Exhibitions + Commissions
Under the Mountain's Shadow
Tryptic - Summer 2021
Marion Nicoll Gallery Installation, Calgary - November 2021
Whyte Museum Installation, Banff - January 2022 - Present
The research project and artwork, Under the Mountain’s Shadow, created through he AUArts Self-Directed Research Scholarship explores, and attempts to bring awareness to, the challenges that face residents of, and visitors to, resort towns. Issues that are rarely discussed and even more rarely publicly acknowledged. The beauty of the place and the ‘Peter Pan’ attitude towards life in a resort town has a shadow—a darker side that results in increased rates of sexualized violence, domestic and intimate partner violence, as well as challenges with addictions and mental health[1]. These issues are even more challenging because along with the high turnover of people and the younger population, most business and employers in resort towns rely on the tourist industry and its accompanying pristine image of natural beauty—leaving little space to acknowledge, discuss, or improve the social issues facing resort towns.
The finished piece, depicting a semi-abstract landscape of the town of Banff, is built up of trash collected from around the townsite, printed statistics and comments from a survey and research conducted during the project. The trash reflects the less picturesque as well as the disappointing behaviour of visitors and locals alike in the National Park. While the statistics from the survey which address sexualized violence, domestic and intimate partner violence, addictions, and mental health are not perhaps surprising given provincial statistics (see below) they are hard to face personally and as a community. Yet, there is hope to be found in the Bow Valley. There are shifts in attitude, access to good mental health and addictions services,[2] and the emergence of new programs to educate and support the community. While there is a shadow that hangs over this beautiful place we love and I am lucky to call home, there is also light in the increasing willingness to discuss these issues and in the strength of our community. Under the Mountain’s Shadow expresses both the darkness and the light and is part of a larger ongoing community building project.
[1] Hoffart, Irene. “Finding the Higher Ground: Exploring the Need to Establish Secure Shelter, Transition Housing and Support Services for Women and Children who are Escaping Domestic Violence in the Bow Valley.” Synergy Research Group Submitted to the YWCA Banff, https://ywcabanff.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/YWCA-Higher-Ground_Needs-Assessment-Report_May10_16.pdf, March 2nd, 2016. Page 5.
[2] Hoffart, Irene. “Finding the Higher Ground: Exploring the Need to Establish Secure Shelter, Transition Housing and Support Services for Women and Children who are Escaping Domestic Violence in the Bow Valley.” Synergy Research Group Submitted to the YWCA Banff, https://ywcabanff.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/YWCA-Higher-Ground_Needs-Assessment-Report_May10_16.pdf, March 2nd, 2016. Page 5.
The View From Here - Private Collection
Spring 2021
Produced through private commission this piece, The View From Here, is 4' x 8', acrylic, house paint, and ink on framed panel. It explores the city of Calgary, or rather the city in my mind, the locations, connections, and features that are meaningful to my experience of this place.
Iterations of Self
Residency September 2020 - April 2021
Exhibition Under Maintenance May 2021
Digital Drawing Animation, Duration 6:30
Produced during the 2020/2021 Hear/d Residency through the AUArts Student's Association.
Project Artist Statement: My artwork explores how our understanding of self can be expressed in the attachment to and relationship we have with particular landscapes. I rely on memory, emotion, and experience of place to build up an image that is as much internal as it is external. In this work, Iterations of Self, I express the fluctuations in my mental health over time, exploring its influences and its effects. Throughout the month of March, and the one-year anniversary of the COVID19 pandemic, while still very much in isolation, I recorded my mental well being, rating how I was feeling based on four categories: energy level, stress, optimism, and feelings of connection with others. I transformed this record into parametrically programmed variables that animate a digital drawing, recording the impact of these changes on the landscape. The drawing depicts the view of Cascade Mountain from my home in Banff, a view which is itself as changeable as my emotional state. It represents at once a diary-like record of myself and the ways mental health can change our perception of our surroundings. By acknowledging this variability, I am examining how mental health is a relationship between the individual and time, that it not something to be ‘fixed,’ rather part of all of us that needs to be recognized and maintained.
Memories in Place - Private Collection
June 2020
Memories in Place, private collection - was produced as part of the AUArts Scholarship for a research project. It made in response to changing patterns of movement, human and animal, within the townsite of Banff as a result of the COVID 19 lockdowns.
The Algonquin Project
September 2019-Present
The Algonquin Project is an ongoing exploration of the interconnections between sound and landscape. The first instance of the project and exhibition at the Algonquin Art Center has been postponed due to COVID with a future date to be confirmed.