Local artists provide fungal-themed arts through Our Park 2025
By David Yin, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
The Our Park program returns this year throughout August and September with a series of free fungal and nature-themed art installations and events.
Co-produced by the City of Markham Public Art Program and Varley Art Gallery, Our Park features an ongoing art installation, two workshops, and a kite-flying session for free.
This year’s theme is “Learning from Mushroom.” Artists took inspiration from specific fungi – known as mycorrhizal fungi – and their ability to form a mutual relationship with plants by exchanging nutrients for sugars.
The program uses this relationship as a metaphor to explore how cultures and communities change and develop through everyday interactions among people.
“The Underground Sun” by Xiaojing Yan is a 2,500-square-foot living artwork on display at Milliken Mills Park. She arranged a variety of yellow perennial flowers to bloom in waves throughout spring, summer, and fall.
She also designed the installation to look like mycelium – fungal root-like structures that grow underground to form a nutrient-exchanging network.
To ensure sustainability, she selected only flowers native to Ontario and installed each plant in a way that minimized disruptions to the pre-existing soil underneath.
She collaborated with Catherine Dean and plant nursery Ecoman to create the installation, along with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Yan said that she chose Milliken Mills Park because its hilly environment provided an ideal canvas to display her art.
“I want people to notice how beauty can be emerged through time, care, and quiet change,” she said.
“From Forest to Sky” and “Paper and Wind” are two related workshops that end with “Pictures of the Sky,” a community get-together.
In “From Forest to Sky”, Jason Logan will teach participants how to forage local plants from Rouge Valley to create their own ink. This workshop is open to all ages and will occur at the Varley Art Gallery and Rouge Valley Trail on Aug. 23 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Logan is an artist, writer, and founder of the Toronto Ink Company, a collaborative project that produces a variety of inks from locally gathered materials.
In “Paper and Wind,” Annyen Lam will teach participants how to build kites using bamboo, Japanese washi paper, and their homemade inks from the previous workshop. It will occur on Aug. 24 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Varley Art Gallery, but the program recommends participants be at least 13 years old.
Lam is a Toronto-based artist and creator of the Tiny Blades Project, a years-long collection of paper cuttings.
“Pictures of the Sky” is a kite-flying event on Sept. 21 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Visitors get to fly their kites, either store-bought or made during the workshops, along with Logan and Lam.
Both workshops have limited availability and require registration via [email protected].
The kite-flying event is open to everyone without mandatory registration.
Logan said that he hopes participants can open their perspectives and find new value in local wildlife through the program.
“I think it really is a workshop that’s about play, and not that there aren’t some little details that take real concentration, but I think the ultimate message – and I hope, takeaway – is to be joyful,” he said about “From Forest to Sky”.
Our Park is an initiative that helps local artists, organizations, or collectives to provide public arts programming for free in under-invested areas of Markham. The City of Markham Public Art Program began the program in 2022 and launched its first public show in 2023.
The program accepts artists well-versed in visual arts, media arts, literature, theatre, music, dance, or other arts.
To learn more about the 2025 program, head to https://yourvoicemarkham.ca/ourpark
Photo: These yellow blooms are one of many flowers growing in “The Underground Sun” by Xiaojing Yan. (David Yin photo)