The 164-year-old Irving House now has two new residents.
Starting July, artists Janet Wang and Holly Schmidt have been exploring the 14 furnished rooms, elaborate fireplaces and manicured gardens of the heritage building as part of the city's Public Art Program.
The artists were invited to look at the Gothic Revival style colonial home and find ways to make it "more current, and decolonize the histories of the house," said Wang, a visual artist and educator who has won awards from Vancouver Foundation, BC Arts Council and the Canada Council of Arts.
As part of the pilot art project, Wang and Schmidt have been spending three to four days a week at what used to be the home of Captain William Irving and his family back in the 1800s, and poring over documents at the New Westminster archives to learn more of its history.
“When you go in there, it's all about the settlers who built this grand house ... and there are all these old artifacts in it. But the stories that I'm very interested in are also of the Chinese labourers that actually supported these households,” said Wang, who is a second-generation settler of Chinese heritage.
"There are very few images of Chinese labourers who would have been the cook or the laundry person or the gardener. So that's kind of what my angle has been going into this house.”
Old wallpapers inspire new zines
As someone who has always been interested in patterns, Wang said she gravitated towards the house’s gilded wallpapers — two of which are originals from 1887.
According to the City of New Westminster website, a set of original wallpaper, frieze and ceiling paper was found as part of the building’s 2009 restoration. The patterns in the found-wallpaper were “meticulously” recreated by heritage consultant Stuart Stark and printed in England, before being shipped back to Irving House.
“Some of these patterns that were very much of European taste were actually derived from Chinese patterns or from this idea of the Orient,” said Wang.
She carefully photographed the wallpaper, re-stitched the photos together and printed them to create a wallpaper-inspired zine, with a character-design of herself on the cover.
This month, she plans to invite all history buffs to join her on a tour of the Irving House and then make quick zines based on their observations.
At the free event, Wang will teach participants drawing techniques and provide them with the wallpaper-lookalike prints to create a fun booklet that explores the deep question: “What are the stories in the walls of this house?”
“It doesn't need to be these colonial histories. It could be, 'What does it mean for me as a Chinese settler in Canada to go into this house,' ‘What would my place be back in the day or now?'," she said.
"And just try to really question 'What does it mean to be a Chinese person in this house at this point?'”
The zine workshop, presented by the New Westminster Public Library, is on Thursday, Aug. 24, between 10 and 11:30 a.m. at Irving House, 302 Royal Ave. It's free for all. Register by sending an email to [email protected].
