A Story of Survival
on Altered Islands
an illustrated zine and sculpture by invasive art initiative
〰️
an illustrated zine and sculpture by invasive art initiative 〰️
The uninhibited exchange of organisms across terrains allows for a seemingly unrelenting interchange of plants and animals, previously unknown to the landscape, to carve new relations within these newfound communities.
The illustrated zine, A Story of Survival on Altered Islands, trails its narrative through the unlikely paired story of English Plantain and the endangered Taylors’ Checkerspot Butterfly. Where colonization, dwindling food sources, and ecological devastation across the Gulf Islands have brought this insect near to the brink of extinction, the introduced Plantain has offered itself as ecological solace, allowing the Butterfly’s populations to rebound across continued generations within this changed landscape.
The dichotomy of disbelonging and seeded unification plays out along the pages, inviting readers into the lives of these insects and “weeds” by tracing their stories and histories. A spiral of butterflies in flight, comprised of Plantain-based paper, encircles the suspended booklets, melding these two species in visual relation. These newfound co-collaborators conjure questions of what it means to belong, the varied ways reciprocal relationships can take form, and what a just ecological future may look like across imagined borders and communities. This work emerges from extensive research processes, underscoring the balance and interconnectedness of these shared ecosystems.
In spite of earlier years’ best efforts to refute the label of storyteller, my bodies of work, between varied past lives of filmmaking and writing, educating, and community work, run their threads along historical recounting and environmental testament. Weaving narrative and reciprocity, the Invasive Art Initiative was born out of a love for community, both human and other-than – an inquiry into the shifts of ecosystems I’ve had the privilege of witnessing over the past decade and of what’s to come. Working at the intersection of climate, community, and ecological justice, the Invasive Art Initiative delivers low-barrier workshops, community art builds, and talks on reimagining reciprocal relationships with invasive plants. Sprouting from soils with which they did not choose to grow, this material practice fosters deeper-rooted connections to shared ecosystems that invariably involve the lives of invasive plant neighbours, recounting the stories and histories of these beings.
My years as a facilitator have prompted me to inquire beyond an assumed end product, of art and collaborations produced for the sake of endeavoured reciprocity and the many forms that has taken shape. Being a settler to the PNW brings with it a responsibility to the Land in ways I do not take for granted, my work is as much ecological inquiry as it is who I am to be here, removed from my homelands of Treaty 2.
Working between both story and the materiality of invasive plants, leaning into the inquiry of presumed relationships held to urban environments, my own move to city-life brought with it a closer acquaintance to this very nature. Connecting readers to urbanized ecosystems, landscapes, and relations eking between towers of concrete and fields of asphalt, A Story of Survival on Altered Islands explores this perseverance in perhaps one of the more unorthodox of spaces. Uplifting this story of reciprocal relations, spanning centuries of colonized landscapes, the zine examines what it means to be “here” and how new connections may alter collective climate futures.
In that same vein, I have begun seeking out unlikely collaborations, carving new ways of being for these human-recounted histories, honouring the lives of shared communities between Plantain, Butterflies, and all those existing in between who call back to these spaces, with roots entangled, as their home.