The Okanagan Thompson International Sculpture Symposium (OTISS) was organized by bronze sculptor Jock Hildebrand in 2002 who wanted to provide educational, tourism, and cultural benefits to the community by bringing professional sculptors to the region. Eleven international sculptors and ten Canadian sculptors were invited to the Thompson Okanagan region to create permanent public sculptures in one of the nine host communities: Kelowna, Kamloops, Vernon, Penticton, Summerland, Osoyoos, Westbank, Lake Country and the seven First Nations bands in the Okanagan Nation Alliance. The project ran for over 100 days in BC.

Bill and Joyce De Meester were semi-professional photographers from Ontario before settling in BC where they continued photography non-professionally. In 2002, they proposed to Deborah Greaves, the fundraising coordinator for the Okanagan Thompson International Sculpture Symposium (OTISS), that they would like to photograph the sculptures with the intent to make them available globally through different media outlets such as newspapers, magazines, postcards, books, or other fundraising opportunities.