Rebel salt crystals and the irreproducible equilibrium of sacred salt lakes.
This FEELed Note was written by Nina Vroemen, with contributions from Julian Self, as part of ASiR 2026, the FEELed Lab’s pilot Artist-and-Scientist in Residence program.
“What is saltier: human blood or the Ocean?”
Indeed, both blood and swell are comprised of the same kind of salt: sodium chloride.
Salt is in our bodies.
Some of the most important bodies of water.
Salt seduces.
It enhances flavour on human tastebuds.
It fixes colors to textile fibres.
It preserves food without electricity.
It makes vegetables sweat—pulls brine.
It drives mammals to travel lengthy distances to satisfy an essential Lick.
Salt—with a particular interest in Salt Lakes—was our focus for our Science and Art residency at Woodhaven.
Nina Vroemen’s ceramics practice emphasizes geological knowledge within glaze chemistry, attending to the ecological and cultural stories that materials carry. Julian Self studies Phase Equilibria, observing how salts dissolve, crystallize, and transform with environmental conditions. Though analytical in method, his work aligns with Vroemen’s through a shared attention to emergent behaviour and observation. Together, we explored how artistic and scientific approaches illuminate material processes and the stories they carry, creating a space for dialogue across disciplines.
Salt lakes are often believed to be lifeless. The most famous salt lake is called the Dead Sea, in English, and in Arabic.
However, salt lakes are very much host to life, and also seen as a key to understanding life’s past, present and possible futures.
During our ten day residency at Woodhaven we conducted fieldwork and material research on Salt lakes with a particular focus on Kłlilx’w or Spotted Lake, located near Osoyoos on the traditional territory of the Syilx Okanagan.
Spotted Lake is a sacred medicine lake revered for its healing properties.The salt lake is striking in its unusual coloration and material wonder. The lake contains high levels of magnesium sulfate (Epsom) and sodium sulfate with trace minerals such as titanium and iron.
It also contains magic—an element that is unquantifiable.
During the dry season the lake transforms into an otherworldly cluster of hyper-pigmented pools encrusted in salt crystal shore lines. The spots recessed into the rolling hills range in colour from turquoise, copper green, umber, orange, and gold.
Spotted Lake is comprised of 365 pools—one for every day the Earth orbits the sun! A jaw dropping fact that Coralee Miller shared with us from the Sncewips Heritage Museum. Each spot contains its own unique qualities that have healed many from physical and emotional ailments.
Otherworldly
In reading scientific articles on the Spotted Lake we were made aware of it’s troubling extractive history and also how this body of water is a remarkable site on earth that lends itself to understanding terrestrial pasts and life on other planets.
Exobiology is the study of life outside of earth. Exobiology studies can take many forms, one of which is to study environments on earth which can resemble environments in space which are possible candidates for life.
The Spotted Lake is one such example: “Spotted lake is an analog for ancient paleolakes on Mars in which sulfate salt deposits may have offered periodically habitable environments and could have concentrated and preserved organic materials or their biomarkers over geologic time.” (Pontefract, 2017)
The salt lakes can also show the potential of preservation through the crystallization of salts: “Organisms have also been shown to exist in fluid inclusions trapped in rapidly forming salt crystals, and viable isolates have been obtained from inclusions that are on the order of 105 years old” (Pontefract)
In this way the Spotted Lake contains both knowledge of the deep past and potential for deep futures beyond this holy wet planet.
Rebel Crystals
One of the oldest scientific articles we read was by Olaf P. Jenkins, written in 1917. The elaborately detailed, extractive paper reveals the harmful legacies and yet it also sheds light on how the salinity of the lake helped sabotage mining at the site:
The material agency of the lake in resisting extraction, literally bursting pipes and wooden tanks in its salt crystal transformation became an emergent resilient narrative that parallels the strength, care and stewardship of the syilx people that regained rightful ownership of the lake in 2001.
Geo mimicry
Salt crystal formations became our material research. Julian attempted to reproduce a solution similar to the scientific reports of the lakes composition. Epsom salts (sourced at the pharmacy) and Glauber’s Salt (sodium sulfate) were combined in an attempt to mimic the salinity of the water. The brine was slippery to the touch and when left over night would begin evaporating into impressive crystal formations. Self conducted Phase Equilibria experiments while Vroemen adopted the saline water in creating brine paintings that would crystallize overnight and soaked ceramic bowls in the solution to create crystal encrusted dishes that mimicked the spots of the lake.
Notes on Salt Painting & Brine soaked Ceramics
The salt crystallization in brine painting satisfies this unexpected aspect that I love so much in ceramics. Where the elements will have their way in the kiln despite material research, prayer and patience.
The brine paintings take over night to crystallize as the salty solution hovers over the paper, the water clinging to the salt molecules rather than the paper pulp.
I love working with unexpected elements, where you have to relinquish control.
Conservation
Spotted Lake (kɬlil̕xʷ) is protected by the Okanagan nation. Having endured many years of mining and prospected for a Spa in the late 90’s the syilx people regained rightful ownership of the sacred lake in 2001.
The conservation success of the Spotted Lake is in deep contrast to Kelona’s Robert Lake that has been depleted of its salinity the discharged the water complaints from private landowners surrounding the site to prevent flooding. Tragically this temporary solution has removed the salt from the lake forever. Though water can be returned, the delicate composition of its salinity cannot.
The Spotted Lake can be observed by all visitors from the pulloff, however access to the land and shore surrounding this sacred site is only granted through permission from the Osoyoos Indian Band.
In asking for permission we were fortunate enough to be welcomes by J.R. “Banjo” Linkevic, director of lands, from the Osoyoos Indian Band and Carrie Terbasket who is part of Lower Similkameen Indian Band.
The experience of walking down to the lakeside was beyond words. Full emotion, magic and awe. Our attempts at recreating the salt lake water felt clumsy and sterile in the embodied experience of the complex ecology and spirit of the place.
We are tremendously moved by the generosity, knowledge and stories shared with us on our visits.
Field notes from the Lakeside
The lake keeps the score. A record of soles in the soft clay in the shore. Each footprint, marking the steps towards recovery, to healing, to guidance. Imprinted in clay that is saturated with magnesium sulphate and sodium sulphate and magic; sprouting crystals from the impressions of its visitors.
The waters surface is calm today while visiting the lake with my dear friend Carrie Terbasket.
The pools are mirror-like.
Unlike yesterday when the wind was so strong ripples formed and the gusts felt as though they were coming from the water itself.
Banjo had brought us to the lake the day before with also the intention of returning a piece of the healing shore that German tourists had stolen to gift a friend.
Luckily the crystallized medicine had been rejected and returned to the Osoyoos Indian Ban.
Banjo slowly unwrapped the stolen piece of the lake from the red tissue paper. The thin blue ribbon wildly dancing in the wind. So strong now that our voices were muffled by the beckoning call of the water.
The lake had been longing for a piece of itself that had been taken without permission.
Now returned, the lake is calm.
The FEELed lab 