Looking Back at BestB4 Collective Community Events — artist salon with Daphne Harwood and Debra Sloan

BestB4 Collective Salon featured a conversation between Daphne Harwood and Debra Sloan on Sunday, 06 December in the On-Tak Cheung Gallery at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver. 

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 spoke about how she has been documenting this transition in photography, journaling, quilt-making and assemblage.

Debra Sloan is a Vancouver-based ceramic sculptor and the 2015 recipient of the Mayor's Design and Craft Award. Her slip cast dogs, horses and baby figures challenge and surprise viewer assumptions and attitudes. Sloan's work has been exhibited locally, across Canada and internationally, and most recently awarded the Vancouver Mayor's Art Award and biannual Hilde Gerson Award by the Craft Council of BC. She spoke about her recent ceramic residency at C.R.E.T.A. in Rome.

Both artists discussed the influence that the environment had on their artist practice and bodies of work. Debra Sloan works in ceramic residencies that offer the opportunity to research both techniques and ceramics history. Daphne Harwood works from a documentary perspective, using journaling and photography as a starting point; her current work continues as Vancouver house progresses from the demolition of the original Imagination Market site to construction and eventually occupancy. 

Telling Story/a visual art exhibition continues in the On-Tak Exhibition Hall at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum of Greater Vancouver (555 Columbia at Keefer) until Saturday, 19 December. The gallery is open Tuesday- Sunday (11 - 5 pm). The limited edition exhibition catalogue can be purchased for $20 at the Chinese Cultural Museum. 

Looking Back at BestB4 Collective Community Events — an artist tour and exhibition catalogue launch

BestB4 Collective artists Jim Friesen, Daphne Harwood, Alison Keenan, Sophi Liang, Colette Lisoway, Edward Peck, Phyllis Schwartz, Debra Sloan and June Yun guided visitors through a  tour of Telling Stories: A Visual Art Exhibition at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum on Sunday 29 November. Artists told stories that enlivened their photography, painting, ceramics, fibre and installations and engaged viewers in dialogue about contemporary issues that weave together their collective exhibition. 


Telling Story/a visual art exhibition continues in the On-Tak Exhibition Hall at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum of Greater Vancouver (555 Columbia at Keefer) until Saturday, 19 December. The gallery is open Tuesday- Sunday (11 - 5 pm). The limited edition exhibition catalogue can be purchased for $20 at the Chinese Cultural Museum. 

Sunday's Salon — two artists telling stories about their stories (Part 2)

Debra Sloan: Whisper Sweet Nothings

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).

Debra Sloan: Maple Tree

Debra Sloan is a Vancouver-based ceramic sculptor and 2015 recipient of Mayor’s Design and Craft Award. Her slip cast dogs, horses and baby figures challenge and surprise the viewers’ assumptions and attitudes. Her work has been exhibited locally, across Canada and internationally and most recently awarded the Vancouver Mayor’s Art Award and biannual Hilde Gerson Award by the Craft Council of B.C. Debra Sloan has recently returned from a six-week residency at C.R.E.T.A. in Rome.

Sculptural work by Sloan in Telling Stories is from Horsing Around, a series that grew out of her experience as Artist in Residence at the Leach Potter in St. Ives. This series of horse and rider continued a solo exhibition at the Gallery of BC Ceramics(2015).

Debra Sloan: The Edge of Nowhere

Over time, says Debra Sloan,my figures have become what I call proto-human, neither male nor female, adult or baby. Landscapes and architectural references are about my environs and provide opportunity to add contextual layers. Placing my figures and images within metaphorical constructs, and outside of how we normally encounter them, is how I comment on our interaction with environments and society.

Debra Sloan: On the Merry-Go-Round

Debra Sloan: Riders to the Coast

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.

School Tours Begin ~ Strathcona Students Visit Telling Stories — a visual art exhibition

Daphne Harwood welcomes students from Strathcona Elementary School

Students from Strathcona Elementary School visited Telling Stories—a visual art exhibition in the On-Tak Cheung Exhibition Hall on Friday 13 September. Grade 4/5 students in Annie Simard's class were  toured by visual artists Daphne Harwood, Alison Keenan and Phyllis Schwartz.

Questions about Imagination Market Quilts

Daphne Harwood challenged students to consider the story about impact of neighbourhood change in her quilts documenting of the demise of the building that housed Imagination Market. Alison Keenan posed questions about her series Avian Fables, paintings about the territory shared by avian and human inhabitants. Phyllis Schwartz asked students to consider the back story of food production and industry in North America, showing photographs of resultant environmental devastation.

Best B4 Collective artists will work with these students and their classroom teachers to learn interviewing and story writing skills for a project about Chinatown Elders. These students will return to the Chinese Cultural Centre to meet these elders to  interview them so that they can write stories about their lives. These interviews, along with photographs, will appear in subsequent blogs.

Looking for stories in Edward Peck's On the Wall Series

Students notice camouflage and landscape features in Debra Sloan's Rider to the Coast

Alison Keenan listens to students telling stories 

Out of the Mouth of Babes

As part of our BestB4 Residency at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum (Vancouver) during the run of the  exhibition. Tree: Literal and Figurative, Pauline Doyle, Alison Keenan and Phyllis Schwartz welcomed students from Britannia Secondary School and Lord Strathcona Elementary School into the gallery and museum classrooms. Student from both schools were quickly engaged with the art work in the gallery and responded with perceptive and knowledgeable observations.

When standing in front of Anna Ruth's inverted graphite drawings of trees, they speculated on why the tree was installed with roots at the top of the drawing and leaves on the ground: perhaps forests were being destroyed or the artists wanted us to take a more careful look at the entire tree. Looking at Edward Peck's three large scale  photographs, their comments indicated that they had an instant understanding of the raw industries that make up the economy of British Columbia; they quickly made the connections between raw materials being converted into building materials, pulp and paper.

Pauline Doyle leads a discussion about Edward Peck's photographs

Students discussing Anna Ruth's inverted tree drawings