An Anthology of the Anthropocene

Dialogue Two

THE WILLOW BASKET PROJECT:
Practices of Community Resilience at the Yukon School of Visual Arts

Tues, December 17, 2024
@MacBride Museum, 1124 Front StreetWhitehorse, Yukon
6:30pm Doors open with beverages and light fare provided
7-9:00pm Round table discussion follow by community inquiry
Tickets Sliding scale $5-20/person
Event contact jodi@weareriver.earth, 867.332.7795

The second of the Illuminating Worldviews community dialogue series, this evening will feature Aubyn O’Grady and Jackie Olson (Leads of the Willow Basket Project) in conversation with Ayana Young (Host of For The Wild).

In the early 2000s the arts sector was introduced as a viable economic alternative to the boom-and-bust economy of Dawson City, Yukon, Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Territory.

The Klondike Institute for Arts and Culture was established with the ultimate goal of creating an art school. As a model of creative placemaking, the Yukon School of Visual Arts (YSOVA)-a partnership between Yukon University, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Government, and the Dawson City Arts Society-was envisioned as a site of community-oriented, experimental, and land-based art pedagogies. YSOVA opened its doors in 2007.

Decades later, these beloved community organizations face the stress of perpetual adaptation resulting from the intertwined environment and economic challenges of our time, including an acute housing shortage, increasingly unpredictable flooding and wildfire events, issues of land sovereignty and resource extraction, desire for sustainable and renewable energy sources, waste diversion, and food security.

In response to this, the Willow Basket Project was born.

The Willow Basket Project is a collaborative and experimental land/arts-based research program that employs art and creative approaches to address the most pressing environmental issues in the Dawson community. Led by Aubyn O’Grady and Jackie Olson, the project’s framework is likened to a basket that weaves local interest, expertise and materials into a network of interdisciplinary and geographically diverse collaborators, ideas and projects that support this practice. For example, they are three years into building a partnership with local placer miners to connect artists to post-mined claims (canvases) and the reclamation process. One of these claims is now home to a burgeoning Willow farm, grown and tended to by Jackie, Aubyn and students of YSOVA.

In this conversation, Jackie and Aubyn will speak about their relationship as colleagues, co-researchers, and collaborators.

Speakers

Jackie Olson was born and raised in Dawson City and is a Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in citizen. Olson received a BFA from the Alberta College of Art in 1992, and has been creating and learning new art forms since. Olson’s work has been featured in exhibitions across Canada including the Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff, AB), Harcourt House (Edmonton, AB), and a forthcoming solo exhibition at the ODD Gallery (Dawson City, YT). Her work lives in many private and public collections, including the Bavaria State Anthropology Museum (Germany), Indigenous Art Centre (Canada), and the Yukon Permanent Art Collection (Canada). Olson holds a faculty position at the Yukon School of Visual Arts, and in 2022 she was awarded the Yukon Hall of Innovator’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her transformative reimagining of age-old Yukon practices as an inspired new way of creating art.

Aubyn O’Grady is the Program Director of the Yukon School of Visual Arts (Yukon SOVA) in Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Territory, Dawson City, Yukon (Canada). Aubyn’s research-creation practice is concerned with artist-led schools, the ethics of site-specific and land-based artworks, and artist engagements with rural places. Her art practice requires frequent and enthusiastic collaborations, and Aubyn can be credited with conceptualizing the Dawson City League of Lady Wrestlers (2013-2017), the Swimming Lessons Aquatic Lecture series (2017-2018), Local Field School (2020-2022), and Drawlidays (2019+), a Dawson City-wide portrait exchange. Though her work is rarely meant to travel, documentation of Aubyn’s projects have been featured in exhibitions at the Younger Than Beyonce Gallery (ON, Canada), the Art Museum at the University of Toronto (ON, Canada), and the ODD Gallery (YT, Canada). Her work has also been the subject of a documentary; The League of Lady Wrestlers (2018), directed by Amy Siegel.

Ayana Young and her daughter Penelope Mae Walker spend most days strategizing how to stop large scale industrial projects in wild salmon habitat; and exploring the wilderness of Coastal Alaska. Ayana is the Co-Founder and Host of For The Wild, an independent slow media organization and podcast dedicated to land-based protection, co-liberation, and intersectional storytelling that dreams towards a world of grounded justice and reciprocity. Learning deeply from the critical dialogue shared with over 100 guests, Ayana approaches For The Wild’s mission with critical thinking, deep reverence, and artistry. She is also a Co-Founder of the The Chilkat Watershed Fund at Alaska Venture Fund as well as the Co-Founder of The Asher Foundation.

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