KPU fine arts instructors bring research to life in art exhibit

Field Notes is an instructor exhibition at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Surrey campus library. It was a result of creative research done on education leave last year by fine arts instructors Maria Anna Parolin, Amy Huestis, and Liz Toohey-Wiese.

The exhibit was on display until Feb. 8 at the Arbutus Gallery near the library entrance and featured the instructors’ art.

Parolin focused her creative research on growing sustainable art materials from plants in her garden, while Huestis investigated the human-to-owl relationship and Toohey-Wiese examined the environmental impacts of wildfires.

Parolin says the creative process took her about a year and a half and started with the curiosity of how she could grow her art supplies. 

“I started thinking about sustainability and being responsible for the materials that we use, and then teaching that in the curriculum and in my classes…. I’ve always loved knowing how things are made,” Parolin says. “So my research goal was to grow everything in my garden.”

She adds that the process started with planting seeds in her garden, and once the plants grew,  it was about researching which plants produced the most intense dye.

“I thought, ‘How can I take these plants and work with them to see how much they can offer me?’ — and wow, was I ever blown away.” 

“I couldn’t believe it — the colours, the fibre, the magic…. The beauty of chemistry and alchemy depends on all these different variables,” Parolin says.

Parolin’s work is not finished art pieces, instead it included tests and experiments of plant-based inks, lake pigments, fibres, and lightfastness. She adds that creating the artwork will be the next step, rather than experimenting with plants.

“That’s what I want to honour in my new artwork is that consistent transformation.”

While swatches of pigments brighten up Arbutus Gallery, Toohey-Weise brought her summer research trip to life in the form of paintings.

On her trip through Bella Coola, the Chilcotin region, and Wells with two friends, Tooley-Weise focused on salvage logging, which happens after wildfires. She documented all notes, conversations, photographs, and sketches — and used those materials to create her paintings for Field Notes.

Tooley-Weise took two months in her studio to finish the paintings, but her research into wildfires has been ongoing since 2018. While finishing her paintings, she used her art studio as a laboratory to conduct experiments and painted in a way that communicated how salvage logging made her feel.

“Seeing the salvage logging in person was deeply disturbing to me. In my body, it felt wrong to see a wildfire landscape that was actively being logged,” Tooley-Weise says. “It felt like so much violence was being enacted on the landscape, but it took being there and seeing it to be like ‘Oh, this is bad.’”

She adds that her paintings are based on both imagination and photographic references.

“I can use painting as a way to figure out how I feel, and it as a way to figure out my conclusions. So I think it was this really exploratory process.”

Through the exhibit, Tooley-Weise wants to share a sense of curiosity and inspire people to find a topic they feel curious about. 

“People think that art should have a clear message and it needs to get across. [But] I think clear messages only come through to people when they have experiences.”