Holly Schmidt is a Vancouver-based artist whose practice moves across disciplinary boundaries, and incorporates pedagogical, collaborative and social practice approaches. She has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and as an educational programmer at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver.
In Fall of 2018, Holly instigated a tree mapping project by tagging 30 trees with ID and an email address in the West Point Grey Community Centre and Jericho Park area. Inspired by the City of Melbourne tree mapping project in which the purpose of labelling trees so that residents could report tree damage or disease by email, the project was hijacked by citizens sending personal notes of their admiration for the trees. Schmidt opened up the same opportunity for Vancouver trees, and with a response email back it will also educate about the different species of deciduous and coniferous trees located in the parks. Schmidt worked with historian John Atkin, poet Rahat Kurd, horticulturalist Egan Davis, and indigenous herbalist Lori Snyder as a part of the Artist in Communities program through the Vancouver Park Board.
Lost Lessons (Midnight Picnic)
Since 2014, Schmidt has employed her father's astronomy slide collection that spans over thirty years of diagrams, illustrations, NASA and other observatory photographs and various technical capacities to document the universe. Caitlin Chaisson has described the ongoing series as "stargazing events that explore what it means to be tethered to the Earth". Continuing and supported by a Canadian Council for the Arts grant, a new iteration expanding on the work collaborates with the theatre company Boca Del Lupo.
In a public intervention project with Other Sights for Artists' Projects between May to November 2011, Schmidt harvested and engaged local community in a living ecological laboratory in the middle of the city that she called Grow. In a vacant industrial lot near Vancouver's Olympic Village, Schmidt occupied the space with a living garden that brought people together to share their knowledge and experience in sustainable design and Eco-philosophy. Activated by activities such as the Grow Seed Exchange, walking dialogues with disciplinary experts on sustainability including Designer Duane Elverum and Trudeau Scholar Rajdeep Singh Gill, and drop-in workshops on urban farming, visitors practiced new potentials for growing food against the backdrop of high-end condos that mark Vancouver's notorious housing market. Using social practice methods, the events create collaborative, informal, grassroots interaction that model an alternative social structures in contrast to industrial food systems. The work evolved into other participatory and collaborative events, such as Moveable Feast at Burnaby Art Gallery which featured foraged food and locally found ingredients, honey, spiced mead, fermented beverages, simple cheese making and pickled vegetables. The series provided workshops with underground chefs including Fermented Beverages
Residencies
Schmidt has engaged in participatory projects on food and food mobility through various residencies, such as the Santa Fe Art Institute Food Justice Residency, Mess Hall at the Banff Centre, Lore Residency at Zocalo Organic Farm in GuelphOntario, Woodland School with Duane Linklater at Artscape in Toronto, among others.
