‘Viewfinder’ is a collaborative project between Heather Cline and the Nature Conservancy of Canada. Cline created artwork inspired by viewing the landscape through a conservation lens, walking the land with staff and stakeholders of the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
Cline has created a muti-media exhibition incorporating paintings, audio works and video that offer an immersive experience of the land. The initial fieldwork for ‘Viewfinder’ consisted of a series of one-on-one encounters with each project participant in their environment. The goal was to have meaningful exchanges on the land that impacted Cline’s renderings of the landscape. Cline documented these walks through audio recordings, video recordings, and an aerial survey of the sites from viewpoint of a Cessna Skyhawk airplane. Key encounters on the ground were marked through the collection of GPS points that were used to create the flight plans over each location. This has translated into a series of paintings of the landscape that capture some of the shared experience on the land with the project’s key participants. The exhibition also features video documentation of participants walking through the different project sites and an archive of short explanatory videos featuring the activities of project participants on the land.
Nature Conservancy of Canada
The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) is Canada's leading national land conservation organization. In Saskatchewan, NCC has secured more than 170 properties and has helped to conserve over 198,219 hectares of ecologically significant land and water in Saskatchewan.
Prairie grasslands are among the most endangered ecosystems on the planet and are vital to our well-being—they filter our air and water, store billions of tonnes of carbon, and help reduce the impacts of flooding and drought. Grasslands are also key to ranching livelihoods and supporting local economies. To find out more about how NCC is safeguarding these critical landscapes, visit prairiegrasslands.ca.
To learn more about the Working Landscapes program visit: https://natureconservancy.ca/where-we-work/saskatchewan/our-work/working-landscapes/
The artist would like to gratefully acknowledge support from Sask Arts for this project.
Viewfinder Paintings
Heather Cline Viewfinder - Trevor Herriot
THE BIRD’S EYE VIEW of the prairie on a cloudless day is always compelling. On your flight east to Winnipeg or Toronto you look out the window and there it is: the gold and green and brown of the familiar crazy quilt we have all come to think of as prairie. The parallel lines recede towards the horizon in a rippling comforter thrown upon the ancient land. Sometimes, if you are paying attention, your gaze falls on shapes that break the pattern—sinuous tendrils of sage-green etched into the quilt that you recognize as a creek; a larger expanse of that same tone with a different nap or weave to it and you think it might be native grass. And far to the north where the atmosphere thickens to a haze at the curving rim of the earth, something dark enough to suggest depth bisects the quilt west to east, a rope of deep blue that must be the valley where your grandparents once had a cabin by a lake. And in that moment, where land and memories of people collide, other thoughts rush in, questions too. Past the picturesque, a conversation begins.
Viewfinder 2025 Fieldwork
Viewfinder 2025 Walking
