{"id":23639,"date":"2019-04-25T17:26:19","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T21:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23639"},"modified":"2019-04-25T17:26:28","modified_gmt":"2019-04-25T21:26:28","slug":"last-chance-to-see-thought-provoking-watershedsci-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/last-chance-to-see-thought-provoking-watershedsci-exhibition\/","title":{"rendered":"Last chance to see thought-provoking \u201cWatershedsci\u201d exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Whether it is traditional paint, pieces created from\ndebris found along the Lake Simcoe shoreline, or small pieces of fabric\nsuspended from the ceiling to represent microplastics omnipresent in our water,\nWatershedsci has sparked no shortage of thought-provoking discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday, however, will be your last chance to see what\npeople are talking about as Watershedsci, a unique environmental collaboration\nbetween the Simcoe Watershed Art Project and Lakehead University, prepares to\nleave the Aurora Cultural Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The creators behind Watershed welcomed participating\nartists and art lovers alike to the Cultural Centre last Saturday for a special\nreception that shed light on the science that inspired the project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen Jenny Clark, founder of the Lake Simcoe Watershed\nArt Project, brought this exhibition to my attention, I was intrigued by the\nidea of artists responding to scientific research,\u201d said Clare Bolton of the\nAurora Cultural Centre. The result, as you can see, is an exceptional\nthought-provoking exhibition by outstanding artists working in a variety of\nmediums. I am grateful for the artists and scientists for using art as a\nvehicle for social change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel this exhibition has inspired visitors \u2013 young\npeople, educators have come through the doors and the community at large \u2013 to\nstart their own conversation about environmental concerns. I have learned since\nthe opening of this exhibition [from] the educational school system that the\nconversation is happening [there] and that it is an integral part of their\neducation. I am hopeful. There are some great things happening with the young\npeople today. Exhibitions like this remind us of the challenges we face, but when\nwe look at the creativity involved and the response to the scientific data that\nthe scientists presented to the artists and worked with them. For me, it is\nessential for society to come up with innovative solutions for the challenges\nwe face. This exhibition, and the response, gives me hope.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also gives hope to scientist Debbie Balika, Water\nQuality Specialist for Kawartha Conservation, who helped get this conversation\nstarted in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Balika became involved in the project while working\nat Lakehead University where she was asked to speak to Ms. Clark and\nparticipating artists about what they had in mind. What transpired, she said,\nwas a great conversation that boiled down highlighting the art already existing\nin nature and melding these into a common vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis Watershedsci project is very dear to my heart,\u201d\nsaid Balika. \u201cIt really acts as a bridge for different conversations to occur,\nbut it also allows for understanding and, at the end, what we all really want\nis action to happen. When people understand environmental issues and they\nunderstand impacts and are able to act on it, we couldn\u2019t ask for a better\nflow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs we moved forward with this collaboration, we had a\nmultitude of meetings. We had a lot of meetings to work out the details, our\ncontributions, the artists and timelines, and the artists carried the lion\u2019s\nshare of the work. We spent an evening of learning and lectures\u2026and then we\nsent all the artists home with thick wads of academic papers about different\nresearch on water quality issues. The topics we talked about that night, we\nreally narrowed down to a focus on Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching because, as\nyou know, we have a lot of water quality issues on a global level and we wanted\nto narrow down that scale.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the things talked about in relation to the two\nlakes were water quality monitoring, urban run-off, rural run-off and the\ndumping of nutrients into the water, e-coli, pesticides and biological\ninvaders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter that night and after the artists had time to absorb\nall that knowledge and they chose a topic they wanted to focus on a little bit\nmore, they were paired up with a Lakehead University scientist. I was lucky to\nbe paired up with Jenny,\u201d she continued. \u201cShe is just as excited as I was. It\nwas a mutual excitement. We had lots of good and thoughtful conversations and\ndiscussions and what I took from it as a professional was I really increased my\nskill of making science accessible because it really needs to be understood in\norder to then share it with someone else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel the success of this exhibition itself is only a\npossibility because two different spheres came together and that is an art\nsphere and a science sphere. Both bodies were willing to look at things through\ndifferent lenses and understand different perspectives. When we look through\ndifferent lenses and we share perspectives, we can also make new perspective.\nThe culmination of everyone\u2019s passion and hard work is really evident today.\nYour work is creating new dialogue around the very thing that connects us all \u2013\nwater.\u201d <\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether it is traditional paint, pieces created from debris found along the Lake Simcoe shoreline, or small pieces of fabric suspended from the ceiling to represent microplastics omnipresent in our water, Watershedsci has sparked no shortage of thought-provoking discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/2019-04-25-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-69h","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 10:57:31","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\/23639","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=23639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}