"Some People Plough Their Fields" /  by Caitlin Chaisson

Artist Bill Horne was able to raise $600.00 with his artwork, Stakes in the Peace, which will be donated to the Yellow Stake Campaign. One hundred per cent of the funds go directly towards supporting Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations legal challenge to protect the Peace River Valley. 

May, 2017. Video by Denis Gutiérrez-Ogrinc. 

Horne's Stakes in the Peace (2017) is a 15-inch by 48-inch terracotta replica of the field of solidarity in the Peace Valley. Over the course of the sixteen-day exhibition, Horne collected donations from across the country, both online and in the gallery. With each five dollar donation, a miniature stake was planted in the terracotta replica, or taken home by the visitor to place in their own gardens, planters, or terrariums.  

Over the course of the exhibition, the terracotta field transformed dramatically. The wet and supple clay which you can see being "ploughed" by Horne in the video, slowly began to dry out as the month came to a close. The water gradually began to disappear from the field, and in doing so, each stake became more fully secured. As the terracotta dried and shrunk away from the edges of the frame, it began to hug each stake more closely, rooting each marker into the clay.

To read more about Horne's artwork, look here.  

Snakes, Rakes, Lakes, Zines, Zines, Zines /  by Caitlin Chaisson

Over the course of the exhibition, Disturbances in the Field, the gallery space was used to host several youth workshops that encouraged the sharing of stories about environment and landscape through drawing and zine-making. Using collaborative drawing techniques where several artists work on a page, these mash-up drawings create narrative through juxtaposition. In the exercises pictured above, a silver-breathing pink Tyrannosaurus Rex faces off against a flying unicorn, a cat basks in the sun between a bat and a tulip, the Loch Ness monster exclaims its name and startles a fluffy ram nearby, and a sun rises over a one-point perspectival horizon. Each drawing contains the tropes of landscape: a horizon, a type of vegetation, an animal, and some kind of atmosphere.  

Short, thirty-second line drawing exercises were also used to experiment with the effects of simple mark-making. Asked to illustrate the phrase "A snake in a lake with a rake" (among others silly rhymes), the group came up with some impressive and dynamic improvisations. 

All the drawings were later turned into either components or preparatory work for zines the participants made and took home. So many thanks to the truly awesome Carrier Sekani Family Services youth and staff. 

If you are interested in making your own zine, and sending it in to the Far Afield Library... please do! The Library is a slowly growing collection of sought out, donated, and self-published works. 

Download the Zine making instructions here, and learn how to fold the instructional zine here. Try them out, make your own, and send them in.