Last Refuge
2011
Fibre Construction
48x60 inches
Identities change over time.
Materials are physically altered by usage and re-usage.
Identity can be reinvented but no matter how strong and redirected is today’s purpose, it cannot completely obliterate the previous lives of the object.
This accumulation of identities leaves a patina of physical surface texture where the layers of accumulated meanings can be read.
So yes, some of those rocks are fun fur from past Halloween costumes.
Those are recycled pieces of oil and watercolour paintings otherwise unfit for public consumption
And some coffee stained canvas test strips dredged up from the bottom of the scrap bin.
Join the two subject figures and look out from this refuge to the great world beyond.
Or hide in here; see if the two silhouettes can peer this far into the gloom, way down into the back of the cave.
This piece won the 2009 Student Legacy Award from the Alberta College of Art + Design Students Association.
Very exciting, because during my four years at ACAD, this was the only award actually based on artistic merit,
rather than GPA.
Materials are physically altered by usage and re-usage.
Identity can be reinvented but no matter how strong and redirected is today’s purpose, it cannot completely obliterate the previous lives of the object.
This accumulation of identities leaves a patina of physical surface texture where the layers of accumulated meanings can be read.
So yes, some of those rocks are fun fur from past Halloween costumes.
Those are recycled pieces of oil and watercolour paintings otherwise unfit for public consumption
And some coffee stained canvas test strips dredged up from the bottom of the scrap bin.
Join the two subject figures and look out from this refuge to the great world beyond.
Or hide in here; see if the two silhouettes can peer this far into the gloom, way down into the back of the cave.
This piece won the 2009 Student Legacy Award from the Alberta College of Art + Design Students Association.
Very exciting, because during my four years at ACAD, this was the only award actually based on artistic merit,
rather than GPA.
This Huge Small World That I Survey
2011
Watercolour and Ink Wash on Paper
48x65 inches
Remember that day, the one down at the river?
The sky was everywhere sunshine, the landscape was immensely wide open, and the river was Huge.
The afternoon went on forever, and yet took no time at all.
The vivid colours of childhood meet vague but ever-present Calgary colours of Buckskin and Blue.
Scale conforms to the priority of memory rather than the geometry of Euclid.
Clearly remembered experience meets vaguely remembered fact.
Solitary and completely engrossing this small huge world that I survey
“the world is very large, and we are very small. But also the world is open, empty, nearly abstract and in its flatness you are a challenging upright thing. As sudden as an exclamation mark, as enigmatic as a question mark." (Steiger, Wolf Willow)
The sky was everywhere sunshine, the landscape was immensely wide open, and the river was Huge.
The afternoon went on forever, and yet took no time at all.
The vivid colours of childhood meet vague but ever-present Calgary colours of Buckskin and Blue.
Scale conforms to the priority of memory rather than the geometry of Euclid.
Clearly remembered experience meets vaguely remembered fact.
Solitary and completely engrossing this small huge world that I survey
“the world is very large, and we are very small. But also the world is open, empty, nearly abstract and in its flatness you are a challenging upright thing. As sudden as an exclamation mark, as enigmatic as a question mark." (Steiger, Wolf Willow)