Podcasts, Plantings and Unveilings - Oh my!

Thank you to those who have been following along with the UN/maker Series to date. The second podcast interview is now live! Entitled UN/making as Speculation and Collaboration, I spent a lovely hour with Guelph artist Lisa Hirmer discussing the importance of taking a variety of human and more-than-human perspectives into consideration when creating so as to help manifest more inclusive and just spaces for being and doing. Click on the links above to check out all the interviews, listen to the podcast or check out some of Lisa's amazing projects. Again a big thank you to the MacLaren Art Centre for sponsoring this series of interview by allowing me to use their professional zoom account!

Other good news, the garden I planted with my PhD thesis handwritten onto seed paper seems to be growing! Although still reflecting the grid like shape of how the pages were laid out, milkweed is one wildflower that is beginning to visibly disrupt the colonial division of space. I would like to express sincere gratitude to Morgan Wedderspoon and Abby Nowkowski of Union Gallery for caring for From Unsettling to UN/making while I spend the next four weeks immersed in writing and editing.

For those of you who live in Simcoe County, I would also like to invite you come to the unveiling of The Jack Pine (Group of Seven), 2022 on Monday, June 19th from 6-8 pm. Starting as a temporary gallery installation for an exhibition entitled Imagining Sustainable Futures curated by Akosua Adasi, this adaptation of Tom Thompson's painting The Jack Pine, now has a permanent home on the homestead of Petra Hewson.

For those of you who would like to follow along a little more closely, you can follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/unmakingnetwork/ where I often publish the performative aspects and outcomes of my research. To check out some of the works I have been creating as a result of unmaking older works, visit my Saatchi page to see my latest collages and paintings. Hope to see you on Monday, June 19th!

Jill

Time for Planting a Theory for UN/making

Union Gallery Garden before composting. Fall 2022

Well it has been a long journey and yet there is still so much to do. On Tuesday morning, my husband and I will use our 25th wedding anniversary to dig out the remaining daffodils from the Union Gallery Garden in preparation for planting my PhD thesis in the afternoon. Still needing to finish writing my outcomes and conclusion, letter press an UN/making Methodology, update my website with the UN/making Dictionary and upload two more interviews for the UN/maker Series, the summer will seem long but go fast! To everyone who has supported this enriching and laborious line of research and action, this includes all those who also informed the outcomes of my MFA, I am extremely grateful. Please be sure to join me on Tuesday, May 16th starting at noon, either onsite outside of the Stauffer Library and Union Gallery or follow my online feed on Instagram as I begin to lay down pages of my thesis into the newly enriched soil of the Union Gallery Garden. Written with water-soluble graphite on handmade seed paper created from old works on paper generated during my MFA, human language / theory will begin to disappear with the garden's very first watering so that words become action and expressions of plant life can begin to take root. To read more about the project visit the Union Gallery Website and keep up to date on the progress of the garden and my thesis completion via the UN/making Network Instagram page.

The UN/making Continues: Interviewing, Writing, Papermaking, Planting...

Thank you for all of the support you have shown The UN/maker Series to date. If you have been busy or taken a break from social media to save your sanity, you might be interested know I have recently established a podcast channel and I finally released the artist interview with Anong Migwans Bean in which she outlines the inhumane and unethical practices she has been able to help unmake in her community by creating an eco-ethical paint company. Again a big thank you to the MacLaren Art Centre for sponsoring this series of interview by allowing me to use their professional zoom account!

The Unmaking Network also has another amazing online zoom interview coming up on Thursday, March 23rd with Elvira Hufschmid! A good friend from Queen's University, come listen in to find out why she considers sensing, versus looking, as a method of unmaking. Be sure to register so we know you are coming! https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/jill-prices-unmaker-series-with-elvira-hufschmid-tickets-593760031237

For those of you who are interested in how my PhD is coming along, I am heading into an intense period of writing and finishing the making seed paper from an old MFA work prior to two performances in May in which I will first hand write the first draft of my thesis onto the seed paper, and then in mid-May, I will read parts of my thesis aloud prior to planting it in the Union Gallery Garden on Queen's Campus. As you can see below, it has already been a long journey of prepping the garden in the fall, and deconstructing the paper sculpture needed to make the seed paper. Two more major thank yous need to go out to the staff at Union Gallery in Kingston, Ontario, and Paperhouse Studio in Toronto for helping me realize this aspect of my PhD.

So why am I planting my thesis in the ground. Upon realizing that my MFA thesis exhibition and the rest of my art practice perpetuates external and internal colonization due to resource extraction and the production of waste, I began thinking on how I could unmake myself from these systems of harm. This began by exploring how unmaking my existing archive of works could help to resist the ongoing consumption and production that the commercial fine art world demands. Working to bring my MFA thesis Land as Archive full circle, so that what I am creating is for the land, versus from and about the land, I am hoping that the pollinator garden that will spring from these pages over the summer will be considered as an act of care and repair that offers service to a multi-species ecology. One of my biggest influences in this entire process has been Natasha Myers and her call for the Planthroposcene. If you like a good read, the link to one of her interviews is here.

For those of you who would like to follow along a little more closely, you can follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/unmakingnetwork/ where I often publish the performative aspects and outcomes of my research. To check out some of the works I have been creating as a result of unmaking older works, visit my Saatchi page to see my latest collages and paintings. Hope to see you on Thursday!

Jill