Fibre Farm began with the dreamwork to use art as a pathway to increase relation to the land. Fibre Farm is committed to centering Skwxwu7mesh knowledge and practices, and is honoured to bring T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss on as Lead Artist for the design of the garden and the delivery of ongoing public programs.
Thanks to funding from Island Coastal Economic Trust and the BC Arts Council, Fibre Farm is a new placemaking project that includes an artist residency space, textile + fibre garden, and an outdoor gathering space for installations, teachings, and workshops. Under guidance from Cease Wyss, we will center Indigenous land-based programming and arts practices, and provide opportunities for the broader community to learn how knowledge connects to and comes from land, water and sky and all their relations.
T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss is an Indigenous Matriarch of the Skwxwu7mesh, Sto:lo and Hawaiian people. Through their work as an ethnobotanist, artist, activist and community-based educator, they strive to share Indigenous customs, teachings, and futures and to connect Indigenous peoples. Wyss’s thirty-year career encompasses a vast array of practices, from weaving, making remedies, medicine walks to the realm of Indigenous Digital Futurisms. Cease maintains a practice to decolonize their life and their art by learning about their culture and using traditions practiced by their ancestors. This is witnessed in their recent exploration of cultural weaving using materials traditionally used by Salish People such as red and yellow cedar, Salish Woolly dog fibre, stinging nettles, and fireweed fluff. Furthermore, their current community teachings and research is focused on restoring and remediating Indigenous species and natural space by encouraging others to build their Indigenous food forests and to nurture local biodiversity respectfully and sustainably and respectfully.
As an Indigenous led project, Cease will be guiding the remediation of a marshland on Skwxwu7mesh territory at the Persephone community and beer farm. This is a multi-year project that will unfold in response to the patterns of seasons and harvests, beginning in 2025. “The land will always teach us what we need to go forward in our lives”- Cease Wyss https://tuyttanatceasewyss.ca
Access and Disability Justice:
“Fibre Farm is motivated by community, connection to land, art, and accessibility. By creating textile and fibre based art, this project will bring together these intersections and build community around them.”- Megan Dewar. Megan Dewar (Meg she/her), a femme physically disabled white settler and mosaic artist is coordinating access on this project. This project has deep roots in disability justice and accessibility by creating access to public art whilst taking into account individual & community needs. Megan Dewar, the Sunshine Coast Art Centre, and the Cinder Circle Collective will be designing and building an accessible infrastructure including a pathway, deck, gathering area, garden, and viewing platform to enable inclusive, accessible, and participatory engagement.
Colonization and Abelism have introduced systems and structures that distance people from land, by becoming close- as close as the clothing we wear and the fabrics we hold- we can resist the structures and strengthen relation with the land. “Often there is separation in the experience of disability and connection to the land, it is empowering to be part of a project that aligns to disability justice and indigenous ways of knowing to bring together these experiences.” States Megan Dewar. Meg brings her lived experience of disability, work in the arts sector, her own arts practice, accessibility consultation, and passion for community based projects to coordinate access with the Fibre Farm project. https://www.coastreporter.net/local-arts/sunshine-coast-mosaic-artist-megan-dewar-shapes-beauty-from-breakage-11199820
Fibre and Textile Practices
A theme of this project will be fibre and textile-based art practices, involving processing natural material from the land around us and making art from removed invasive species. By hand processing natural materials, we will be activating multiple sensory experiences, increasing the ways to engage with art. The interpretation of the practices that connect with natural materials is expansive, we imagine the Fibre Farm being home to practices ranging from ink and papermaking to drawing, illustration, photography, weaving, dyeing, fiber processing, writing, sound and film. As we directly work with materials from the land “We will weave stories, songs, cultural elements and earth / water /sky together as community”- Cease Wyss’s states to illustrate the work that will be done at the Fibre Farm.
Community
Located on Squamish territory, the Fibre Farm will exist on site with the Persephone community and beer farm https://www.persephonebrewing.com/barley-1. The Persephone is a pillar of community and sustainability on the Sunshine Coast. By hosting regular events, including weekly live music, a farmer’s market, and trivia nights; the Persephone has a vibrant and bustling atmosphere. They have a commitment to inclusion and diversity which has enabled them to become recognized as a safer space for many community groups to feel welcome at, including a local weaving, knitting, and textile art group who steward a textile and tool ‘share shelf’ at the Persephone to encourage others to participate. The Sunshine Coast Arts Council is excited to be partnered with the Persephone to host the Fibre Farm, as well as the Tiny Studio art residency project which is another Sunshine Coast Arts Council initiative also located on site and partnered with the Persephone. The Tiny Studio is an opportunity for local artists to take up an art residency and market place in a beautiful 100sqft, trailer-mounted mobile artist studio thanks to Click Homes. The Tiny Studio is a space for artists to work on their practices among the natural environment, and engage with community at the Persephone. To find out more about this project, including how to participate, please visit LINK.
The Fibre Farm will extend the community building work of the Persephone. The project will involve the collaboration of many community partners including (but not limited to!) Persephone Brewing, Sunshine Coast Fibreshed, Red Cedar Woman Weaving, Sunshine Coast Spinners + Weavers, Sunshine Coast Tourism, Sunshine Coast Arts Council, Cinder Circle Collective, and Salish Soils. Another valued contributor could be you! The Fibre Farm will be inviting the public into this project, under the guidance of Cease Wyss remediating the pond will be an opportunity for the community to participate in Squamish reclamation work. Additionally the Fibre Farm will be a gathering space that will welcome people to listen, learn, and connect to the land. “Community Engaged projects are built by all of those willing to participate in the work that will become part of their communities. “- Cease Wyss.
