Andrea Williamson / Projects

Staying with 150

A practice of illustrating 150 species, from birds to molluscs to water beetles, endangered in Canada. Trying to take them in and give them presence and space, as I paint each hair, spot, vein, scale.

For Donna Haraway, mourning is neither hopeful nor despairing, future or past oriented, but about sitting with the complexity of relations surrounding and in you. It's about thinking responsibly of consequences to others and not looking away. My ritualistic process of mimetic painting, in which I closely observe and render 150 wildlife species at risk from the federal government's database SARA, allows me to meditate on the creatures that are dying as direct and indirect results of my and my culture's presence. Looking at this truth and the specificity of life and relations in these moments of sustained reflection and attention is for me currently one way to respond and find responses along the way.

Without sustained remembrance, we cannot learn to live with ghosts and so cannot think.

-Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble

Mourning is about dwelling with a loss and so coming to appreciate what it means, how the world has changed, and how we must ourselves change and renew our relationships if we are to move forward from here. In this context, genuine mourning should open us into an awareness of our dependence on and relationships with those countless others being driven over the edge of extinction... This work is not opposed to practical action, rather it is the foundation of any sustainable and informed response.

-Thom van Dooren, Flight Ways

A series of 150 archival prints will be made to raise funds for habitat conservation in Canada.

15% of every sale will go to the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

email andrealindaw@gmail.com or see Etsy

Dusky Dune Moth

Cuillerée de terre/Spoonful of dirt

Mission et historique de Cuillerée de Terre : Depuis 2017, Nina Pariser et Andrea Williamson ont créé et donné plusieurs ateliers basés sur la création de lieux par l'art. En 2019, elles ont présenté une conférence sur leurs ateliers intitulée " Rewilding the classroom : Encourager les échanges résonnants dans les espaces indéterminés " au symposium d'histoire de l'art de Concordia. En tant que collectif, leur approche vise à créer des espaces incitant les liens matériels, pratiques et psychologiques entre participant.e.s de tous âges et horizons avec leurs environnements.

Les images viennent d'un atelier de teinture végétale et d'un atelier de peinture botanique, offerts par Andrea Williamson et le programme écoart workshops (Nina Pariser et Rachel Pochat Selby), à l'école d'art de Pointe-Saint-Charles.

Notre site web : https://spoonfulofdirt0.wordpress.com/

Mission and history of Spoonful of dirt : Since 2017, Nina Pariser and Andrea Williamson have created and given several workshops based on the creation of places through art. In 2019, they presented a conference on their workshops entitled "Rewilding the classroom: Encouraging resonant exchanges in undetermined spaces" at the Concordia Art History Symposium. As a collective, their approach aims to create spaces that encourage material, practical and psychological links between participants of all ages and backgrounds with their environments.

The images come from a plant dyeing workshop and a botanical painting workshop, offered by Andrea Williamson and the ecoart workshops program (Nina Pariser and Rachel Pochat Selby), at the art school of Pointe-Saint-Charles.

Our website: https://spoonfulofdirt0.wordpress.com/

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Les sentinelles de Nunavik

Illustrations pour un livre d'activités et un guide des insectes de Nunavik, en collaboration avec l'entomologiste Amélie Grégoire Taillefer et l'Insectarium de Montréal, Espace pour la vie.

Pour plus d'informations : https://espacepourlavie.ca/les-sentinelles-du-nunavik-un-projet-de-science-participative

Illustrations for an insects of Nunavik activity book and guide book, in collaboration with entomologist Amélie Grégoire Taillefer and the Insectarium of Montréal, Space for Life.

For more information : https://espacepourlavie.ca/en/nunavik-sentinels-one-kind-project

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Faisons briller la neurodiversité

Les élèves de l’école de l’Étincelle ont créé ces images en explorant un processus ouvert à l’expérimentation et à l’engagement sensoriel avec les matériaux. Nous avons utilisé les matériaux naturels ou recyclés (peinture végétale, papier, crayon) et nous nous sommes inspirés par la diversité des couleurs et formes trouvées dans la nature.

Merci beaucoup à tous les techniciens et techniciennes en éducation spécialisée, aux préposé.e.s aux élèves handicapés, aux enseignant/es, à la direction de l'école, et aux parents des élèves pour avoir aidé à réaliser ce beau projet, surtout Julie Gauvin et Annie Malthais.

Projet- Programme Écoles de quartier

Arrondissement du Plateau-Mont-Royal

Ce projet a été possible grâce à la subvention du Programme Écoles de quartier, de l’arrondissement du Plateau-Mont-Royal. Ce programme vise, entre autres, à soutenir des projets qui contribuent à la vitalité de l’école, à tisser des liens avec la communauté et à renforcer le sentiment d’appartenance des élèves, des parents et du personnel envers leur milieu scolaire.

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De Ville en Forêt

Illustrations en aquarelle des 7 principes de Sans Trace pour l'organisme éco-éducative De ville en forêt : https://www.devilleenforet.com/les-sept-principes-sans-trace/

Watercolour illustrations of the 7 principles of Leave No Trace for the eco-educational organisation De Ville en Forêt.

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Notre Ville Permaculturelle

Illustrations pour le livre Notre Ville Permaculturelle par Christelle Fournier, Fertiles édition et onze contributrices. Pour plus d'information sur le livre : https://www.fertiles.ca/produit/notre-ville-permaculturelle-edition-num/

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Labo des couleurs éphémères

Durant cette saison des récoltes de 2019, j’ai eu l’opportunité d’être choisi comme artiste en résidence par l’organisation « On Sème », dans le cadre des projets éphémères du campus MIL de l’Université de Montréal.

Les projets éphémères constitués d’un regroupement d’utilisations temporaires de terrains vagues anciennement industrialisés et qui précèdent l’établissement d’un complexe universitaire, ont pour but de rapprocher les communautés autour des thèmes de l’agriculture, des arts et de « leur intersection ».

Durant ma résidence, mon projet titré « Labo des couleurs éphémères » consistait à expérimenter les possibilités d’utiliser les matières végétales présentes dans les jardins du campus, comme pigments biologiques de peinture.

À travers ce processus expérimental, ouvert au public de tous les âges, j’ai pu témoigner du comportement physique et chimique des plantes mais aussi de la mesure à laquelle nous sommes touchés, interpelés par les esthétiques (les forces créatrices) de ces compagnons végétaux.

En jouant avec la peinture biologique, mes collaborateurs et moi-même avons pu approché un nouveau mode d’expression où la matière devient, elle aussi, un agent créatif à part entière.

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Catalogue de Biodiversité Urbaine au Champ des Possibles

En 2017, j'ai eu le grand plaisir de réaliser les illustrations des espèces présentes sur le site du «Champ des possibles» au coeur du Mile End, pour leur catalogue de biodiversité urbaine.

Pour apprendre plus à propos de leur organisme: https://amisduchamp.com/

Cartographie sensible

Atelier d'approcher comment lire un espace à travers les impressions sensorielles.

Champ des Possibles, Montréal

Le 9 septembre, 2019

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Rewilding the Classroom

June 2018 and May 2019

With English and History classes of Nina Pariser and Dan Cuvalo from the Competency Development Centre, Vimont, Quebec.

In these workshops, students walked through the unattended field behind their school that most consider a waste space, chose a plant they felt drawn to based on sensory information, rendered it in watercolour through observational painting, and then wrote a diaristic passage from the perspective of the plant itself.

Leisure, craft and poetry are not afforded to everyone, and are often considered a waste of time. However, much like the communities of diverse wildlife that thrive where patriarchy and structures of domination have cast a blind eye, sustained intra- and interpersonal connections among students develop where lateral and unpragmatic thinking are given space.

Students were given the space and support to explore who they are by way of observing and paying attention to relationships in the natural world, and re-examining what individual freedom, collaboration within diversity and non-linear relationships in community can nurture.

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She Thrives in Poor Soils

Goldsmiths MFA Degree Show, London

July 14-18, 2016.

plexiglass, LEDs, watercolour, MDF, air fresheners, 3d prints, drywall, timber, bathroom features, embroidered underwear, turned plaster, cast resin, weeds, water.

typical junkdreams of movie stars as the neural pathways are washed out every night

junkspace is the whitewashing of time, space, architecture, struggle, difference

white on white, you loose your sense of separateness

cleanliness is next to godliness

heaven is a place of exclusion

the walls impose limitations to movement

the walls contain you yet don’t care about you

the furniture, made in your image, keeps quiet and still like you’re supposed to be

a porcelain, poreless, impenetrable goddess

all the young-skinny-white celebrities have infinitesimal variations on the same face

their white tears make a bath

Christian virtues: Justice, Prudence, Courage, Temperance, Hope, Faith, Charity

you stole them, made them your own, taking selfies and making affirmations

from within the walls you grew wild, spewing seeds in unforeseen directions and taking hold

painting weeds, as a mindfulness exercise

With Generous Support from Wickes

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Our House of Common Weeds

Group exhibition curated by Nathalie Boobis

featuring works by artists Verity Birt, Fourthland, Carl Gent, Anna FC Smith & Andrea Williamson.

28 October – 25 November 2017 at Res. London, UK

16 November 2018 – 11 January 2019 at The NewBridge Project : Gateshead

Our House of Common Weeds was the result of an eighteen month process of collaborative research into knowledge and ideas ravaged in the path of progress but still latent within stories, rituals, our bodies and the landscape. The artworks within Our House of Common Weeds suggest a constellation of other possible futures built with the disenfranchised wisdom from the realms of female, folk and indigenous cultures, prehistory, the ‘irrational’ and the non-human.

The forms of collaboration through which each artist has developed their ideas are directly reflective of the content of the work. Verity Birt’s sound, video and sculptural pieces exploring feminine mythologies, collectivity and prehistoric rock art have been realised through vocal workshops with Newcastle-based women’s choir, SHE, at Lordenshaw Channel and Roughting Lynn, Neolithic sites in Northumberland. Carl Gent’s folkloric well sculpture is the result of long term research into the fictions and mythologies of the Mercian Queen Cynethryth, the Victorian explorer Kate Marsden and conversations with the storytelling duo, Sheaf+Barley. Fourthland’s installation evoking a domestic scenario of matriarchal reign results from workshops with Xenia, an English language and friendship group for migrant women learning English and English-speaking women in Hackney, London. Anna FC Smith’s festive sculpture, video and sound work on the collective potential of communal intoxication, singing and revelry has been developed in collaboration with regular karaoke-goers at The Bowling Green pub in Wigan and its landlady Nancy Jones. Andrea Williamson’s large scale watercolour and pencil dreamscapes are developed in collaboration with the public archive of Canadian endangered species and the online dream-sharing community, r/Dreams.

The works in the exhibition bear traces of lived experience that the artists have identified as potent ingredients for other possible futures. Our House of Common Weeds proposes the aesthetic experience of the artworks as a set of tools for activating disenfranchised knowledge and interrupting the singular version of the future that is currently unfolding.

www.commonweeds.xyz

Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

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Papillons du Québec

en cours

aquarelle sur papier, 2018

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Chaise papillon

Les papillons mécaniques, qui représentent les espèces retrouvées au Québec, battent leurs ailes à une fréquence correspondant au niveau de pollution actuel à Montréal.

En collaboration avec Chris Millar et Martin Peach.

L'oeuvre fut installée au centre d'acceuil du Jardin Botanique de Montréal, du 22 février au 29 avril 2018.

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Yellow Butterfly Chair

Yellow Butterfly Chair, 2017

Robotic butterflies, turned reclaimed hardwood, air pollution sensors, arduino, low VOC water-based paint, LCD display, cane weaving. 104 x 40 x 40 cm.

Original painted butterfly wings open and close at varying speeds according to live air pollution data in London, UK.

In collaboration with Chris Millar.

Eternal Kim, 2016

Turned plaster, antique honey jar, honey, brass watch parts.

Fabrications of Flight, 2017, HD Video, 4:49

Images from Cacotopia at Annka Kultys Gallery, London, UK. Jan 11th – Feb 11th 2017.