Tom Burrows | Clam

Tom Burrows | Clam
Solo Exhibition | Main Level Gallery
May 10-24, 2025
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday May 10, 2-4pm | Artist In Attendance

Tom Burrows' latest exhibition at Bau-Xi Gallery is a meditation on environmental change, shaped by decades of living and harvesting clams and other shellfish along the shores of the Salish Sea. In his new series, Clam, Burrows reflects on the quiet disappearance of the clam beds he once relied on, drawing a connection between personal loss and the broader impact of ocean acidification. The series of cast polymer resin sculptures produced for the exhibition stand as both elegy and witness—artifacts of a vanishing intertidal world.

Artist Statement: 

“There’s an adage on the Northwest Coast: “When the tide is out, the table is set.”

I had been harvesting clams from the same intertidal gravel beach within walking distance of my island studio for over five decades. The area remained productive through various harvesting intensities from myself and other islanders until three years ago, when I found it was taking me twice the amount of time to gather the same number of clams. Two years ago, the clam raking took longer still.  Last year, I tried once and realized soon there would be nothing to return to.

The increasing acidification of the Salish Sea resulting from historically high levels of atmospheric CO2 is dissolving the shells of juvenile clams. 

Even in the lean times, I could depend on a meal of linguine alle vongole in which a pot of clams is steamed in their shells drizzled with oil and garlic. Once the clams open, their briny sweetness spills from their shells and the pot is emptied over a bowl of warm pasta. Within moments, that small salty goddess is on the tongue.
 
I now make do with the wondrous plains of light as the tide slides over the gravel beach. Waiting. Watching.” – Tom Burrows, 2025


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