Installation III

This is my work in the Ecotone exhibition at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. The exhibition runs from February 9 to April 14, 2013.

Installation III
Plants collected from a foothills fescue prairie in Beauvais Lake Provincial Park. Our fescue grasslands have changed dramatically over the last 100 years. They are fragmented and in decline due to the cumulative effects of roadways, urbanization, cultivation, livestock grazing, petroleum, natural gas and other developments. In this work I am trying to bring attention to these disappearing grasslands and the abundant biodiversity found within them. Protected parks like Beauvais Lake Provincial Park help to ensure that these native grasslands continue to survive. Plants used in this work are: foothills rough fescue, yarrow, death camas, aster, northern bedstraw, bluebell, red paintbrush, shrubby cinquefoil, wild rose and saskatoon.

This is a public invite to the group exhibition, Ecotone, held at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. The opening reception is on Saturday, February 9, at 8pm. Come and join us for a night of art and community.

 A project in conjunction with the Field Notes Collective and the Alberta Rural Development Network

http://www.saag.ca/art/exhibitions/0668-ecotone

Nuna

The word Nuna is a native name for a woman that means land. I am not certain what tribe or nation this First Nation name comes from, but I thought it suited the work since the First Nations have occupied this land for thousands of years and the work itself is of a woman that is made from the land. The face was sculpted using a garden hoe to carve into the clay embankment located in the coulees along the Oldman River in Lethbridge Alberta.

Suspend

This work was done at Beauvais Lake Provincial Park as part of the Ecotone artist residencies through the Field Notes Collective and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in May and June of 2012.

Stick Man

This intervention was created with the help of my friend Marie Otis whose body was the template for the form. The work was made along the shore of the Upper Waterton Lake at Waterton Lakes National Park. When we were creating the work some people passed by and commented that we were making a stick man.

Square, Rectangle, Oval, Triangle

This work was done at Beauvais Lake Provincial Park during my residency in May and June, 2012. I smeared mud on the pine trees and then applied cattail leaves to the mud.

Charcoal on Cottonwood # 7

Charcoal collected from fire pits then drawn on dead cottonwood trees. In the top image the center was sanded.

Charcoal on Cottonwoods

Charcoal on Trees # 3 and # 4

Charcoal collected from fire pits and drawn on dead cottonwood trees.

Mattress # 5

Mattresses have a limited life, they are used for a number of years and are then discarded and often left littering alley ways waiting to be taken to the dump. The accumulation of the mattress in our alleys, reflects a culture of consumption and of immediate convenience and comfort over that of ecological sustainability. Our society places emphasis on creating things for instant economic benefit and immediate gratification, with little concern or thought for a long term vision of where these products will end up once they are no longer useful.

I am interested in utilizing the mattress one last time before it is taken to the dump in an attempt to create an intervention about a particular time and place and to create dialogue about our society, the human condition and accumulation. Cutting the figure out of the mattress is a way to elaborate on a human presence. There is a tension between mankind and the pile up of these materials that effects the precarious balance of our planet.

Mattress # 2

Figure cut from my friend Kimberly Rondeau who owned the mattress. 2008

microcosm / macrocosm

Near and Far

While I was walking in the coulees on a hike to take photographs for a book collaboration between scientist Mark Goettel and myself I decided to make this little cairn on a large stone which might have been deposited by a glacier from potentially as far away as the Rocky Mountains. The urge came to me to make a cairn to mark this place and to share the moment I experienced at that time such as the fall colors on the flood plain along the Oldman river and the coulee landscape.

The Bridge

This sculpture was done at the University of Lethbridge during my Sculpture II class with Nick Wade in September of 2010.

Nature as Culture

These images are from my latest exhibition at the Trianon Gallery in Lethbridge, Alberta. The landscape in southern Alberta is a place rich with a diversity of plant communities, wildlife and riparian areas along rivers and streams. When walking in the coulees and the river valley I feel a connection to the land and a deep sense of time embedded in this place. The ground I am standing on was once a continental sea bed. The coulees were formed as the last glaciers retreated from our area and have been further eroded by water and wind. The landscape was once mostly covered by forests and eventually transformed into the grasslands of today. This area has a profound influence on my work and I endeavour to communicate this with the materials I have collected, assembled and formed to explore its sense of place. From the topographical studies that reference the fluid formations of the coulees and foothills, the bark and driftwood that float down the river and collect in driftwood piles during floods, to the variety of the plant communities that grow in the coulees I seek to celebrate the nature of this living prairie community as culture.

Exhibition at the Trianon Gallery

I am getting ready for my exhibition at the Trianon Gallery in Lethbridge. I will be starting the install on September 16 and the opening reception will be on Saturday September 24 at 9pm. This is the poster I created for the show. I liked the layout of this poster and decided to change my blog and use a similar design.

Waterton Lakes Cairn

The Tree as Mother

    Mud collected and applied to Cottonwoods

Contemplative Landscape # 5

cast aluminum, pencil rod, birch plywood

Untitled

Holes drilled into driftwood which was then charred and sanded.
driftwood and rope