Hibernaculum Collective: Troubled Critters & Healing Spells

Presented in collaboration with GardenShip and State

Collective members include: Andrea Nickerson, Alia Fortune Weston, Faye Mullen, Joce Tremblay, Nat Tremblay, and Sarah Couture-McPhail in collaboration with Amy Soberano, Mike & Deb Tremblay, Rashel Tremblay, Emily, Oddy, Saria, Magnolia, the land, wilds and waters.

“Troubled Critters & Healing Spells” is an ever-evolving eco-art project by the Hibernaculum Collective, a diverse group of artists, storytellers and earth workers using the Tremblay family farm as their base of operations. This project is included as a locally based component of the GardenShip and State exhibition at the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham, exploring land and water decolonization, restoration, relationship and reciprocity through traditional wild clay processes.  

For this exhibition the collective foraged wild clay, exploring how honourable harvest might differ from its historical use as a commodity for settling, farming and industrially producing clay tiles by some of their ancestors. Gatherings and feasts were held with family and friends throughout the project to process the clay, fire their forms, and discuss what decolonization and healing the land and waters means to them, generated through artistic and collaborative processes.  

Local clay tiles and limestone were ground down with a corn mill for grog. They then hand shaped clay vessels and objects meant to honour the land, water and wildlife that is surviving deforestation, industrial agriculture and climate change, striving to uplift through those forms the healing witnessed in these ecosystems as a result of organic permaculture, habitat rehabilitation and creative stewardship. The clay was fired in open-earth pits inspired by traditional indigenous techniques for creating earthenware, using a Raku technique for colouring the clay by adding fragmite, sumac flowers, wild peas and egg shells all gathered from the land. 

Ceremonies were hosted over the fire to invoke hopes for the world(s) they want to live in - where social and ecological justice is a priority and no being is disposable. Through this project the collective hopes to invite the community into creative dialogue about what it means to be good stewards in these territories.