April 2022 Artist in Residence - Jenn Pearson
Jenn Pearson
Artist-in-Residence April 2022
Jenn Pearson is a settler artist, born and based on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam peoples, now more widely known as Vancouver BC She received her BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in the spring of 2019.
She is currently working with adhoc plots, a small collective of artists who are working on a series of mini-garden plot sculptures for a downtown activation project in New Westminster BC. In 2020, she was a team member with Lori Weidenhammer’s Victory Gardens for Diversity: recipes for a community-based ecological engagement, an artist residency at Terra Nova Park in Richmond BC. She continued her wandering/gathering/studio practice during a self-directed artist residency at the Caetani Cultural Centre in Vernon BC in 2019. Selected exhibition history includes: The Show, Emily Carr University of Art + Design Vancouver (2019), Intertwined, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, (2018), and It’s Alive, The Fifty Fifty Arts Collective, Victoria (2018).
@jlpea71 @adhoc_plots jennpea604@gmail.com
Caetani AiR Project
I am inspired by the magic of the humble earthworm—small agents of earthly alchemy—as they glean, digest, and transform vegetal matter. The groundwork of my practice is to explore, and to gather natural and discarded materials. The materials I that glean, become part of my studio practice of painting, sculpture and textiles. My diaristic-assemblages often depict imagery and text that refer to the plants, and time and social conditions I am working in. In consideration of the historical context of the place where I live and work, I use these natural materials with sensitivity and care.
During my stay at the Caetani Cultural Centre I am reflecting on the word inflammation, in relation to the current state of our planet’s ecosystem, our inter-species relationships, and my own physical body. In unison with my current material practice involving paper pulp—the therapeutic mushing of paper and plant fibers with plant dyes—I will research the healing potential of a selection of this region's plants. This exploration will become the salve integral to my learning and reciprocity with this place and its surrounding community.
