Take My Hand explores our connections to our surroundings and each other. It represents those moments where everything comes together and true connection and empathy shine through. Every so often, if the weather, time of day, and sun angles allow, the shadows from the panels align to create a secondary hand taking the offered hand in the print. Participants are encouraged to take an active role in their surroundings and use their own shadow to take the outreached hand themselves. #takemyhand
In an unprecedented time, Pod ENVELOPED aims to act as a vehicle to engage us with the various natural phenomena that surround us. As the seasons progress, this small intimate structure will become encapsulated by hops becoming something more.
Weather is something that is unique to a region and, in essence, defines a specific place. In the Maritimes, a large part of that includes the rain. Our weather connects us. It is something we all experience despite our various backgrounds. Weather is the topic that we most often broach with strangers or in casual conversation. RAIN/PLAINS celebrates and embraces this often under-appreciated but place defining and connecting element.
RAIN/PLAINS is a simple but dynamic pixelated two dimensional paint installation. Lines of blues and greens cascade down the wall in a variety of tones. The composition and interruption of lines creates a feeling of falling. While the colours and tones create depth within the two dimensional plane of the wall. The bright contrasting orange pixels interrupt and contrast the rain, representing us, unique separate entities surrounded and connected through this experience and place.
Abstracted through pixelation, RAIN/PLAINS looks to create not a visual representation of rain but the idea of it. The pixelation is also used to connect the piece into its surrounding architecture by referencing the grid created between the wood slats on the ceiling and walls. In essence, RAIN/PLAINS adopts the inherit architecture as its basic framework while using tone and colour to create a depth of plane, playing with both two and three dimensionality.
Pavilion One is an exploration in biomimetic forms and alternative structures. Situated on a farm in PEI in, it takes inspiration from the double curvature and the overlapping pods of the surrounding grain fields. The arched interior is reminiscent of a gothic arch. The semi-opaque covering protects the viewers from the weather while allowing the shadows from the adjacent trees to envelope the structure.
Much like real-life motherhood, Motherhood is ever-changing and consisting of many parts. Twice a year during the spring and fall solstices, the shadows of Motherhood’s concrete silhouettes come together to create the perfect silhouette of a pregnant mother. This work was done as part of the Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development.
The PODS Series aims to act as a vehicle to engage the viewer with the various natural phenomena that surround us but are often overlooked and under-appreciated.
Tactile Interactions is a 6.5’ in Diameter by 6’ high POD constructed with bent wood trusses, plywood and conventional lumber. The pod is divided into six sections with three of those being open and three of them consisting of bent wood trusses that become grass covered lounge seats.
Human beings have a complicated relationship with nature. We tame it. We revere it. We abuse it. Tactile Interactions invites the viewer to reengage with nature through a medium that is highly cultivated but extremely emblematic of our connection to nature, grass.
Grass is the medium we often see around us to denote ‘green areas.’ It is the cultivated/manicured symbol of nature. We walk on paths through it, but we don’t often actively engage with it. Tactile Interactions draws the surrounding grass up into benches to reconnect the viewer with the experience of their surroundings in a physical manner while connecting with each other.
Funded by a Creation Grant and Arts Infrastructure Grant for New and Emerging Artists by New Brunswick Arts Board.
Building Blocks seeks to engage the local community with the building of their public spaces. It seeks to more mindfully connect us with our surroundings, and encourage us to become involved in the placemaking of our community spaces. Through a series of workshops, the community would tour the site and buildings, returning to a nearby public space for discussions and the creation of mosaics of their experience. These mosaics will be cast into the concrete blocks that will become the art piece. With the final shape and location of the piece being dictated by the discussions during the workshops.
Sitting in our offices and places of work, we are often disconnected from the outside world. SWAY intends to more directly connect us to the ebb and flow of outside. In SWAY, an entire office is inhabited by a grid of swaying string moved by a tiny motor whose movements reflect the wind outside. Participants enter the office through the grid of swaying string to a small void in the centre. There, they stand, enveloped.
28 concrete blocks dance lightly 1/2” off the gallery wall, their lightness and movement challenges our preconceptions of concrete being a heavy, thick, grounded material. Develop while in the gallery, its initial inspiration was the somewhat typical presentation of paintings or photography in a horizontal line. That line instead became a baseline exploded chaotically across the wall and even the floor, expressing the chaotic nature of life changing events, in this case, the birth of the artist’s first child.
Funded by a Creation Grant and Arts Infrastructure Grant for New and Emerging Artists by New Brunswick Arts Board.
The PODS Series aims to act as a vehicle to engage the viewer with the various natural phenomena that surround us, defining our locations but are often overlooked and under-appreciated.
Light/Shadow is a 7’ in Diameter by 5’ high POD constructed with bent wood trusses, plywood and conventional lumber. The POD is tilted to maximize the play of the sun on the structure. The viewer can enter in two sides with the third open side covered with a crisscross of wooden pieces acting as a filter for light. As the time of day and weather changes, the experience of the pods changes. Direct sunlight creates beautiful crisp light/shadow play inside the pod, while angled sunlight causes the crisscrossed wooden elements to glow. Light/Shadow reengages us with the nuances of light in our surroundings.
Jury selected. Constructed in situ for Art in the Open 2016. Wood lumber. 8’ x 8’ x 10’.
OCULUS aims to direct our gaze upward to frame the ever changing sky. Built with uncut 2x4's, OCULUS uses conventional building materials to create a space for the viewer to interact with and experience above.
Canopies surround us. They are above us in the tree branches and leaves. They are below us in the ferns. As we move through the forest, we are surround by these levels of canopy. For this project, nearly a hundred collected logs and branches were erected within the criss cross remnants of a clearing’s root structure. They echo the vertical elements of the nearby canopies. The participant is invited to mindfully move through and sit at the centre surrounded.
Word of Mouth is a collaborative project between Michael Fernandes, Adam Read and myself. Originally conceived as a structure to house Michael during his residency at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in PEI, the project evolved to explore the line between art and architecture and the relationship between public art and the public.
Created in situ. String, surrounding trees. 10’ x 12’ x 12’. In collaboration with Christian Démoré.
THRESHOLD is an exploration in defining thresholds within the natural landscape. Thresholds are the divides that denote one space from another. They can be solid walls, blocking out and sheltering us. They can be less obvious like a decks edge. While walking through the surrounding forest, the spiderwebs were the thresholds of the forest, dividing one space from another. They became the inspiration for this piece. Layers and Layers of string were interwoven between trees and fallen logs, creating a defined separate space within the forest that was still visually connected to its surroundings.
This piece explores building community and place while engaging with the enivronment around us. Over a series of weaving workshops, the community would be provided with materials and given instructions from various diverse teachers to weave ribbons. These flowing ribbons would become the ceiling of a newly defined public space. The final piece will be hundreds of woven ribbons hanging above in a treed area, slowly blowing in wind.
