Stories from the Compost
Patricia Ki is an immigrant/settler of Chinese/Hakka descent living in Tkaronto, which is the traditional territory of the Anishinaabek, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat. It is subject to the Dish With One Spoon Covenant; its teachings of nonviolence challenges her daily to live into the responsibility of caring for herself and others. Patricia is an instructor at the Toronto Art Therapy Institute and a student at York University.
Inspired by a workshop on painting with food offered by Dr. Fyre Jean Graveline at the 2021 CATA Conference, I started looking into art making with plants; particularly, plant parts that are left behind and going to the compost. Below are some thoughts and notes that emerged from the process.
Deep in the winter months we find ourselves surrounded by root vegetables at the market, looking up recipes for borscht
Beets, onions, carrots
While rummaging through the fridge, also found a bunch of cilantro that arrived back in warmer months, morphing into green slime
The plant is a life. A living, shifting being
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Through some mindless scrolling of Instagram over the long, dark, all-plans-cancelled, stay-under-the-covers days in the last two weeks of December, I stumbled upon a gift—
—Plant watercolors are easy, simple & fun! / Pour hot water over flowers or plants of choice & mash / try with children when homeschooling—
A marvelous, glowing square on my phone lighting up my face under the covers and the way to some excitement for the first week of January
The generosity of another artist sharing knowledge. A chance connection
I am but an old child having to learn again, at home, how to live the unpredictable every day
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Each plant is a life. Each has a story to tell, like any life
Do stories need to be told in words, in language I can understand?
Each has a story, told in textures, colours, scents. What it tells partly depends on how it is asked
Beet peels give colour freely, a bright red pulsing through the surrounding hot water, a vibrant magenta with a single brushstroke
“My hand brings familiar forms, gestures and shapes. From memories, histories, experiences, attachments, habits.”
Cilantro gently mashed, strained, steeped, distilled, building layer upon layer of liquid pooling across the page for a subtle teal-green, its scent leaps forward much more readily than its pigments
Onion skin spends the day, what it gives depends on the time of day and how much patience I have, from tentative blush to golden mustard
Carrot peels surprise in a whisper—I thought you were orange like the juice you left on the potato peeler—I am actually pale gray barely noticeable like the overcast winter sky, and now I made you look
I say I don’t make a plan, I follow the directions of what the plants give, but that’s only partly true
My hand brings familiar forms, gestures and shapes. From memories, histories, experiences, attachments, habits. The body-mind loves what it loves
I say I don’t impose a plan, I don’t bring judgement, I follow the directions of the person sitting in front of me, but that’s only also partly true, isn’t it?
Fabulation (detail), watercolour (beet peels, onion skins), thread and graphite transfer on paper, 2022.
(to see more about this piece: https://www.instagram.com/p/CYcJQxqPgLH/)
Stories from the Compost, watercolour (beet peels, onion skins, wilted cilantro, carrot peels) on paper, 2022.
To say that my purpose of being in this space with this person is to take responsibility for supporting their well-being, is to make a plan
To say that some forces in our world – racism, colonial violence, ableism, gender-based oppression, class inequity, environmental destructions – should not be sustained into the future, is a judgement
The ways I take in stories, the directions I take to meet the person, nevertheless fit into narratives; already made sense to me in my awareness, shaped by memories, histories, experiences, attachments, habits. Some have to do with aspirations of responsibility and justice. Some are rooted in needs and desires that are altogether self-preserving. Some leap forward more readily than others into my awareness. Some I know, some I’m yet to find. What is it that I need to find next?
“How I navigate and co-create the reality between myself and the other in my next encounter will be shaped by parts of a beet, an onion, a carrot, some cilantro.”
As a very wise supervisor once taught me, “find a practise that will inform your practice.”
How I navigate and co-create the reality between myself and the other in my next encounter will be shaped by parts of a beet, an onion, a carrot, some cilantro.
A plant is a life. We shape each other into being, one living body intersecting with another. Fluid and always transforming, always shifting, always emerging anew, rather than fixed and self-contained, rather than threatening the dissolution of self:
“If we accept that when we enter into dialogue we both change; if it is true that we co-create reality, which in turn creates us—then we are called to a new kind of community.”
From earth to plants to connections between bodies, between minds, we live because everything else does.
I am but a student learning every day to live into my place of interbeing and belonging in our shared, unpredictable world.