From Harm to Harmony
Featured Exhibitions and Projects
Inspiring Action. Nurturing Artists. Building Community
Explore our Community Arts Project
Our ‘Switch on Hope’ Energy Poverty campaign launch on Saturday, Feb. 24 in Saint John brought out 30 community members to address energy poverty in our province, striving for a more fair and sustainable future together.
The event featured the debut of two music videos featuring songs created by local youth with the assistance of local musician Matthew Elliott, also known as STEPHEN HERO and David R. Elliott. We unveiled the story behind each video and shed light on the creative journey behind them.
The Hope & Resistance Concert on Feb. 9 was an unforgettable evening featuring an incredible lineup of musicians, including Juno Award-winning artist Julie Doiron, Pink Snail from Montreal, and the talented local high school band POSH.
About 70 attendees were immersed in the captivating melodies and performances. Throughout the venue, Shoshanna Wingate’s thought-provoking Harm to Harmony project sparked deep conversations and reflections about climate change.
This event showcased the extraordinary power of art to amplify voices, cultivate community engagement, and ignite positive change, leaving a lasting impact on all who attended.
The grand opening of the “Voices of Tomorrow” Exhibition took place on Feb. 3, showcasing a captivating multi-generational art journey orchestrated by Riverview-based painter Ji Hyang.
At the center of this collaborative endeavour was a vibrant mural project crafted by the youth of Riverview, New Brunswick, depicting their aspirations for a sustainable future amidst the challenges of climate change. About 70 visitors were moved by the emotional resonance of the artwork, which was a culmination of the efforts of both local New Brunswick youth and seasoned adult artists.
The exhibition was held at the Riverview Public Library, offering attendees an opportunity to immerse themselves in the creativity and vision of the community.
Throughout December 2022, our community artist collective visited schools all over the province to encourage people to write letters to the Prime Minster and Canadian delegates heading to the NatureCOP in Montreal to discuss global progress on nature protection and come up with a plan to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.
On Dec 4, these visits culminated in an art exhibition and letter-writing event facilitated by painter/textile artist Émerise Leblanc-Nowlan where community members and our artist collective met with Nature Canada’s NatureBus tour at the Conserver House on its way to NatureCOP in Montreal and delivered more than 500 physical letters and art pieces to be delivered to Canadian delegates attending NatureCop along with thousands of other letters collected across the country.
Inspired by the inexhaustible power of wind facilitated by musician/writer Laura Barron, our art collective designed their third exhibition, Catch Wind of It, to be a poetic pinwheel garden installation, created for the Third Shift — Saint John’s outdoor contemporary art festival which took place on August 19-20, 2022 — where community members could reflect on the renewable and powerful source which is at the periphery of everything – wind.
Representing wind’s creative, transformative, kinetic, distributive, and symbiotic qualities, each artist created a functioning pinwheel/whirligig, using their respective mediums (wood, metal, found objects, textiles etc.), to animate a uniform platform and propeller, designed and produced by Gary Crosby and Mario Doiron, woodworkers from Harm to Harmony.
Healing the Land, Healing Ourselves is our third exhibition whose work is inspired by the interconnectedness and interdependence of humans, the natural world, and its different ecological systems. This third exhibition results from a remote artist residency led by BC-based community-engaged artists Juliana Bedoya and Laura Barron, in collaboration with artists across New Brunswick.
With this exhibition, our community artist collective aimed to engage the public and help shift people mindset from an extractivist mindset, one that thinks of nature as a resource, to one that is relational, restoring kinship with the land and people.
Shedding a Light is a collaborative installation created by numerous From Harm to Harmony artists, in an effort to inspire climate action through their work. Each unique piece is created by an individual artist, using their chosen medium(s) to visually and metaphorically illuminate a particular environmental concern that is close to their heart.
As viewers reflect on each artists’ concern, they are invited to follow their curiosity by linking to relevant petitions and/or pledges of personal action (documented on the QR-coded tiles lit by each lamp).
Want to support a local artist this holiday season? What if I told you that your holiday spending could also go towards protecting the land, air, and water in New Brunswick? This was the idea behind Harm to Harmony’ online community art show featuring a variety of local handcrafted nature-themed artwork, including sculptures, dolls, paintings, prints, and more.
This successful holiday fundraiser resulted in a variety of unique holiday gifts and served as a model for future artistic fundraisers with thirty percent of all proceeds going directly to our environmental work in New Brunswick.
Come Home – an ancient forest lullaby is the collaborative work of passionate artist activists across Canada. This lullaby represents the point of view of the Ancient Mother trees, themselves, as they guide Earth’s children (all humans) through the wise words they wish to share about protecting them.
This project was both facilitated and inspired by Laura Barron’s work through Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project, where her own non-profit, Instruments of Change, has been engaging with single mothers escaping violence, to co-create original songs for their babies that foster bonding and healing.
The Healing Power of Nature is the initial collaborative project co-facilitated by remote artist residency led by BC-based community-engaged artists Juliana Bedoya and Laura Barron, that drew participants from across the province, from varying backgrounds and disciplines united in a desire to inspire change through art, and ultimately resulted in the creation From Harm to Harmony.
Because of COVID-19 restrictions, participants met online to discuss and develop ideas, to share skills and collaborate, and to reflect upon the growing threat of climate change.
Together and individually, through a variety of media and techniques including embroidery, papier maché, photography, painting, rug hooking, video production, felting, and weaving, members used this first exhibition to offer varying perspectives on the natural world and the challenges facing society today.