Storytelling by Jacqueline Metz and Nancy Chew in collaboration with Gerald Gloade, is one of many public artworks installed across the Halifax Regional Municipality.
Jacqueline Metz and Nancy Chew in collaboration with Gerald Gloade, 2023
Cut-steel, polysiloxane painted, mounted on existing concrete benches
Spring Garden Road
About the Artwork
In 2020 the Public Art contract for the Spring Garden Road Streetscaping Public Art Project was awarded to artists Jacqueline Metz & Nancy Chew with cultural commentary and design by Mi'kmaw artist, cultural educator, storyteller, naturalist, Elder and visionary Gerald Gloade. Along Spring Garden Road, linking the lush Public Gardens to the Central Library, will be a series of 5 colourful silhouettes.
Before the city, there was nature - the land immemorial - and all who inhabited it - moose, muskrat, beaver, and duck, encampments of families, hunters, trappers, gatherers and fishers... Storytelling links the Central Library, a place of books and the written tradition, to the Public Gardens. An artifact of the colonial Victorian era, the Gardens are inhabited by figurines, ghosts, flitting birds, small animals and, before the Gardens were gardens, there were animals, Mi’kmaw, nature…it is a place of many stories over time. The five ‘storybook’ silhouettes are characters inspired by this area – by the people and creatures who have inhabited the area.
Jacqueline and Nancy were drawn to the Gardens, an artifice of nature inhabited by figurines, ghosts, flitting birds, small animals and even further back, before the Gardens were gardens, the memories of caribou, hunters, trappers…a place of overlapping enigmatic stories. The library is a place of books and the written tradition - containers of stories, narratives, ‘history’; the Public Gardens, an artifact of the colonial Victorian era - are also a container of stories, narratives, ‘history’.
The artists are very grateful for their working relationship with Gerald Gloade, Mi’kmaw artist and cultural educator. He not only provided the artists historical insight and cultural commentary during the conceptual development of their work but collaborated with them on one of the silhouettes - The Storyteller.
This silhouette will be kitty-corner to the Central Library, a place of books, the written tradition. The artwork here - informed by the oral tradition and Mi’kmaq storytelling - forms a counterpoint. The silhouette is an artwork by Gerald with an addition by Jacqueline and Nancy. The turtle is the great storyteller, the one who passes on culture, knowledge, wisdom and truth - and in doing so hold’s the world on his back. Listening enraptured to the turtle are two crows, slightly foolish but wanting to learn.
About the artist
Jacqueline Metz and Nancy Chew are visual artists who have worked collaboratively since 1997. They met in at UBC in 1986 and found they had common interests in architecture, public space, landscape and cultural thought. Jacqueline had a childhood in northern BC, camping, building forts in the forest, watching the light shift, seasons change, leaves decay, the shifting crackling aurora borealis, exploring nature. Later formative interests include photography, archaeology, and literature. Nancy is a first-generation Canadian raised on Vancouver Island. Growing up on the Island, next to the Cowichan Tribes, her world was about navigating diverse cultures and thought systems - Western, Chinese and Indigenous. These diverse experiences and influences come together to create an art practice that is conceptual yet grounded in place - a practice centred on the public realm, an exploration of place and perception.
Gerald Gloade is an artist, educator, storyteller, naturalist, Elder and visionary, his efforts have been integral to expanding cultural understanding and contributing to healing in Mi'kma'ki. Gloade was honoured at the Vancouver Olympics Aboriginal Art Pavilion with a design on a Canada 150 coin for the Royal Canadian Mint and as a nominee for the prestigious Portia White Prize. He is also a past member of the Creative Nova Scotia Leadership Council. Every October, his striking and informative posters for Mi’kmaq History Month are a sought-after tool for teaching the Mi'kmaq language. Most recently, he illustrated A Journey of Love and Hope, the Inspirational Words of a Mi’kmaw Elder for Nimbus Publishing. Gloade lives in Millbrook First Nation with his wife, Natalie. The couple have two sons, Kyle and Gerald, and two grandchildren, Nina Gloade-Raining Bird and Gerald Lydian Gloade Raining-Bird.