Cole Swanson

Among the Drupes (Elegy for a Wasteland) is an exhibition about the dynamic and vulnerable life story of the accidental, urban wilderness. For eight months, I developed a relationship with the last remaining groves of staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) on the West Toronto Rail Path, an ecology being dismantled for rail expansion and ongoing gentrification. Through video, material process, and installation art, I attempt to reflect on and care for the site’s wayward ecology in which native, invasive, and naturalized species survive together amidst the precarity of our times. Engaging with Frederick H. Varley's field sketches of sumac, and creating a suite of natural materials from the organic, mineral, and human-made constituents of the site, I question how art can move us to bear witness, attend to, and form unlikely kinships within our more-than-human communities.

Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

Exhibition view: Among the Drupes (Elegy for a Wasteland) at the Varley Art Gallery of Markham. Pictured here are site-specific and material process videos centred on the ecological agents of the West Toronto Railpath’s accidental wilderness. Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

Seven videos on five monitors depict the rendering of pigments and art materials used in the exhibition’s mural: staghorn sumac; Virginia creeper; yellow ochre; Coffea arabica (?); grove snail; sumac charcoal, and curly dock chlorophyll. Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

The last remaining grove of staghorn sumacs along the West Toronto Railpath.

A cluster of fruits of staghorn sumac - drupes - are a common sight among females of the species, and provide sustenance for many birds and animals throughout the entire year.

A video installation featuring the seasonal and ecological transformations occuring over an eight-month period greets visitors upon a jewel-toned wall. The systematic devastation of various ecological systems are witnessed throughout the film. Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

A natural-history collection including a botanical sketch by Varley, raw materials, pigment samples, and anthotype prints (chlorophyll and staghorn sumac). Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

Foraging and pigment-making can be understood as a form of forensic ecology; the rendering of colours from plants, animals, and other biotic assemblages tell us stories of life in suffering. I made seven hues from the branches and berries of sumacs, the shells of snails, and mineral colours unearthed by construction crews.

Drupes of the female staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina). High in anthocyanins and tannins as well as vitamin C and essential nutrients for a range of native species, the fuzzy fruits were used to produce a range of inks from deep brown to blood red.

Shells from Cepaea nemoralis, the brown lipped grove snail. Strewn along the path in the thousands, likely dead from the dramatic loss of leaf litter from the clear-cutting of invasive trees, the snail remains contain both organic and inorganic pigments. The resulting paint is fugitive, fading to white as shells are exposed to the elements.

A brief segment from Rhus typhina (carbones) - the process video depicting the transformation of broken sumac branches into charcoal through a process of carbonization.

Goethite, a yellow-ochre mineral pigment unearthed by construction crews excavating earth along the Railpath.

Chlorophyll pigment extracted from Rumex crispus, or curly dock, a non-native and edible plant flourishing along the Railpath.

Red ink made from the berries of staghorn sumac.

Seven colour samples from organic, inorganic, and carbonized pigments.

Composed of creaturely colours from those entangled in the Railpath’s multispecies ecology, dozens of drupes were painted in the studio on watercolour paper, like field studies from memory to become integrated into the installation.

Using an unlikely palette made from the remains of invasive, introduced, and native species, I resurrected the Railpath grove and its graffiti backdrop in the gallery. The stag’s horns of the sumac protect and seduce us. Their chlorophyll ink leaves were the first to fade and disappear, as they do in nature. Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

A brief glimpse of the virtual exhibition tour of "Among the Drupes (Elegy for a Wasteland)" by Cole Swanson, 2023. Presented by the Varley Art Gallery of Markham.

Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

“Among the Drupes (Elegy for a Wasteland)” is an exhibition about grief and renewal. Horticulturalist Lynn Short and I went guerilla gardening, and transported 21 saplings from the contaminated earth of the Railpath to the protected grounds of the Varley Art Gallery of Markham.

Four plots of staghorn sumac saplings were transplanted from the contaminated soils of the West Toronto Railpath to the grounds of the Varley Art Gallery of Markham. A clonal plant, the sumac produces genetically-identical saplings based on a rhizomal root system. In this manner, the original plants were given an opportunity to thrive beyond the limits presented by the Railpath. Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

The graffiti featured throughout the Railpath are the aesthetic kin of the wayward species flourishing along the trail.

Iconography from the graffiti Railpath gallery were painted into a multi-perspective arrangement to provide a psychic space akin to wandering among the margins of the path.

Varley, F.H. Flower of the Staghorn Sumach. n.d. Charcoal on paper. 25.0cm x 9.4cm. Collection of the Varley Art Gallery of Markham.

Four works featuring staghorn sumac by Frederick Varley, recently acquired by the Varley Art Gallery of Markham, have been integrated into the multispecies ecology of the Railpath through the installation of framed works and image re-creations painted in sumac-based inks and charcoal.

Sketch by F.H. Varley (right) integrated into the installation.

Within the mural’s expanse, tiny moments were interspersed including taxonomical referents and insect/gastropod specimens.

Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

Image by Toni Hafkenscheid

Rhizomal root structures are depicted here in yellow ochre pigments as an acknowledgement of how the sumacs proliferate laterally, enriched in pigmented soils found within the site’s post-industrial earth.

The surviving saplings on the gallery grounds are situated in four plots near Toogood Pond in Markham. I acknowledge the kindness and support from employees of the Varley Art Gallery of Markham and the City of Markham grounds staff who have cared for the saplings in my absence.

This exhibition has been presented through the support of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and York University.

The Hissing Folly looks at Durham Region’s ecological landscape and poses critical questions around human relationships with those deemed ‘invasive species’, specifically phragmites (European common reed). The project embodies the colonial, consumer, and cultural systems as agents for the passage of phragmites from Europe to North America, reflecting on the dissonance between the generative and destructive capacities of organisms mediated by human values and activities.

With the guidance of the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority (CLOCA), a collaborative harvest was conducted for the removal of invasive phragmites from the Thickson’s Woods Land Trust in Durham Region. A team of community volunteers assembled over two full-day sessions to clear over 1.5 acres of reeds from a biologically-sensitive marshland. The material was ethically removed, stored, and dried for use in the thatched Loft Gallery installation.

Special thanks to Diana Shermet (CLOCA) and Margaret Carney (Thickson’s Woods Land Trust) for their support.

Photo by Jamie A. McMillan

The final piece is a pyramidal folly, thatched with common reed in the reverse as a nod to the absurdity of the phragmites story in North America. A folly is a functionless architectural form that was popularized in the UK in the 18th century. The piece establishes the connection between folly-building and the transmission of phragmites from England to the east coast of Canada via colonial trade.

The production crew for The Hissing Folly includes assistance by: Fraser Smith (phragmites removal); Eliot Callahan (building); Harry Knight (thatching); Peter Swanson, Andrew Herron, Sarah May Taylor and Karun Ramani (material handling and transport); and Robert Shortill (sound engineering).

The interior of the folly is filled with the sound of dense phragmites reeds blowing in the wind. Field recordings from Thickson’s Woods oscillate in a circular sound installation around the patron. The darkened interior emulates that of the phragmites patch, the density of which prevents sunlight from reaching the organisms below. The sound of rushing reeds is haunting, as the richness of a biodiverse soundscape is notably absent in the installation.

The phragmites-colonized marsh at Thickson’s Woods, Whitby. Photo by Cole Swanson.

The community harvest included a team of volunteers to remove and bundle reeds into yelms - a traditional form employed over centuries in thatching practices throughout the UK.

Photos by Jamie A. McMillan

Post-harvest reed-clearance, Thickson’s Woods, Whitby. Photo by Cole Swanson.

Reed yelms drying in the VAC Loft Gallery, December, 2019.

The yelm horses included in the exhibition were employed in the field to contain and bundle reed for transport. Horses designed and built by Harry Knight.

Hammering thatched reed in the inverse - a nod to the concept of human folly. Should the structure be relocated outdoors, rain water would be captured and delivered into the folly’s interior.

Photo by Harry Knight.

Photo by Harry Knight.

The total height of the folly is over 15 feet - the same height that invasive phragmites can grow in Canada. Without other organisms competing with it, phragmites in North America grow far taller and more densely than in the United Kingdom.

The screening space for The Hissing Folly film, which traces the entire production of the artwork. Opposite the film is a library of reading materials on phragmites, sustainable ecologies, and other environmental publications provided by the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority.

The Hissing Folly film, by Jamie A. McMillan

Photo by Cole Swanson.

Photo by Cole Swanson.

BUT A THICK GROWTH OF WHISPERING REEDS BEGAN TO SPRING UP THERE,

AND THESE, WHEN AT THE YEAR'S END THEY CAME TO THEIR FULL SIZE,

BETRAYED THE SOWER,

FOR, STIRRED BY THE GENTLE BREEZE,

THEY REPEATED HIS BURIED WORDS

OVID, METAMORPHOSES

BOOK X1: ON THE DEATH OF MIDAS

Film and editing by Jamie A. McMillan

Sixth Meditation, hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli paper, 2020, 9.5” x 7”

Minerality (installation view, north wall), Paul Petro Contemporary Art, 2021.

Thirteenth Meditation, hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli paper, 2021, 6” x 5”

Eleventh Meditation, hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli paper, 2020, 6” x 5”

Fine line work has been applied using the squirrel hair brushes (gileri qalam) favoured by Mughal and Rajput miniaturists. While particular works are rendered on a very small scale, the works vary in size and are classified as ‘miniatures’ in name only as a nod to the tradition and the nomenclature associated with the evolution of the art form.

Sentry, hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli paper, 2021, 25” x 15”

Fourteenth Meditation, hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli paper, 2021, 6” x 5”

Twelfth Meditation, hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli paper, 2020, 6” x 5”

Minerality (installation view, north and east walls), Paul Petro Contemporary Art, 2021.

A restricted palette of hand-prepared mineral colours has been applied to wasli, a traditional, multi-layered paper. The seven pigments comprised of iron oxides, bone black, chalk white, red ochre, and terre verte green have been sourced from local and international deposits and were hand-bound with natural binders. Each colour is kept in an oyster shell in the traditional manner.

Sixteenth Meditation, hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli paper, 2021, 10.5” x 7.5”

Seventeenth Meditation, hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli paper, 2021, 6” x 6”

Fifteenth Meditation, hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli, 2021, 15.25” x 7”

Fourth Meditation (detail), Hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli, 2020, 20” x 32”, 2020

Fifth Meditation, hand-prepared mineral colours on wasli paper, 2020, 10.25” x 5.5”

Minerality has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

This piece explores the complex issues around introduced species through a comparative examination of two bees of the same genus – Megachile rotundata (alfalfa leafcutter bees) and Megachile sculpturalis (giant resin bees). The artwork integrates and subverts multiple knowledge systems to unpack biases in favour of and against these organisms as they reflect value systems based on science, commerce, environment, and aesthetics.

Megachile Alienus is the first solo-artist iteration of the Emergent Gallery. The gallery shell was modified through architectural, sculptural, optical, and media interventions to produce a complex artwork in a small-scale and portable space.

Disarticulated M. sculpturalis, Female.

Patrons access the artwork through multiple entry points, which include magnification lenses, peepholes, and dioramas. Through optical bending, the interior space expands to the scale of a massive art gallery, featuring objects, images, and video installation.

The artwork was featured in the ACM Creativity & Cognition Conference Exhibition hosted at the Sala del Camino in Venice, Italy. The Sala del Camino is a late 15th-Century Benedictine Monastic complex on the island of Guidecca.

Installation view: Cities of the Future, Creativity & Cognition Exhibition, Sala del Camino, 2022. Curated by Silvia Casini.

Megachile Alienus is a comparative examination of two introduced bee species that have a complex presence in both Toronto, Canada and Venice, Italy. M. rotundata (left) - alfalfa leafcutter bees - are highly desirable for their ability to pollinate blueberries, alfalfa, and other crops more effectively than other bees. Conversely, M. sculpturalis (right) is considered a nuisance, encroaching on the habitats of native bee species and offering no apparent value to humans. Their scale, aesthetic, and formal differences, as well as their origins (M. rotundata, Europe and M. sculpturalis, Asia) contribute meaningfully to the social imagination around these organisms.

The raw form of the Emergent Gallery was transformed into two chambers - an interior space to house and contain M. sculpturalis and an exterior space to openly display M. rotundata. Modifications were structural, optical, sculptural, and colour-based.

Photo: Building assistant Jacob Sun fits two magnification lenses into the gallery lid.

The newly transformed gallery is fitted with four visual access points for the M. sculpturalis display, which included two spotlit magnification lenses for viewing specimens, and two peepholes to access the interior space and video projection within.

M. sculpturalis (giant resin bee), Male (left), and Female (right). Photo courtesy of the Packer Lab, Dr. Laurence Packer, York University.

The interior chamber of the gallery features an installation meditating on the social construction of the M. sculpturalis (giant resin bee) as a species of concern. Already large compared to specimens of M. rotundata, male and female sculpturalis specimens are magnified three times their size, spotlit in cool, white light and positioned to reveal their characteristic jaws. The effect is akin to the science fiction representation of alien organisms.

The interior of the gallery is fitted with scientific illustrations, data visualizations, and a video projection grounded by botanical clippings from the pine forest nearby in Venice where giant resin bees can be found. Since sculpturalis is imagined as invasive, evil, or destructive, the containment and interrogation of the species are dominant themes in this part of the exhibition.

A deconstructed female sculpturalis specimen is displayed in the right magnification lens. Its disarticulated form relates to the video installation that is featured in the peepholes.

Collaborators Roberta Buiani (left) and Ilze Briede (right) fit the gallery with media components.

A two-minute looping video projection illuminates the gallery interior. The piece is reminiscent of the 1995 Area 51 alien autopsy video, a celebrated hoax. Here, science and science fiction are combined to upend the stability of truth and fiction around this introduced bee.

Left: Video still from Megachile Alienus (Cole Swanson, 2022)

Right: Video still from The Alien Autopsy (Ray Santilli, 1995)

The embossed exterior of the Emergent Gallery has been fitted with a 24 carat gold panel as a reference to the history of gilding in Venice, as well the material’s association with bees, honey, and empire.

The second chamber of the gallery is an exposed and illuminated diorama based on an exploration of M. rotundata (alfalfa leafcutter bees). Unlike the giant resin bee, M. rotundata is highly prized for its pollinating abilities and therefore need not be contained.

M. rotundata (alfalfa leafcutter bee), Male (left), and Female (right). Photo courtesy of the Packer Lab, Dr. Laurence Packer, York University.

The discovery of M. rotundata’s ability to trigger pollination mechanisms in certain crops has lead to the growing practice of leafcutter bee farming. Research has shown that high contrast mark-making - like script and geometric designs - assist bees in spatial orientation when locating their specific nesting holes. The bee board installed in the piece is representative of its taxonomical distinction and preferred nest hole size and arrangement.

Photo (right): Alfalfa leafcutter bee board, Matt Mikus, MPR News, 2018.

The grounds at the Sala del Camino were alight with various pollinators, and included a solitary bee hotel which may provide M. rotundata and M. sculpturalis space to breed on its grounds.

With its capitalist and near-mythological identity in mind, I gilt eight specimens of M. rotundata in 24 carat gold leaf, illuminating the structures of their wings, abdomens, and legs. Each specimen was pinned onto the bee board with an accompanying glyph based on the original specimen label.

Specimens provided by Dr. Laurence Packer, York University.

Based on research suggesting that bees like M. rotundata can navigate based on high-contrast, geometric shapes, the specimen labels have been deconstructed and re-designed to better suit the bee’s ability to distinguish form. The result is a new form of taxonomical label that combines both human and animal aesthetics. A nod to Dr. Laurence Packer - the mellitologist who both supported the project and collected many of the specimens therein - is apparent in the first specimen label.

I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable support of this project:

Dr. Laurence Packer (York University), Roberta Buiani (ArtSci Salon, University of Toronto), Ilze Briede (York University), Lorella Di Cintio (University of Toronto), Silvia Casini (ACM Curator), Camilla Salvaneschi (Assistant Curator), Jacob Sun (Builder), and Spencer Barclay (Designer).

Emergent: Megachile Alienus was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Whimsical imagery resulting from interactions between pigments and water forms the structure of the piece, gathering high in the room, evoking both the earth and the clouds above it.

Through automatic processes of image creation, organic forms emerge, clash, and coalesce, revealing cloud-like universes filled with animals, plant-forms, and hybrid grotesques. The artwork references ornate wallpaper designs common in the early years of the hotel’s history, while drawing from folk-style mural painting and vintage illustration. The clashing of styles reflects the different periods through which the hotel has operated.

The palette includes a range of hues expressed by iron oxides and other elemental influences. In addition to ochres in muted greens, yellows, and reds, a cool grey-blue pigment was isolated from green shale. Finally, roasting a deep brown soil sample produced a rich, smokey umber.

Three hues found in Toronto’s High Park, a glacial ravine rich in pigmented sands.

Curing earth samples.

Six refined pigments became the foundation for the hand-bound painting palette used in the mural.

Built in the Romanesque Revival style, the Gladstone House has been in operation since 1889 and features a range of decorative flourishes including foliage, filigree, and fantastical beasts upon its surfaces, finishes, and exterior columns.

Apart from earthen sources, a new pigment – Gladstone Red – was rendered from bricks used in the original construction of the hotel building (Left).

Hand-bound paints were applied loosely and organically to the walls, wetted to allow the hues to interact and influence one another (Right). After all six pigments were applied, the forms were illuminated in black ink with quick, gestural strokes.

Romanesque window columns, with their drooping acanthus leaves, provided inspiration for the kinds of imagery that would emerge on the walls.

Two paintings rendered through the same process as the mural hang as a diptych behind the guest bed.

Study For Terra Nimbus #1 (left); Study for Terra Nimbus #2 (right). Locally foraged, hand-rendered mineral colours on cotton rag paper, 24” x 24” each, 2021.

Hidden on one of the walls is the image of a cormorant, a signature in some form, buried among the plumes.

The exhibition examines the material connections between humans and cormorants as demonstrated by the birds’ collection of non-biodegradable waste materials. Devil’s Colony is a recreation of the nesting site and its dramatic shifts in ecological activity. The work transports patrons into the heart of the colony to bear witness to the complex lives of a burgeoning species at a critical sociocultural and political moment. Through this intimate, material encounter, Devil’s Colony attempts to promote curiosity and empathy to consider the manifold relationships we share with other agents in the natural world.

Spit Spectre, C-print, 48” x 32”, 2019, documentation by Jamie McMillan

Toronto’s Leslie Spit boasts North America’s - and perhaps the world’s - largest colony of double crested cormorants, an ancient group of highly adaptable water birds that thrive in diverse environmental conditions. The annual nesting site is situated on a human-made parkland comprised of backfill waste deposited outward over decades from Toronto’s lakeshore. Known colloquially as the 'devil bird,' cormorants numbering in the tens of thousands in colonies across the Great Lakes have attracted significant media attention for their apparent destruction of green space and commercial fish populations. Cormorants have been reviled in non-Indigenous western cultures from biblical times onward through intergenerational biases based largely on cultural beliefs. After populations were decimated throughout the 20th century from exposure to chemicals like DDT, their rebounding numbers owe much to the conservation efforts of the scientific community.

Colony, Southwest Capture, C-print, 59” x 24”, 2019

The Blind is an installation artwork that recreates the scientific observation blind within which environmental researchers are able to observe the world’s largest colony of double-crested cormorants at Toronto’s Tommy Thompson Park.

The Blind, Mixed media, video, and field recording (double-crested cormorant colony), 9’ x 20’ x 5’, at Hamilton Artists Inc, 2019.

DCC Nest Samples is a photographic series of nests made by the cormorants at Leslie Spit. They point to the presence of anthropogenic materials in the colony, providing a glimpse into the after-life of commonplace materials.

DCC Nest Samples, C-print on cotton rag, series of 71, 20” x 20” each, 2019.

For Devil’s Colony, photos were installed in a manner that recalls the arrangement of cormorant nests at the Leslie Spit Colony.

Spit Spectre is a speculative performance artwork that muses on time, materiality, and interspecies relationships in the anthropocene. A being composed of materials found within the colony nests, it stalks the site in perpetuity.

Spit Spectre (performance), video installation, 43 minutes, documented by Jamie McMillan, 2019.

Spit Spectre (sculpture), human and cormorant-foraged materials, textiles, PVC, and earth, 72” x 32” x 34”, 2019.

Special thanks to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) for site access and information on the colony, and to environmental biologist Dr. Gail Fraser for her mentorship and support throughout the project. Devil’s Colony has been supported by the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Over time, the mineral rich paint will interact with the bacteria, fungi, lichens, mosses, and other organisms to influence new forms of growth and transform in appearance before being processed back into the earth below.

Iron-rich pigments in the form of yellows, oranges, browns, and reds provide minerals required by lichen species.

Prior to the painting of its surface, the rock-wall showcases subtle, but diverse colonies of microflora.

The Higher Pyrenees region where the village of Farrera sits is a biodiverse mountain-range that divides Catalonia and France.

Farrera is a Romanesque village that boasts centuries-old architectural forms. The town derives its name from the Catalan word for ‘iron,’ aptly titled for the colour-rich minerals found in the mountains.

Local rock-deposits produce a wide-range of mineral pigments in quantities large enough to manufacture paint. Here, a purple-brown variant of iron-oxide has been harvested, filtered, and bound to produce a water-soluble paint.

Farrera is home to a metallic pigment derived from graphite schist. The result is a soft and supple paint that has a deep lustre.

In total, eight pigments were isolated to create a spectrum of colours from which the living mural was produced.

The mountain-side path is frequented by locals in daytime and evening trips. Depicted here are images of the mural seen by torchlight.

I would like to acknowledge the support of the Centre d’Art i Natura in Farrera for providing me with the opportunity to study local pigments over the course of a research residency. The Centre provided the lodgings, studio space, and resources required to support all stages of this project. A special thanks to Lluís Llobet and family for their generosity, engagement, and kindness.

Monument is the culmination of a five year process of collecting, pinning, and gilding insects found within and around domestic spaces. The use of gold draws attention to the beautiful and complex structures of the insect body - the veins in the wings, the textures of the thorax, the banding on the abdomen.

Arranging them in constellated patterns determined by maps made of the spaces where the bodies are found (light fixtures, window sills, nearby sidewalks, etc.) is a nod to particular relationships between animal science, mythology, economics, ritual, and the cosmos. (Image: Toni Hafkensheid)

Conversely, 'Monument' is an acknowledgement of the agency of the non-human world by drawing attention to the actual species that share and shape human habitats; it demarcates the passage of time shared between seemingly disparate animals - human and insect - to promote empathy and curiosity for the natural world at a critical time in history. (Image: Toni Hafkensheid)

Monument 1, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa

(Image: Toni Hafkensheid)

The second iteration at the Art Gallery of Peterborough (pictured here) included new species collected throughout the course of the traveling project-run.

(Image: Toni Hafkensheid)

Monument Installation, “Glimmers of the Radiant Real,” Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2018 (Image: Sam Mogelonsky).

Terraflora is based on previous projects conducted in Ilhabela, Brazil and Rajasthan, India wherein natural colours were used to illuminate the growth of bacteria, fungi, algae, and lichens upon human-made structures. In this iteration, the artwork evokes those natural processes of growth and deterioration that would befall the hotel if devoid of human intervention.

The motifs painted appear like microflora; spores, moulds, and lichens appear to invade the space, emboldened by gestures, lines, and shapes made of the earth itself. The piece beckons one to consider the fragility of human systems in a natural world undergoing unprecedented change.

Project preview: Terraflora, Cole Swanson, produced by the Gladstone Hotel, 2019.

Photo: Anna Grayson, 2019

Red and green iron oxides, Cheltenham Badlands, Caledon, Ontario

Unrefined pigments exhibit unique behaviours due to composition and interactions with surrounding compounds and atmospheric conditions. The result is a series of colours with distinct textures, opacities, and finishes.

White clay, Bluffer’s Park, Scarborough Bluffs, Toronto

Raw clay sample, Bluffer’s park (left); Bluffer’s Grey made from refined pigment (right).

Scorched earth with gum/honey binder, a flame-oxidized variant of the medium earth pigment, Caledon, Ontario

Scorched earth pigment (mulling)

The Terraflora pigment list includes: i. Cheltenham Green ii. Bluffer’s Grey iii. Cheltenham Red iv. Medium Earth v. Scorched Earth vi. Driftwood Black

Terraflora studio tests, fall 2018.

मिटटी सिटी | Mitti City (or City of Soil) is a collaborative public art project lead by Cole Swanson in Ramganj Bazaar, Jaipur, India. In association with The Open Space Society (TOSS), Uday-Waldorf Inspired School of Jaipur, and Contree, community members of various ages illuminated the biological activity on an historic rooftop in Jaipur’s old city.

Using only unrefined, locally harvested mineral colours, the bacteria, lichen, moulds, and fungi proliferating upon the rooftop’s surface were traced over a two-day period. The artwork muses on the agency of earthen media in forming and transforming the spaces in which human beings live.

Ramganj Bazaar is an historic, culturally complex community found within the walled city of Jaipur.

The untreated space exhibits a range of growth by various colonies of microflora offering an engaging opportunity to examine acutely the myriad of ways biological activity might transform a centuries-old stone substrate.

After an artist talk on past projects (Lecanora Muralis) and workshops in paint preparation and colour application, approximately thirty five community members responded to the biological activity present on the site using unrefined pigments designed to interact with microflora and dissolve/dissipate over time.

Photo credits: Hitesh Adwani, Megha Bhatnagar, Cole Swanson

Photo credit: Hitesh Adwani

Vendors within Jaipur’s walled city markets provided regionally-harvested pigments from local minerals.

The mineral colours used in Mitti City include Indian red (हिरमिच), red ochre (लाल गेरुआ), burnt sienna (गेरु), yellow ochre (पीला गेरुआ), and chalk white (सफेदा).

Photo credit: Hitesh Adwani

Held in July, 2018, the project elapsed during the monsoon period in Jaipur. Light rains amplified colours before washing them away.

At the close of the two-day painting performance, heavy monsoon rains flooded the site demarcating the culmination of the collaborative artwork.

A site specific installation made up of painted cut-outs from wasli and watercolour paper, The Furrow, The Froth examines the capacity for natural materials to determine form and engage aesthetic empathy.

The pigments chosen for the artwork evoke mythologies associated with furrows and fields. Cattle bone char (bone black) and various copper and iron oxide-based colours make up a limited palette of earthen hues.

Animal bone and earth pigments bound in gum arabic interact with and transform one another on hand-made, water-soaked substrates.

Once cut free from their supports, each shape contributes to a site-determined installation brimming with organic forms.

In each iteration of the artwork, new relationships between forms are achieved through automatic approaches to installation. The result is a mutable artwork that inhabits each space differently.

The linear organization of the installation at Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi evokes genealogies, script, musical systems, and notions of cause and effect.

For the first iteration of the artwork, a customary, ceremonial lamp was lit at the Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi. Special thanks to Dr. Rekha Bhatnagar for her guidance and organization of the project, and to Dr. Ashwin M. Dalvi (Chairman) and Shri. Vinay Sharma (Exhibition Officer) of Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi for their generous support.

Colony is a study on the relationship between urban development, green-space construction, and animal colony habitation. This piece examines animal activity in Tommy Thompson Park including its massive population of double crested cormorants. A human-made space, the park hosts a highly intensified bird colony that has significant impacts on the area’s tree growth. Local researchers have worked tirelessly to introduce the colony to ground nesting sites, achieving notable success and averting plans to cull birds.

The soundscape of the shorebird colony has been captured and relocated to the historic chimney (1906) at the brickworks, a space wherein another bird species – chimney swifts – inhabits en masse in the warmer months. Through sound and interaction, Colony attempts to embody the complex issue of land use, population growth, and species cohabitation in a rapidly changing environment.

Double crested cormorant colony, Tommy Thompson Park, photo: Cole Swanson., 2018.

This video produced by the TRCA in partnership with Crazy Dames and Evergreen focuses on the research questions and methods undertaken to realize Colony for the Living City Exhibition. Video by Jamie McMillan, 2017. 

For the installation, the inner chamber of the chimney was cleared and re-lined with brick made from the historic kilns of the Evergreen Brickworks. This provided a sound chamber that allowed field recordings to travel up into a 200 foot vertical space, and out the front gates to where the public would encounter the work. 

Colony, evening phase

Colony, daylight phase

Field photograph, Tree-nesting cormorants, Leslie Spit, Toronto, 2017.

Historic chimney gate redesign process; images from field photography shot of the nesting colony have been transformed into the laser-cut steel gate frames and fitted permanently into the brick facade of the chimney. 

The steel frame has been reinforced by an oxidized copper mesh. The organic design of the expanded copper metal recalls the form of feathers and the blue-green colour is a reference to the striking hues of the cormorant's eyes and inner beak.  

Historic chimney, the Children's Garden, Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto. 

The artwork demonstrates the transformative and generative forces at play as nature reclaims human-made structures. The piece is titled after one of many specific lichen found -  muralis - named after the aesthetic qualities inherent to the organism's growth cycle. 

Pigments were harvested from the island along the shoreline and the interior of the jungle. Bright red, orange, yellow, and lavendar ochres were processed from island soils. Bone black pigment, rendered from charred bovine bones - a by-product of the Brazilian cattle farming industry - supplement the earth palette. Without a binder present, the mural will slowly deteriorate as natural weather and biological systems interact with the wall surface. 

Close inspection of the work reveals the multitude of species colonizing the wall surface. Micro-organisms feeding on organic material support more complex species in inhabiting the wall's architecture.

The untreated wall demonstrates a wealth of organic activity.

Harvesting raw sienna pigment (with Hannah the dog) from Ilhabela's coastline.

Indian red, yellow and lavender ochres processed from soil found in the jungle interior.

Yellow ochre pigments are harvested from rich clay deposits, ground, processed, and tested.

The state of Sao Paulo is rich in iron oxide soils that are harvested for a variety of industrial purposes. 

Ninety days after its completion, the mural demonstrates aesthetic changes likely due to weather conditions, seasonal shifts, and biological processes between the microflora and the iron-rich media used in the painting. (Image: Tamar Granovsky)

Sacred Bone, latex paint on glass, Unilever Detergent Factory, 2017. 

Believed by ancient Greeks and Romans to be the seat of the soul, the sacrum has been fashioned as an icon for the exhibition, a window through which the world outside of the factory can be contemplated. The city skyline, public infrastructure, industrial architecture, and spartan wild growth can be viewed through different sections of the installation. The work offers a counterpoint to the interior space of the factory in which cattle byproducts were processed to create the detergent soap exported by the Unilever company. 

Image courtesy of Sandra Osonjik, 2017

He was a thing (left), Pastorale Bovinae (Day and Night, centre and right), and Sacred Bone (centre right). 

Pastorale Bovinae (Night), cattle horn, wood, steel, paint, and field recordings.

This piece positions the listener as a bovine individual wherein multi-layered soundscapes of the cattle world emanates from the hollow horn crusts of a previously slaughtered animal. In this iteration, an evening soundscape produces sounds from insects, owls, distant trains, and the rhythmic sounds of cattle breathing. 

A selection of abstractions in cattle bone char pigment (Bone Black, right) appear as meditations on the offcuts of animal industries. 

Pastorale Bovinae (Day), 2017

Daytime soundscapes of cattle fields provide listeners with punctuated auditory experiences of buzzing flies, crickets, grasshoppers, crows, far-off automobiles, overhead airplanes, and the wind. 

He was a thing, Spray paint text installation on factory drum, sound installation (cattle lowing), 2017. 

He was a thing beckons viewers to circumambulate an industrial drum, filled with remnant detergent material from the bygone days of the Unilever factory. On the cylindrical form is an excerpt from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953): 

THERE WAS A FOOLISH AND YET DELICIOUS SENSE OF KNOWING HIMSELF AS AN ANIMAL, COME FROM THE FOREST, DRAWN BY THE FIRE. HE WAS A THING OF BRUSH AND LIQUID EYE, OF FUR, AND MUZZLE AND HOOF, HE WAS A THING OF HORN AND BLOOD, THAT WOULD SMELL LIKE AUTUMN IF YOU BLED IT OUT ON THE GROUND.

EDIT, Expo for Design, Innovation, and Technology, Unilever Detergent Factory, Toronto, Ontario, 2017. 

Alvearium II (Detail), 2017. 

Alvearium I is an installation artwork using field recording, painting, and sculpture. The work transports the exhibition patron throughout ascending levels of an active bee hive. The visual, auditory, and olfactory output of the work is transformative; patrons are temporarily extracted from their human selves to inhabit a foreign, animalian space, drawing attention to the complex realm of other species typically absent from the contemporary human experience.

Wood, beeswax, celluloid film, and field recordings of honeybee hive interiors, Craft Ontario, Toronto Design Offsite Festival, 2017.

In the second iteration of Alvearium, the Toronto Design Offsite Festival and Craft Ontario curated the work as a function of the 2017 Living Well exhibition via architectural intervention. Interrupting the gallery's main entryway and atrium, the piece exposes patrons to the complexities of animal architecture through immersive multi-sensory engagements.

The daytime function of the piece attracts mammals and birds with edible pine cone ornaments.

Squirrels, raccoons, skunks, jays, and woodpeckers were the primary daylight visitors.

During evening hours, UV lights illuminated the structures to attract insect species.

Species of moths common to the late summer cycle were commonly observed.

Edible pine cones were refreshed on alternate days to keep the piece active.

Kuckucksuhr was erected just prior to the annual blue jay migration along the shoreline in Ontario. On the final days of the exhibition, large flocks of jays were present to harvest food from the work. Photograph captured from inside the large watchtower.
 

It was anticipated that various species would claim the work for themselves. Squirrels and raccoons tore through the silk linings in search of foodstuffs stored within, while various birds and mammals ravaged edible materials across the work's facade.
 

This large-scale installation artwork is a reference to the pre-modern belief that honeybees were spontaneously generated from cattle bodies in a vicious ritual called ‘bougonia.’ The literal and symbolic act of killing and burying cattle to repopulate mass honeybee losses appears throughout the ages in countries across Africa, Europe, and Asia. These ideas resonate in the present as we encounter similar anxieties around dwindling bee populations and unethical animal husbandry practices in industrial farming.

Twelve cells of the installation are filled with white sugar, the thirteenth with cattle bone char. In most refining plants, sugar is stripped of its colour when filtered through fragments of burnt cattle bone. Interestingly, this char is the primary pigment in ivory black (or bone black) paint, used in the series of abstract paintings showcased in the adjacent gallery. The skulls in the installation buzz with the sounds of honeybees living in the University’s on-site apiary; the din is punctured by the distant wail of spectral cattle, recorded in the fields of nearby farms. 

Human participants move through the installation as if they were traversing both an industrial farming operation and circumabmulating a ritual space. Visitors unwittingly perform the honeybee 'waggle dance' a non-auditory form of communication between insects that redirects swarms to new sites for habitation.

All sugar from the installation was reclaimed and donated to the Honeybee Research Centre at the University of Guelph to support the living hives at the apiary.

Image courtesy of Dean Palmer Photography

Cattle hide, brass, and steel pins, 74” x 87”, 2014

Cattle hide, brass, and steel pins, 7' x 6', 2014

Cattle hide, pins, and paint, 84”' x 86”, 2015

Cattle hide, pins, and paint, 7.5' x 7.5', 2015

Cattle hide, pins, and paint, 7.5' x 7.5', 2015

Chicken skeleton (Mammoth BBQ Chicken), blood, 24 carat gold leaf

2013

Chicken bone, blood, and 24 carat gold leaf

2013

Chicken skeleton (BBQ Mammoth Chicken), blood, 24 carat gold leaf

2013

Chicken bone, blood, and 24 carat gold leaf

2013

(Image: Toni Hafkensheid, 2018)

Tuesday Night Special (right), “Glimmers of the Radiant Real,” The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2018. Pictured with Mary Pratt, Christmas Turkey, 1980 (left).

Red Earth is a large scale installation that celebrates the history and materiality of Jaipur's longstanding engagement with earth-based handicrafts. An expression of the Indian region's visual identity, earthenware forms serve countless functions for the city's residents. Once expired, terracotta is discarded to the streets without bestowing upon the earth the ill-effects of other industrially produced materials.

Red Earth is composed of used vessels, idols, and decorative objects from Jaipur's neighbourhoods, kumhaars (ceramic craftspeople), lassi shops, and nearby villages. Crumbling clay forms convey the cycle of human relations with the earth itself - a metaphor that participates within and beyond contemporary debates on consumption and waste. Once subsumed into the Madhyavarti open-air theatre's circular architecture, the stories and identities of people from different social spheres are recombined into an earthly space that reflects a condition of unity and shared experience.