Cease Wyss and Katherine Ylitalo, 2019

Cease Wyss and Katherine Ylitalo will discuss their work with gardens and Indigenous knowledge. Wyss will address North Vancouver’s local flora, her indigenous ties to the land, as well as her land-based work in relationship to her practice, while Ylitalo, a master gardener and curator, will discuss her work with The Butterfly Garden (1999), an art project by Mi’kmaq artist Mike MacDonald at the Walter Philips Gallery, Banff.

T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss Skwxwu7mesh/Sto:Lo/Metis/Hawaiian/Swiss T’uy’t’tanat- Cease is an interdisciplinary artist who works with new and other mediums and community engaged and public art. She is currently developing two public art sites in Vancouver based in permaculture and other land based work. Cease is a Coast Salish ethnobotanist and is an emerging cedar and wool weaver with a textiles art practice that includes plant and other natural dyes. Through the IM4 :: Indigenous Matriarchs [An Indigenous Futurisms Lab, with Loretta Todd], Cease has become an emerging developer of XR Futures, and has developed a series of VR experiences for her Sacred Teachings Series. Cease is a beekeeper and a member of the Aboriginal Writers Collective West Coast and lives in East Vancouver.

Katherine Ylitalo is a Calgary-based curator, writer, educator, garden historian and gardener and curator of Griffin’s MONSOON exhibition. As an independent curator, she has organized and written for exhibitions for several museums, galleries and artist-run-centres such as the Glenbow Museum, Nickle Galleries, the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Dunlop Gallery and Stride. Usually, she has a number of projects on the go. Currently, she works at Founders’ Gallery, a remote site of the University of Calgary at The Military Museums of Calgary, is curator of the art collection of Bow Valley College, Calgary, is a monthly contributor to Avenue magazine, and stewards the Mike MacDonald Butterfly Garden at the Banff Centre.