Having lived at the Gladstone hotel for the past decade, its very exciting to see what artist Bruno Billio will do for this years’ Grow Op show. Bruno has a huge love, respect and curiosity of the green living environment around him, and the direct connection he has have to it. Living in such a special apartment Bruno will create an overwhelming sense of nature in his small personal space.

Turning the tiny living room apartment into a palm plant gentleman’s greenhouse, the viewer will be able to visit and experience the colour, textures smells and feelings of intense tropical greenery.

GROW OP will be on public display at the Gladstone April 24 – 27, 2014

@intheweedstv (www.intheweedstv.com)

Saturday April 26, 2014 5pm-8pm (Gladstone Ballroom)

Admission $10 – Tastings $5 each.

This year, as part of the Grow Op exhibition Chef Jamie Kennedy, Chef Miriam Streiman and Chef Mario Paz present an ambulatory ‘feast for the senses’ that celebrates the diversity of two local agricultural landscapes – Prince Edward County, 200k east of Toronto and Simcoe and Grey-Bruce County, 200k north-west of Toronto and present them in the diverse urban context of the Gladstone’s ballroom.

@intheweedstv

The flavours and characters of these two counties will be uniquely captured in a video production made exclusively for this event by Toronto’s own In The Weeds TV. In The Weeds is an online foraging food show that showcases the indigenous foods to Canadian soil. The exclusive video for Equinosh will treat landscape as portrait and portrait as landscape, and merge subjects as well as projection and solid form to create an installation that encompasses the contemplative, natural and organic nature of these places. We went on location to visit some of the farmers and producers to see what the spring harvest will bring.

Through their own enterprises, Kennedy and Streiman have been inspirational leaders in supporting the renaissance of the new rural economy – one driven by quality, small scale production, resource conservation and sustainability.

@intheweedstv

Equinosh will feed your mind with a new understanding of what the Ontario landscape can offer in the days before the summer bounty.  The producers will stand shoulder to shoulder with the cooks to animate the selection of democratically priced offerings.  Enjoy the feast!

Thank you to the producers and artisans who are the heart of Equinosh; who have grown, raised, foraged, fished,brewed and handcraftedthe beautiful ingredients from Prince Edward County/PEC and Simcoe/Grey Bruce County/SGBC that have inspired our spring menu. Please support your local food networks and farmer’s markets and explore Ontario’s diverse agricultural landscapes.

@intheweedstv

BEVVIES FROM THE COUNTIES

Beer / Barley Days Brewery / barleydaysbrewery.com PEC

Cedar Gin Martinis / Gilead 66 Loyalist Gin PEC

Pinot Noir / Red Tail Vineyard / redtailvineyard.com PEC

HandCrafted Hard Apple Cider / Beaver Valley Cidery / bvcider.ca SGBC

EDIBLE CREATIONS FROM THE COUNTIES

FORGED FOREST SALAD

Microgreens / Roy’L Acres Farm / roylacresfarm.ca SGBC

Foraged Edibles & Dried Mushrooms / Forbes Wild Foods / wildfoods.ca SGBC

Foraged Wild Edibles / Mad Maple Country Inn SGBC

Jamie Kennedy Kitchens Pickled Wild Leeks / jamiekennedy.ca

Cold pressed nonGMO Sunflower Oil / Jeffery Sanders’ oil, sunflowers

grown on Burnham Farm, pressed by Jason Persall / pristinegourmet.com /

burnhamfamilyfarmmarket.ca PEC

SIMMERED LOYALIST LAMB IN AN HERBAL BROTH

Heirloom Beans & Root Vegetables / Vicki’s Veggies / vickisveggies.com PEC

Lamb/ Buschbeck Farms / twitter.com/Buschbeckfarm SGBC

Microgreens / Roy’L Acres Farm / roylacresfarm.ca SGBC

GREAT LAKES FISH CAKE WITH WILD LEEK TARTAR SAUCE

Wild Perch / Dewey Fisheries PEC

FreeRange Chicken Eggs / Murray’s Eggs PEC

Cold pressed nonGMO Sunflower Oil / Jeffery Sanders’ oil, sunflowers grown on Burnham Farm, pressed by Jason Persall / pristinegourmet.com / burnhamfamilyfarmmarket.ca PEC

CHEESUS LOVES YOU… BREAD AND FRESH BUTTER TOO!

5 Year Old Aged Cheddar / Black River Cheese Company / blackrivercheese.com PEC

Grains & Bread/ Stonemill Bakehouse / stonemillbakehouse.com PEC

SWEETTART RHUBARB MERINGUE

Rhubarb / Lennox Farms /  SGBC

Maple Syrup & Maple Sugar / Campbell’s Farm/ campbellsorchards.com PEC

FreeRange Chicken Eggs / Murray’s Eggs PEC

Frozen Strawberries / Barrie Hill Farms / campbellsorchards.com SGBC

Honey/Osprey Bluffs Honey / ospreybluffshoney.ca SGBC

Clotted Cream/ Sheldon Creek Dairy / sheldoncreekdairy.ca SGBC

A special thanks to George Brown Chefs School, Chef Jason Innis and the Chef Students for their time and culinary support!

GROW OP will be on public display at the Gladstone April 24 – 27, 2014

Curated by Victoria Taylor, and featuring 26 new projects, Grow Op 2014 is the Gladstone Hotel’s annual alternative landscape and urban design event, celebrating innovative ideas and conceptual responses to sustainable placemaking across a broad range of creative practices.

For press and media inquiries please contact the Gladstone Hotel’s Managing Director – Artistic Projects, Britt Welter-Nolan

As part of his PhD research work at York University, Toronto J Scott MacIvor samples pollen from bees and flowers to study pollination in cities. The installation at Grow Op seeks to increase awareness of flowers as providers of pollen and the role urban citizens play in structuring urban food webs.

Pollen is essential in flowering plant reproduction. Pollen moves from one flower to another, which develop into seeds, nuts, and fruit. Many flowers need insects to move their pollen grains. Bees are the best movers-of-pollen, but they don’t do it for free. Bees eat pollen from flowering plants, shrubs, and trees. Bees are also very diverse, with over 150 species in Toronto, each hungry for different pollen types at different times of the year.

GROW OP will be on public display at the Gladstone April 24 – 27, 2014

Curated by Victoria Taylor, and featuring 26 new projects, Grow Op 2014 is the Gladstone Hotel’s annual alternative landscape and urban design event, celebrating innovative ideas and conceptual responses to sustainable placemaking across a broad range of creative practices.

For press and media inquiries please contact the Gladstone Hotel’s Managing Director – Artistic Projects, Britt Welter-Nolan

A participatory art project about place + precipitation

Karen Abel is a Toronto artist and naturalist interested in contributing to a culture of ecology through research-intensive, season and time-based practices. Jessica Marion Barr is a Toronto artist and educator. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates artmaking, research, and pedagogy, focusing on ecological elegies.

photo by Doug van Hemessen

Referencing ephemeral wetland ecosystems formed by melting snow and rainwater in springtime, Vernal Pool is an immersive, elemental installation of snowmelt gathered by participants from across Canada and abroad as a form of extrinsic artistic practice about place and precipitation. Like a confluence of thawing tributaries meandering to common ground, snow samples referencing geographically and perceptively distinct chronicles of one winter condense and meditatively pause at a seasonal meeting place, forming a temporary body of water – a kind of anthropological precipitation map – in a gallery space.

photo by Kristine Mifsud

photo by Karen Abel

On April 27, we invite visitors to take some snowmelt to water local gardens and greenspaces.

GROW OP will be on public display at the Gladstone April 24 – 27, 2014

Curated by Victoria Taylor, and featuring 26 new projects, Grow Op 2014 is the Gladstone Hotel’s annual alternative landscape and urban design event, celebrating innovative ideas and conceptual responses to sustainable placemaking across a broad range of creative practices.

For press and media inquiries please contact the Gladstone Hotel’s Managing Director – Artistic Projects, Britt Welter-Nolan

An emerging sculptor and MFA candidate at York University, Rebecca Houston has worked in community development through the arts for two decades, including eight years at SKETCH Working Arts for Street Involved and Homeless Youth.

Recent work in a community housing project influenced this response to the complex relationship between humans and a changing urban environment. Local children looking for playthings, break the branches from saplings in a new park while old and dying trees across the city drop unwanted branches, wreaking havoc on our city infrastructure.  Windfall is an interactive sculptural plaything that reanimates Toronto’s recent bane, fallen tree branches into a kinetic prosthetic for a broken relationship between children, urban nature and outdoor play.

GROW OP will be on public display at the Gladstone April 24 – 27, 2014

Curated by Victoria Taylor, and featuring 26 new projects, Grow Op 2014 is the Gladstone Hotel’s annual alternative landscape and urban design event, celebrating innovative ideas and conceptual responses to sustainable placemaking across a broad range of creative practices.

For press and media inquiries please contact the Gladstone Hotel’s Managing Director – Artistic Projects, Britt Welter-Nolan