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Tree Shaman – Lydia Kwa in the Massy Gallery
October 26, 2018 @ 7:00 pm - November 28, 2018 @ 6:00 pm
Massy Books is proud to present “tree shaman,” an exhibition of photo-based works and accompanying chapbook by Vancouver writer and clinical psychologist Lydia Kwa.
Join us for an opening party on October 26th at 7PM, and stop by any time through November 22 to catch her work in the Massy Gallery.
“I walked east along the avenue and saw the cut
stumps of the birch tree. I surmised the tree must
have developed some kind of disease, and
the Parks Board people had to come cut it down.
I was seized with an urge to photograph the dead,
dismembered tree. Three days later, on 24th August
2015, I went to buy an old Polaroid camera, and
loaded it with film made by the Impossible Project.
Two rolls—eight shots in the morning; and eight
later that same afternoon.
Three years later, this project has come to fruition.”
Proceeds from the sale of this chapbook will be
donated to Pacific Wild Alliance
(pacificwildalliance.org).
About Lydia Kwa:
Lydia lives and works in Vancouver as a clinical psychologist and a writer. She went to University of Toronto to do a Bachelors of Science degree in Psychology, then spent 7 years at Queen’s University in Kingston getting her MA and PhD. While at Queen’s, she started to take her writing more seriously and would drop into a writers’ group that met on the top floor of the Grad Club on Monday nights. In 1989, the poems she submitted to two campus periodicals won prizes. It was also the year her poems were first published in a Canadian literary magazine: CV2 out of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Today, Lydia works out of her own office as a full-time psychologist at the edge of Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver. She has several published books, including: This Place Called Absence, The Walking Boy, Pulse, and her latest work— sinuous, a long poem that spans about fourteen years, and covers various experiences of living in Canada, including her reflections on the nature of trauma, the resilience of the human spirit, and the healing that comes from practices such as meditation and ki aikido.