Sunday's Salon — two artists telling stories about their stories (Part 1)

Join the BestB4 Collective Salon for a conversation with Daphne Harwood and Debra Sloan this Sunday, December 6 (2 - 4 pm) at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum (555 Columbia Street at Keefer). 

Clay Model of Imagination Market (1989, artist unknown)

Daphne Harwood was one of the originators of the Imagination Market, a non-profit organization that promoted the reuse and repurposing of usable industrial discards. Now the building site where the Imagination Market was has been transformed by Vancouver City Council’s approval of a 52-storey tower. Harwood has been documenting this transition in photography, journaling, quilt-making and assemblage.

Harwood's work for Telling Stories is about two projects in her neighborhood. One project was The Imagination Market that was housed in 1435 Granville Street between 1986-89. The other project is happening right now: the building of a 52 story condo called Vancouver House, designed by Bjarke Ingels.  The installation pieces by Harwood look at the land and the transformations that have taken place on this land from 1850 until the present.  It maps the transition from virgin forrest near a tidal inlet, to a large land-clearing lumber operation, to a zone for light industry that gave way to homeless people, then to a complete razing in preparation for erecting a dramatic building and a new neighborhood complex.

Photo Essay of the transition
from Imagination Market to Vancouver House

In her own words:

I look at these neighborhood projects through several lenses: Impermanence—of buildings & land allocation & communities. Re-use—of materials that are generated by humans. This was a key feature of what Imagination Market did by collecting scraps from industries & business that could be reused for art, craft & play. And re-use is vividly shown in the demolition, excavation, & construction in the block where Vancouver House will go. The Non/Traditional Quilt in the show is made from scrap material. Mapping—my memories are often held in maps that I make of where I went, what I did.  Finally, people often say of quilts, “If the patches could talk what tales they would tell.” I wondered about all the occupants of 1435 Granville Street which was built in 1942. The building is now deceased and its body dispersed, but I did want to think about the “life" of this building. This is the lens of Honoring. The workers, engineers, architects, occupants,  tools, sewer line diggers, & new technologies and old.