Fifty western Canadian artists are putting their talent where their hearts are in an effort to protect B.C.’s wild and fragile raincoast.
Celebrated artists like Robert Bateman and the Shuswap’s own Gaye Adams, will spend five days capturing the landscapes they believe are threatened by the Northern Gateway pipeline proposed by Enbridge and their international partners.
The talented group includes many First Nations artists. A network of coastal lodges, tour boat operators and water taxis have come on-board, donating travel and accommodation so the artists can explore some of the province’s most remote and spectacular scenery.
Over a period of two weeks, artists will “depict the rich biodiversity and integrated ecological elements of the forest, intertidal and ocean zones and the people, flora and fauna that have lived there for thousands of years” in paintings and carvings, says a Raincoast Conservation Foundation press release.
The event is the brainchild of Tofino artist and biologist Mark Hobson, who helped co-ordinate a similar venture in 1989 that resulted in Carmanah: Artistic Visions of an Ancient Rainforest.
The book drew international attention to the Carmanah Valley and led to permanent protection of the area.
Art created during the upcoming event will be included in a book – Canada’s Raincoast at Risk: Art for an Oil-Free Coast, scheduled to be published this fall.
The original artworks donated by participating artists will become part of a travelling art show to raise public awareness of what is at stake on B.C.’s spectacular coast and why it must be protected.
Adams says she met Hobson about five years ago at the Bamfield Marine Science Centre and recently joined him on a weeklong kayaking-painting excursion in the Gulf Islands.
“I didn’t have a great understanding of what was going on, but Mark explained to me how treacherous the waters are that the supertankers would go through, tankers that would cause a disaster much greater than the Exxon Valdez,” says Adams. “I caught the bug.”
On June 18, Adams will fly to Bella Bella, then travelling by boat to the Hakai Institute, a teaching, research and conference facility on Calvert Island.
The talented artist is very excited about the upcoming trip organized through the Raincoast Conservation Foundation. She sees her art as a tool to bring attention to the need to protesct the area, whose rich biotic zones include Douglas Sound and the Great Bear Rainforest.
Art as a tool was described by noted Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar Marshall McLuahn – “Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.”
Also on Adams’ list of exciting projects for summer 2012, is an exhibition she will hold in the ballroom of the Prestige Resort during the Roots and Blues Festival, which runs Aug. 17 to 19.
