People are made up primarily of water. Carbon connections hold it all together for us as we grow and change over time. It's what makes us as organic as an ostrich or an algae bloom or a tree.
Trees are among the largest organisms on the planet and share a lot of human traits. They grow tall, they have a trunk with appendages that branch off, they need water, they need sunlight, they need nutrients, they propagate themselves via seeds or in some cases by connective root systems that make individuals really just one part of a broader mass. Doesn't that sound a lot like a community?
When the term "tree hugger" is used, be it for environmentalism or sarcasm, it speaks to that kinship that draws people and trees together. People use trees for all the most important facets of existence - food, energy, shelter, tools, spiritual inspiration - and contemplating all that is David Jacob Harder. He is using the tree and some of its ecological cousins in a wild dialogue about how humans impact nature, even at the unintentional or incidental level but all the way up to the industrial and global economy level.
This conversation is a silent one, at least at Harder's end. He is expressing his hypotheses using the voices of art. It speaks up inside Emily Carr University's Neighbourhood Time Exchange studio downtown in a one-day exhibition entitled Back To The Land. Harder, from Wells, is the latest in the Neighbourhood Time Exchange series of artists-in-residence.
"If you put in a road or put in a power line or the right-of-way for a pipeline, it doesn't seem like much, but you have now factored into the ecology of that spot," he said. "On that spot you've just cut a swath through the trees, and that means the patterns of what grows there in the present and the future have been altered. Grasses or shrubs are growing where trees used to grow. The wind won't behave the same way, the sunlight to the ground won't be the same, the water flows differently, which has a ripple effect on all the other plant-life around it, and a big effect on the animals of that area."
It's a simple statement of fact. Harder's exhibition seeks not to indict any government policies or industrial practices, but his work insists that consideration be given to the entire chain of consequences for human activities on the landscape.
It starts with one person's need for food, heat and home - that alone has its impacts - but it extrapolates to national trade policies and a country's gross domestic product. A person changes a tiny patch of land as evidenced by your house; a species changes the entire globe as evidenced by the unnatural heating of the planet.
"Is humanity the only reason climate change is happening? Not likely. Are we largely why it's happening? Absolutely. So this is about getting to know your natural environment, getting in closer touch with it, before it's gone," Harder said. "I'm not standing on a soapbox preaching about it. I'm not out to change anyone's mind. I'm just hopefully calling to mind that we are inextricably linked to the life-forces all around us, and maybe if we think more deeply and more consciously about that, we might make better decisions. It's not exaggerating to say a lot of lives depend on us doing a better job than we have."
To convey his baseline theme, Harder has created several artistic structures that are symbolically affixed to our local environment and we, the people. One is a giant sheet of Canfor pulp (donated to Harder's project by local artist Susan Barton-Tait) textured to what looks like a white plank wall. On it is a human silhouette made of sawdust. Beneath its spot hanging on the wall is a pile of sawdust accumulating where the bits of the human figure slowly fall away due to gravity and deteriorating adhesiveness.
Another item on the artistic agenda is an outdoor piece - an amalgam of wooden wheels held together in a shaped wall by a few metal screws and a lot of river ice used as mortar. The wood was cut from a single green, healthy evergreen inexplicably cut down with a chainsaw and abandoned alongside a local forest service road.
Giving purpose to a wasted organism was part of Harder's process and ultimate message.
It also brought Harder himself in closer touch with the local environment. Using river ice for this project was difficult because it has been too warm to shape it efficiently and the forecast for show-day is for plus-6 temperatures.
He also got treated to random cracks and pops inside the studio as the thin wheels of the evergreen dried out in the room's warmth. It constantly smelled of sweet sawn softwood and he could see the changes in the salvaged wood over the time he was working with it.
He also did one other thing in service of his art project, even though it was disconnected and seemingly trivial. He struggled and strained to place a large block of river ice on the downtown park bench shared by the sculpture of Bridget Moran. It was almost like the ice was a friend sitting in conversation with the smiling stoic writer.
"You can't help but think about why," said Harder, speculating on the reaction of passersby. "It tells you there's more of a story there. If art can just do that, it is doing a great thing - allowing us to tap into our imaginations."
The ice block beside Bridget Moran is long gone by now, and the rest of Harder's work will be gone soon too. It is on display Saturday only, from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Neighbourhood Time Exchange studio (1119 3rd Ave.) located in between EDI Environmental and Groop Gallery. It is free to attend the exhibition, all ages are welcome, Harder will do an artist talk and answer any questions from the public about his meanings and his processes, and refreshments will be served.
Following the exhibition event, Harder encourages the public to join him for the after-party at the Legion ($10 cover charge) for a concert by his musician friend Andrew Judah and special guest act Britt AM.
