14/10/2023
A carbon-sequestering art and research installation, the Sky Pillar at the Deanery Project was designed with architecture students from Dalhousie University. As Kim Thompson puts it, the Sky Pillar is "a bridge to the night", and was created as an anchor to the Deanery’s annual SeaLight SkyLight festival. Kim says, “We’re trying to get people outdoors, connecting with nature, at night, which isn’t something we always do in our century”.
Listen to this conversation (www.sharedground.ca, or on Spotify, iTunes, etc.) with Kim Thompson and Dr. Jenn MacLatchy as they talk about how the Sky Pillar came to be and how it brings together art and science, land and sky.
This installation sparks an interest and understanding in night time wonders and gives an interesting angle from which to view our place in space, to think about navigation, and to connect to the seasons.
Tune in also to discover the relationship of the Sky Pillar to bioluminescence, Japanese Knotweed, and biochar!
The Deanery Project is nestled in a forested, sheltered cove of the Atlantic Ocean. It is an environmental arts and education centre that hosts many intriguing buildings, workshops, projects, and art installations. It is located in Lower Ship Harbour, on Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore of Mi'kma'ki. Visitors and students come here to experience creative natural building techniques, to learn about permaculture, to help out on the land, discover community, practice citizen science, collaborate on an art installation, and/or to join a group for one of the wide-ranging programs. Here, one can find everything from a solar wood kiln to to retreat facilities. In response to the challenges of our times, the Deanery is also a convening space and living laboratory; for research and for building capacity for communities.
Kim Thompson is Executive Director of the Deanery Project. She imparts her love for learning, art, social justice and sustainability into everything she does and is passionate about nature, family, natural building, art, traditional skills and community. An adjunct instructor with the School of Architecture since 1998, Kim is deeply committed to creating experiential, educational opportunities for pre and post secondary students at the Deanery, and welcomes anyone interested to learn and become involved with the variety of things going on there.
Dr. Jenn MacLatchy (she/they), is an artist, a kayak instructor, and researcher of settler descent living in Mi’kma’ki. Her doctoral research was focused on using arts-based methods to engage with waste, weeds, and wastelands to form a settler method for decolonizing relationship with land and tending to liveable post-Anthropocene futures. (Episode 16 of Shared Ground is about this)
(You may also like to check out Episode 17, An Intro to the Deanery Project)
