The Barnacle Project is an interactive art installation piece.

Created by Sculptural Embroidery Artist Steph Kincade (They/Them) with support from Canada Ocean Week’s Blue Creators Grant

Come learn about Barnacles, single-use plastics, microplasics and how they are all related!

Artist talk and Scientist talk times TBA on June 8th at the Cunard Public Space on the Halifax waterfront

About the Barnacle Project

While many grocery stores have shifted away from single use plastic bags, Plastic bags are still widely used in food packaging. Frequently these plastic bags go straight into the trash, some making it into our oceans as bags and others as microplastics as they break down. Many Ocean animals can mistake plastic bags for food, which can lead to toxic buildup in their systems or suffocation. In fact, fish eat thousands of tons of plastic each year, which is then passed up the food chain to larger fish marine mammals and humans.

In an effort to shift my art practice to a more sustainable practice, and in an effort to combine my work with science communication, I began to explore unlikely materials. One of which were the plastic bags that our food came prepackaged in. Having saved the majority of our household plastic bag waste over the course of the last year I decided to transform it into cordage that I could crochet with and began building sculptural pieces that will be part of an expanding installation piece addressing plastic waste (specifically in our oceans). This has resulted in a colony of larger than life barnacle sculptures. As filter feeders and as animals very low on the food chain barnacles can ingest microplastics and are a potential bioindicator of microplastic pollution in the ocean.

About the artist

Steph Kincade (they/them) is a sculptural embroidery and fibre artist. They are a settler in K’jipuktuk/Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada and hailing originally from Menaquesk/Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. They began their artistic career working behind the scenes in the world of live theatre with a BA in scenography and technical scenography. Embroidery and fibre became their focus in 2020. Beginning as a self-taught artist and building on a small foundation pieced together during their theatre career, they quickly discovered what specialized skills they desired additional training in and proceeded to seek out and complete self-directed study with tutors around the world to gain those specialized skills.

Working in the arts has never diminished their love of science or their long-standing love affaire with marine biology and the tiny worlds many folks walk by without notice. These natural inspirations are the focus of much of their work. Past work includes MicroWorlds, a sculptural hand embroidery collection exploring the small and microscopic, and Stranglehold, a small collection of wearable art pieces inspired by toxic algae blooms. Current work explores the addition of freehand machine embroidery, explores the use of sustainably foraged plant fibres, and how to combine their art with science communication. They have been exploring how to transform the art of embroidery into a more environmentally sustainable practice as well as a more sculptural one while still maintaining a high quality of work.  Steph has been sustainably gathering and drying their own plant-based materials since 2022 and frequently uses thrifted and crowdsourced materials that would otherwise be disposed of.

They have had works exhibited in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario. They can be found online at www.stephkincade.com on Facebook @SKartistpage and on Instagram @stephaniekincade