TYLER LOS-JONES

Around 450 million years ago, plants began their gradual journey out of the oceans and spread across the land. It would be another 300 million years before these early plants produced flowers and nutrient-rich pollen to invite animals to assist in their proliferation. During their long co-evolution with pollinating animals, flowering plants have developed a stunning array of tactics to encourage participation in their multi-species exchange. Los-Jones is fascinated by the ways plants use colour and pattern to invite animals (including humans) to look, investigate, and encounter them. Knit by roots and wings is an artwork which seeks to honour the aesthetic contributions of flowing plants and looks towards local wildflowers as examples of connection, generosity, and beauty that can nurture and sustain communities.

This work began in 2023 by documenting an abundant field of wildflowers near the artist’s home in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta. At the site of the original photograph, several species of plants were actively in bloom, including many regularly found in the Kelowna area, such as Casteleja, Sitka Valerian, Aster, and Arnica. Knit by roots and wings translates the petal patterns of these flowers into the knotted form of a net, where the original image is visible in the threads. This work incorporates the formal language of nets and knitting to represent the simultaneous qualities of entanglement and porosity found in multi-species communities. Los-Jones finds these structures compelling for many of the same reasons contemporary eco-critic and philosopher Timothy Morton describes his interests in the term “mesh” in his 2010 book The Ecological Thought:

“Mesh” can mean the holes in a network and threading between them. It suggests both hardness and delicacy. It has uses in biology, mathematics, and engineering and in weaving and computing - think stockings and graphic design, metals, and fabrics. It has antecedents in mask and mass, suggesting both density and deception. By extension, “mesh” can mean a complex situation or series of events in which a person is entangled; a concatenation of constraining or restricting forces or circumstances; a snare. (Morton 28)

— Tyler Los-Jones, 2024

Tyler Los-Jones produces objects and images from his home in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta. Entangling photographic and sculptural processes, his work complicates cultural expectations of environments. Prior to beginning his current body of work using images of Alpine wildflower fields as source material, Los-Jones’ practice reflected on several related subjects including lichen species who grow specifically on limestone in the Canadian Rockies, the ancient plants that now constitute coal deposits in southern British Columbia and Alberta; and the romanticized depictions of mountain vistas that are so integral to the tourism industry in his past home in Banff. Since graduating from the Alberta College of Art and Design (now Alberta University for the Arts) in 2007, Los-Jones’ work has been exhibited extensively across Canada and the United States. He has also had solo exhibitions at Banff Centre; Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Division Gallery, Toronto; and Norberg Hall Gallery, Calgary. He has been commissioned to produce large-scale public artworks for the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Calgary Airport Marriot In-Terminal; and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre. Los-Jones is a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award (2016) and has received grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Canada Council for the Arts. His work is in the permanent collections of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts; the Government of Canada Department of Foreign Affairs; and the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, as well as the TD Canada trust and the Royal Bank of Canada. He is represented by Norberg Hall, Calgary.