pierced by hand using city maps as a template, mounted in a lightbox so the light shines through the holes. You can read more about the work here.

I was fortunate to receive a grant from Calgary Arts Development to complete this project, which meant I was able to not only have Resolve Photo do the prints (which I do with all my work) but I could also have them build these wonderful lightboxes. They did a ton of troubleshooting behind the scenes that went into making these pieces look great, so these tuned out so much better than anything I would have been able to build!

I also have to say a huge thank you to all my fellow volunteers at Calgary Urban Species Response Team, especially co-founder and program coordinator Kathleen Johnson. Volunteers patrol downtown Calgary during spring and fall migration and collect these deceased birds (and ensure that any injured birds are rushed to a qualified wildlife rehabber), and without their work and Kathleen’s support I’d never be able to document all of these birds.

Upcoming show: Hearth Gallery, Bowen Island

A reminder to save the date, everyone! I’ll be exhibiting my work at The Hearth Gallery on Bowen Island, BC (just a quick ferry ride from Vancouver) from Sept 27th to Oct 9th, 2023. I’m sharing the gallery with another very talented artist, Lydia Miller, who creates wonderful sculptural pieces using natural materials. The opening night Artist pArty (Lydia and I will be in attendance) is Sept 30th from 6-8pm - if you’re in the area I hope you’ll come by and say hello! Prints in this exhibition will be available for purchase through The Hearth.

Upcoming show: Miller Art Gallery at the Roxy, Edmonton AB

Edmontonians please mark your calendars, I’ll be having an exhibition in the Miller Art Gallery at the newly rebuilt Roxy Theatre from Oct 12 - Nov 16th, 2023. The opening will be held on October 12th and I will be there to answer questions and chat about the pros and cons of spending time in the forest (just kidding, it’s all pros). More details to come!

Thanks for reading! You can also follow along on instagram for updates, and find my work in person at Christine Klassen Gallery in Calgary. See you in the forest!

-Julya