{"id":21357,"date":"2018-08-17T11:17:33","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T15:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21357"},"modified":"2018-08-17T11:17:33","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T15:17:33","slug":"shifted-ground-explores-our-natures-present-and-distance-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/shifted-ground-explores-our-natures-present-and-distance-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifted Ground explores our nature\u2019s present and distance past"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

You might not feel the earth move under your feet, and, let\u2019s face it, neither did Carole King, but whether you feel it or not, the earth is shifting \u2013 and it will continue to do so even after we\u2019re gone.
\nWe\u2019re stewards of the world around us, says Rebecca Last, and one only needs to look as far as our own actions to see the impact we have on the environment.
\n\u201cAll of this is changing, a lot of it because of people,\u201d says Ms. Last. \u201cWe\u2019re stewards of this land, or at least we\u2019ve sort of taken this role on. If we go extinct, the world will continue. If we want to survive, it is not the planet that\u2019s going to need to survive; it\u2019s going to be us.\u201d
\nMs. Last, an award-winning artist who has exhibited around the world, explores these themes in her art exhibition entitled \u201cCassandra\u2019s Garden: Tracing Shifted Ground,\u201d which is now on at the Aurora Cultural Centre.
\nSet to formally open this Saturday, August 18, with an Artist Reception from 1 \u2013 4 p.m. as part of Doors Open Aurora, the series of large-scale paintings is inspired by the landscape surrounding her studio on Rice Lake, near Peterborough \u2013 a landscape she describes as \u201coften primordial.\u201d
\nHer vivid paintings trace our complex interconnectedness with the natural world, along with our own psychological ties to landscapes that transcend generations.
\n\u201cUp until I [moved my studio to Rice Lake] I would say I was an urban gal,\u201d says Ms. Last. \u201cThe exposure to the elements, to the lake, but also to what was going on over the lake had a pretty profound impact on me, and on me artistically, and I made a right-angle turn in my artwork.\u201d
\nBefore she encountered Rice Lake, Ms. Last spent a lot of her artistic time in Europe studying and teaching. There, she was inspired by the umbers and ochres of the Italian landscape, but focusing more on Canada, she found renewed inspiration in the often cooler colours that typify the Canadian terrain.
\n\u201cI do really believe, down to a cellular level we\u2019re connected to the air around us and to each other,\u201d says Ms. Last, adding she was inspired to delve deeper into the changing landscape of Rice Lake and the surrounding areas through the renowned writings of Catherine Parr-Traill, who was an early settler in the area. \u201cThen, there is the distant past too because Rice Lake is based on drumlins, these little islands that were formed by glaciers retreating during the ice age scratching the surface. I went up with a friend in a plane above the lake\u2026and you could see everything is parallel. There was a connection to the far past landscapes in front of us too, as well as the near past.\u201d
\nLooking into the much nearer past and the present, Ms. Last says she is struck by the images of Earth beamed back to the planet since the start of the space race, images which bring home even closer our interconnectedness.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re very connected to our solar system and all the accidents that got us here,\u201d she says. \u201cI think when you look at a two-dimensional image, whether it is my painting, a photograph, or someone else\u2019s artwork, one brings to that their own experiences of the natural world. I know from my own experience, looking at images of mountains meant something very different to me before I actually saw mountains [myself]. I hope when people look at my work, they bring their own experiences of nature to it, and that it reminds them of the value of it. That is something really, really critical right now.
\n\u201cI also hope when people look at this, it triggers memories of positive and moving things because everyone I know has some sort of primal connection to some place they have been that is natural and remind them that we\u2019re all vulnerable, our planet is vulnerable, and just be moved and inspired to enjoy our natural world.\u201d
\nShifted Ground runs at the Aurora Cultural Centre August 11 through September 29.
\nArtist Talks with Ms. Last are scheduled for August 15 and August 19, each evening from 6 \u2013 7.30 p.m.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You might not feel the earth move under your feet, and, let\u2019s face it, neither did Carole King, but whether you feel it or not, the earth is shifting \u2013 and it will continue to do so even after we\u2019re gone.
\nWe\u2019re stewards of the world around us, says Rebecca Last, and one only needs to look as far as our own actions to see the impact we have on the environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/2018-08-16-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5yt","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 15:52:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}