Alchemy

Table Settings

A Group Exhibition In Prince Edward County By Alchemy Artist Residency

About this Self-Guided Exhibition
For the Ontario Culture Days 2021 Festival, Alchemy has paired artists with wineries to create work in response to their temporary surroundings – a landscape that while stunning represents a harsh climate and rocky clay like soil. During 2021, seven visual artists and one writer each spent a portion of the county’s harvest season reflecting about what compels people to continue to create, grow, farm, and live on the county’s western edge. These artists further engaged with the community by assisting Alchemy coordinators Claire Tallarico and Tonia Di Risio in planning and preparing twice weekly meals featuring local produce and proteins for the 40 seasonal agricultural workers who live and work on collaborating local wineries. These meals are offered to acknowledge the significant contribution of farm and vineyard labourers, many of whom come from outside of Canada and all of whom work alongside local wine makers and vineyard owners to harvest food and grapes enjoyed in the county and beyond.

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Sites

Site 1: Redtail Vineyards

This four-part collage is a series for Redtail Vineyards gleaned from collected photographs the artist took when visiting Hillier from 2017 – 2021. Di Risio’s new work is a series of collages consisting of fantastical landscapes that reflect on consumption and the labour of food preparation. Assembled using traditional method of collage, her hand cut works are playful compositions that also include the reflection of the landscape and surroundings of Redtail Vineyards.

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Site 2: Casa-Dea Estates Winery

Using found objects from Casa Dea’s vineyard, with a nod to the County’s quilting history, Lynn Hubbs’ wall hanging tells the story of grape to wine in the hands of vineyard workers.
Paralleling the importance of sunshine and water in the grapes’ growth, each unique cyanotype image was made using sun and water before adding print and stitched embellishments.

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Site 3: Hillier Hall

Using found objects from Casa Dea’s vineyard, with a nod to the County’s quilting history, Lynn Hubbs’ wall hanging tells the story of grape to wine in the hands of vineyard workers.
Paralleling the importance of sunshine and water in the grapes’ growth, each unique cyanotype image was made using sun and water before adding print and stitched embellishments.

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Site 4: Stanners Vineyard

For her installation, Mary Macdonald hopes her project can inspire someone to work with their own overlooked materials and think on what draws us together beyond the wine we share and the meals we prepare in the place we call home.

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Site 5: Cold Creek Vineyards

Genius Loci: the Latin term for the pervading spirit of a place.

Through locally foraged and gifted farm and cooking tools, Claire M. Tallarco offers a definite and powerful illustration of Genius Loci at Cold Creek Vineyard.

Working with neglected and forgotten rusted objects, Tallarco explores the history of the County and examines ongoing connections to winemaking, farming and cooking. This documentation acknowledges materials used over decades by local families to cook, bake and prepare food. It honours the bond between people and place.

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Site 6: Hinterland Wine Company

This photographic work offers a view of the exuberant growth and physical nature of vines. This fabricated and constructed image expresses the lively natural character of vines and the careful tending by the grower.

Vines  have been trained and tamed by skillful hands over many years where excess growth has been pruned away. Once the fruit is set, the lower leaves are pruned away exposing the grapes to the morning sun. All this is part of an ongoing relationship between the grower and the vines, between the vintner and the weather.

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Site 7: Closson Chase Vineyard

While in Prince Edward County, Lisa Wood was partnered with Closson Chase Vineyard. Shadowing four of Closson Chase’s seasonal farm workers from away, she walked up and down the rows of vines with the workers, listening to their stories and taking photos of them through the vines as they worked putting up protective netting.

In her responsive art piece, a 5.5′ mixed media drawing titled Walking the Vines, Wood focuses on the workers’ hands in action. While the workers are largely hidden from view by the lush foliage, their contribution to the county and the vineyard is integral and is shown through this representation of each of the workers’ strong nimble hands.

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Site 8: Broken Stone Winery

At Broken Stone Winery, utilizing V. Jane Gordon’s, The Artist’s Inquiry Book, as a guide, Patti Randazzo Beckett explored the elements of sound, kinetic wind energy, sun and shadow as a form of creative exploration on paper. The process is an integral part of and very much informs the final results.
She says about her piece, “In my work I explore the disquiet between line and empty space and between colour and form. Much of my work starts with gestural life drawings, and using intuitive embellishment, the work becomes both representational and very much abstracted.”

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These programs would not be possible without the support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of Ontario, the Ontario Arts Council, the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund and the Toronto Arts Council.

The Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund is a program of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, administered by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund Corporation.