Across the rural prairies are remnants of relationships to land and place. Due to transient land ownership and a dominating ideological relationship to land based on its perceived economic usefulness, the prairies are scattered with dilapidated structures echoing historical shifts in relations between people and land. While often depicted in a romanticized manner, these structures embody a connection to land based on an economy of extraction, perpetuating abandonment and an ongoing loss and erasure of history. Embedded throughout extensive fields of export grains are decaying homesteads encapsulating the process of colonization, the clearing of woodlands and grasslands for homesteading, and the gradual shift from intergenerational to corporate industrial farming. These grain-based pieces take the form of the structures they replaced, embodying a moment of reflection on the passage of time and complex relationships to land and how it is valued.
2023, archival ink on mitsumata, rabbit skin glue, beeswax, wheat, wheat flour, soil
Piece exhibited as part of MAWA’s Tiny Gallery, February 2023.
This print was produced for a portfolio exchange titled “Codes of Conduct” as part of the 2022 SGCI conference. The print was created in response to the following provided text:
“The chasms between the codes we claim to uphold as a society and the reality of our conduct have only become more apparent over the last several years, amidst a global rise of right-wing populism, ecological devastation, and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. In the face of these realities, growing, social movements are thinking otherwise, imagining futures that may be uncertain, but which offer alternatives to previously upheld systems which all too often function as pillars of animosity in the way of goodwill, growth, and change.
Societies, cultures, and intuitions have structured themselves around these spoken and unspoken codes, and members of these portfolios are asked to reflect broadly on this theme in their work. How do such systems dictate our everyday lives, unite and year us apart, remain present in the mind of the invisible until broken? What does a response to these ruptures look like from numerous points of view offered within a portfolio? How might our art draw attention, provoke thought, and channel support towards repair, revision, or replacement of the structures of our daily lids? And in keeping with the conference theme, what do our futures propose? Our prints will collectively offer a varied set of individually situated responses thinking through but not necessarily answering such urgent questions”
Across the rural prairies are remnants of relationships to land and place. Due to transient land ownership and a dominating ideological relationship to land based on its perceived economic usefulness, the prairies are scattered with dilapidated structures echoing historical shifts in relations between people and land. While often depicted in a romanticized manner, these structures embody connection to land based on an economy of extraction, perpetuating abandonment and an ongoing loss and erasure of history. Embedded throughout extensive fields of export grains are decaying homesteads encapsulating the process of colonization, the clearing of woodlands and grasslands for homesteading, and the gradual shift from intergenerational to corporate industrial farming. These grain based sculptures take the form of the structures they replaced, embodying a moment of reflection on complex relationships to land and how it is valued.
2020, mixed media: wheat, salt, grains.
Pieces will be part of an upcoming exhibition, “Flatland: a Survey of Graduate Ideas in the Canadian West “ with shows at The University of Alberta, The University of Lethbridge, and The University of Saskatchewan.
At dusk in the silence of deep woods and fleeting open fields, we encounter nocturnal creatures. As light retreats from these landscapes we become isolated in a vastness of uncanny uncertainty. This body of work is based on a collection of shared narratives reflecting on personal interactions with predatory creatures that emerge in the dark, specifically coyotes. The stories I collected embody the subjective vulnerability of encountering these scavengers and the sense that we’ve imposed on something not ours. In our limited capacity to comprehend the unknown, these encounters reemerge in dreams, a meeting place where the animal becomes a reflection of our innate fears, anxieties and a symbol for our perception of mortality. Through an assemblage of surveillance image and objects I replicate an archive of dreams that invoke a correlation between these ephemeral confrontations and the underlying experience of our phenomenology.
2016, digital prints on honen and film mounted on aluminium, coyote bones, found materials mixed media and video.
Pieces exhibited in 2016 as a part of "Night moves" at Jackson Power Gallery and "Core Spectres" at the Stanley Milner Library in The Works Art and Design Festival, Edmonton Alberta.
This body of work explores the structure of a home that sits on the property I was raised on, that has now become deteriorated and vacant. Over time I have observed the state of the house decay into ruins in both it's physicality and ephemerality. My interests lay in provoking a representation of the history of the space, deconstructing the tangible reality of the house by re-articulating my relationship to the space and temporality. The images recreate layers of experience, revealing the underlying presence not only of my memories but an assemblage of history. The traces are not only reminiscent of the physicality of the structure, but the psychological layers of the trace felt and experienced in the space.
2011, digital prints on stonehenge
Pieces exhibited as a part of "From Soul to Seawater" in FAB Gallery at the University of Alberta, Edmonton AB and at Cliff Bungalow Arts Centre in Calgary, AB as part of “Ignite Festival.
Core is a series of large scale photographic dyptics that contemplate our relationship to the animal and our construct of home. Through the pairing of images depicting intimate domestic scenes and images of deceased local animals, this body of work alludes to the human's relationship to and imagined separation from the animal. The animals were photographed on the same property that the house pictured stands on.
2011, digital images printed on film, mounted on aluminum
Select pieces were exhibited in 30 Love at Society of Northern Alberta Printmakers Gallery in 2012
Our bodies house our memories, not unlike our bodies occupying built structures. As our bodies deteriorate over time our memories fade, alter or remain vibrantly etched. The house pictured is that of my grandparents vacant and disintegrating home during a time when their own selves were fragmenting into dementia. Painted on fragile skin-like paper, this repeated image flickers like a memory, the paintings themselves become bodily and weary. The repetitive image of a deteriorating house simultaneously articulates our relationship to fading memory, the home and the body.
2011, oil and graphite on rabbit-skinned honen
2011, mixed media
Pieces exhibited in "From Salt to Seawater" at Fab Gallery at the University of Alberta and "Parka Patio" at Latitude 53, Edmonton
This body of work depicts a figure entering a dark, wooded landscape. In the isolation of landscape our experience of duration and presence are altered. The woods become a transformative meeting place with the self where we are confronted with things beyond our senses and beyond our understanding. This dichotomy allows for an emergance of the uncanny.
2010, acrylic and oil on board
to carve was part of the Winnipeg Underground Film Festival’s 90-Second Short: CHAPTER VI: Marking Place.
