Waterside/Alder/Portal

Waterside/Alder/Portal, 6' x 6;, A collaboration with Alders a friends, placed at the threshold of land & water in dialougue with tidal and ancestoral energies. Temporary installation at Waterside, Cornerbrook, a land-based performance installation with the support of the Rotatry Arts Centre Artist in Residency, Oct 2024 

Collaborators- Tara Cashen

Zack Turpin

Sampson Vassallo

   Project Photography-   Mandy Keeping, @mandykjumps

  Sampson Vassallo @samsinnermind

Sawyer Eaton & Nicole Fougere

Imminence/Land/Bear

Imminence/Land/Bear, 72' x 58', oil mediums, brook sand & mud, vegetation & other offerings, suspended by trees and rocks, temporary insallation at Waterside, Cornerbrook, a land-based performance installation with the support of the Rotatry Arts Centre Artist in Residency, Oct 2024 

Gratitude 

Thank you to all for sowing, watering & caring for these seeds. Thank you for bringing a sense of wholeness to our communal and personal realities. For the deepening of self/land; for one intimate dialogue after another. 

This project is the first of a series of oil paintings paired with land-based woven plant sculptures. These pieces will be painted in place incorporating the use of natural materials & mediums, which are gathered from the site. There will be more resonating and responding consecrated through living fibers, sculptural vows, a paradox of materiality and a ritualized feast to commemorate the work, grow the tendrils, and feed all who made it happen.  

This project began with a commitment to Land, Water & in-between spaces, becoming commitment in and of itself for projects to come.  A commitment to the collision of worlds, mediums, disciplines, art practices, and inward/outward spaces. Entangling motifs. Creating webs of story. Being guided by lived stories, and learning how to move with land. I intend these works to challenge viewers to embody new ways of being with ritual, place, self and renewal. I wish to continue exploring mediums & exhibition spaces that channel the interconnectedness, animacy & intimacy of place. Art & Land as reciprocity- as one. 

Bear  

You could say this story began with a deep yearning to paint Bear. 

My heart ached; the moon mourned; the mountain called 

At the time, I couldn’t say for sure I knew who I or who the Wild God was... 

I knew I was afraid 

I couldn't say for sure if I had been invited into the house of the Wild God, or if I had invited myself in. There were stories I had told myself that said I wasn’t a trespasser, that in some way I belonged. Yet it’s impossible to ignore the fracture. Is the Wild God welcome in your home?  The stories tell us so: fear the people, fear the water, fear bear.  

This story defies told boundaries.  There are no lines between human and non-human 

It is Bear in motion, a collision of worlds.  

The yearning heart that moved a fearful mind to grow the garden, to climb the steps, to embrace the friendship, to enter the wood, to follow River, to cross the threshold. 

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I knew Bear was in the wound 

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