From Harm to Harmony: Healing the Land, Healing Ourselves
My artistic practice has evolved through my work with the Conservation Council’s, From Harm to Harmony Artist Collaborative. From Harm to Harmony: Healing the Land, Healing Ourselves is my second group exhibition. This exhibition features work by artists across New Brunswick of varied skills and experience with a unified desire to address the environmental emergency. Our work aims to change the story of the nature and climate crises from one of despair, worry, and loss to one of hope, love, and action.
Inspiring Action and Building Community
Throughout this collaborative project, I was able to explore other mediums by participating in this unique collaborative process. Come Home- We Are Kin is a collaborative text-based installation, music, and video production that involved artists from across Canada who met regularly online to discuss how their art could change narratives and mobilize climate action.
Come Home - An Ancient Forest Lullaby is the soundtrack of this video that resulted from several online sessions hosted in late 2021 as a collaborative musical piece co-created by passionate artist activists across Canada. The lullaby represents the point of view of the Ancient Mother trees, themselves, as they guide Earth’s children (all humans) through the wise words they wish to share about protecting them. This empathetic creative process began with collaborative lyric-writing sessions, where Laura led participants from BC and NB , including Karine Cormier, Kaitlyn Gillis, Danielle Manuel, Heather Marmura, Clara Shandler, Kristin Singh, Dana Sipos, & Danielle Smith in narrative and poetic activities which were ultimately woven together into verse form for the lyrics. Victoria-based singer/songwriter, Dana Sipos brings her deeply soulful vocals to this haunting acapella lullaby, composed by Laura. The lyrics are set to a five-layered vocal accompaniment which represents the mycelium (fungi) layer of interconnected communication that occurs beneath the ancient forest’s soil. Each layer includes either a 1,2,3,5, or 8 syllable word from the co-created lyrics. And the b flat minor melody also uses the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 8th notes of its scale. A true team effort throughout, the final product was expertly mixed by producer Ben McClelland, and mastered by Dan Bereza.
We Are Kin, Come Home- Letter E. A one of a kind handmade mixed media textile piece that captures the diversity and beauty of the forest floor. This piece took over 40 hours of hand-stitched embroidery and felting.
Juliana led the group through arts-based online sessions where participating artists addressed climate change as a "relationship problem" and reflected upon ways to inspire climate action from a relational approach to ecological restoration. This collaborative ideation process resulted in a sentence or declaration that aims to expose the interconnectedness and interdependence of humans, the natural world, and its different ecological systems, inviting people to restore kinship with the land and people as a fundamental principle that will align us around biocentric values. Each artist in their geographic location created a letter, in the sentence Come Home, We Are Kin, using different artistic mediums including encaustic, rug hooking, carving, weaving, knitting, embroidery, wool felting, and more.
The resulting letters are also physically presented as part of the From Harm to Harmony: Healing the Land, Healing Ourselves exhibit at the Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre in Saint Andrews, March 4-26, 2022.