Join Our Virtual Open House for From Harm to Harmony: The Healing Power of Nature

Group exhibition by Conservation Council of New Brunswick supporters in partnership with International Centre of Art for Social Change looks at challenges of climate change and the power of people to make a difference

The Conservation Council of New Brunswick and the International Centre of Art for Social Change (ICASC) invite you to join a virtual open house for the From Harm to Harmony: The Healing Power of Nature exhibition currently on display at the UNB Art Centre.

Join representatives from the partnering organizations, the facilitating artist and project participants for a virtual tour of the show as they share insights about this community engaged project that uses art to voice their perspectives and emotions about climate change.

  • Date: Thursday, March 25th, 2021
  • Time: 7-8:30 p.m. AST
  • Registration: This event is open to the public but registration is required. Complete the form below to register!

Registration for the event is now closed.

Click here to learn more about the exhibition and participating artists.

The exhibition is on display at the UNB Art Centre in Fredericton from March 7 to April 18, 2021. Click here to arrange a viewing.

This exhibition presents artwork culminating from a collaboration initiated through a remote-artist residency led by community-engaged environmental artist Juliana Bedoya in British Columbia and a diverse group of community participants from different geographic regions in New Brunswick. The project emerged from a partnership between the Conservation Council of New Brunswick (CCNB) and the International Centre of Art for Social Change (ICASC) as part of their national FUTURES/forward mentorship program, which embeds community-engaged artists within organizations to address the pressing environmental issues of our times. 

Participants were invited to join this remote residency to express, through art, their ideas and feelings about climate change. The group met weekly via Zoom to converse and discuss environmental issues from a global to a local perspective, and from there, to develop the concepts and pieces presented in this show. Through their work, the artists sought to inspire changes in behaviours in New Brunswick and to offer a space for reflection on ways we might repair our relationship with nature, partly by experiencing its healing power reflected in the artwork.

Varying in age, culture, and professional backgrounds, participants exchanged skills and navigated different mediums and technologies—including embroidery, paper mache, photography, rug hooking, comic, video production, felting, weaving with plant materials, poetry and more—to create individual pieces that are amalgamated into a collaborative narrative that takes visitors from a hopeless reality of climate change, destruction, and harm to an action-driven world where humans are inspired to change their habits to live in harmony with nature.

By creating awareness about the specific challenges that climate change poses in New Brunswick, such as increased flooding, summer droughts, decreasing biodiversity caused by human industry, etc., we hope to inspire New Brunswickers to adopt more thoughtful practices (buying local, tree planting and species restoration, habitat conservation, reducing and recycling packaging, etc.) that will mitigate or redress the negative impacts of climate change.

Participating artists: 

  • Abigail Reinhart
  • Bethany Reinhart
  • Caroline Simpson
  • Danielle Smith
  • Fred Harrison and Grade 9 Students from the Sussex Regional High School 
  • Josephine Savarese in collaboration with Dirk Groenenberg and the AK newcomer family. Thanks to Gary Weekes and Sara Miller for filming support.
  • Juliana Bedoya
  • Kim Reeder
  • Kristin Singh
  • Mario Doiron
  • Mitchell Milbury
  • Ralph Simpson

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