Ali’s Anniversary
A note from our Residency Manager, Alexandra (Ali) Bischoff
This December will mark my third anniversary at the Similkameen Artist Residency. When my little family left the city and arrived here at the end of 2022, I had no idea that we would stay as long as we have, but I am so grateful for my time in the Similkameen. In every season that’s passed, the valley has held us and everything in it.
Springtime always surprises me with an unexpected lushness, green feeling so uncommon later on, smothered in the heat of a semi-arid region. And springtime flowers! Flowers everywhere. The Okanagan sunflower, clinging to rugged rock, transforms hillsides into swathes of yellow and marks the seasonal awakening of snakes. Desert floxes so delicately dot paths underfoot (gentle, gentle, watch and set your feet down). And then the bitterroot emerges—blooms bringing whispers from the underworld, otherworldly—gradually folding into themselves again as the heat settles in.
Summer swelters and belongs to reptiles, amphibians, insects, fish. Small fry nibble at your toes when you rest them in the river (glinting silver, little gems). Watching careful to see if the season will mean rattlesnake or bull snake sentinels, romancing either from a distance. The prickly pear seem most at ease in summer; everything in the valley looks soft from afar, but I know it’s sharp, barbed. Ospreys and eagles hover overhead looking for lunch. The studios stay cool and the sun sets late—twice, actually, into mountain dips.
Shadow begins licking at the cabin in the early afternoon each fall. My first autumn, an artist came from afar to practice cyanotype and discovered that the mountains’ shadows stilt then swallow the cabin quick; they practiced earlier, with respect, then retired to other tasks. The valley’s colours turn to fire and rust. It’s the best time of year to hike—to worship mountains, volcanic rock. You can buy the biggest zucchini you’ve ever seen for a buck.
Today, the snow fell and stuck for the first time all year (if not overnight), reminding me again of when we first arrived. I love the winters here. A calm descends upon the valley—a collective exhale—as the river slows then freezes over and the village quiets. Once the snow falls, a favourite pastime of ours is tracking animal prints. Coyotes move in pairs, often, and traverse the property in interlocking patterns, challenging my own way finding and gratifying my animalistic imagination. Seeing ungulate tracks is just as ticklish. Only once have we seen cat prints; a local named Thor and one of the artists thought a baby bobcat, maybe?
Incredibly, I’ve met more than 65 artists here, each with a unique practice and creative perspective. Sharing slivers of seasons with each person has been a gift. While I’ve spent the last ten years of my professional life in service of artists, at the residency I’ve been able to applaud them for sleeping in and taking walks through the sage, for clambering over the purple rock of ancient mountains, for looking at stars and taking creative risks; things I wish for everyone. Things I’ve been so fortunate to have experienced myself.
We’ll be moving on soon, opening our eyes to a different plot of turtle island. But I’ll always treasure my time in syilx territory, which taught me how to see in a different way, allowed me to look long and deep. Here, in the valley that held us and everything in it, that will continue to hold (and let go) long after we’re gone. How heartening.
