artist statement

My work is strongly influenced by my career in forestry and academic research in environmental studies. For example, the modern Western worldview of nature-as-machine presupposes that nature can be either re-engineered to perfect it or preserved to protect it. Both situate nature as object, separate from us, and both assume it can be controlled. In contrast, I believe nature is that which surrounds us and which includes us: from forest to cultivated fields to city environments. I take an ecological view: the world is a chaotic and complex system, a multi-dimensional web of dynamic relationships between a large number and variety of components that form, re-form and sometimes transform in unpredictable ways. This view permeates my public and personal art practice in both content and process. It is concerned with connections and interactions of physical, social and cultural spaces.

My work is primarily site-based: I both draw from and contribute to the site. For example, in Dialectic, three concrete forms situated between a rock outcropping and a wooden staircase, I used form and material to reference both the rocks and the stairs. It models aspects of both and as such embodies the tension between our apparently contradictory notion of nature-made as organic and human-made as geometric. In the Community Totem, I used four concrete columns to ’enclose’ the space in order to create a room or place separate from the other sections of the park. The four wedges in the circular mosaic are aligned to the compass directions with a still point in the centre.

In my work, site is more than physical space: it also includes social and cultural space. For example, the rammed earth sculptures at Rick Hansen Secondary are an integral component of a landscape project to create a garden sanctuary for the students and the material used, namely rammed earth¹ links directly to the East Asian heritage of many of the students.

As well as connecting to site, my work is also about connecting with people and with communities. My public art projects have been collaborative and inclusive. A challenge has been to design projects that provide opportunities to actively engage a wide range of people with varying skill levels and at the same time result in a professional-quality and enduring work.

I designed and led community-based workshops in which Riverdale residents were invited to create designs for the Bronze Tile Mosaic, the community-based component of the Gardiner East Public Art Project. At Branksome Hall, I collaborated with the resident art teacher and 40 Grade 6 students to create the Environmental Totems, six concrete columns cast in-situ on the school grounds. In all of my public art experiences, an enormous sense of pride and ownership of the work was generated by those who participated.

My selection and use of materials is an important component of my work. I use materials such has hand-packed earth to suggest geologic profiles or pigmented concrete to fabricate rock-like forms. In WhitePine, individual tree branches were constructed using recycled cardboard: material originally manufactured from wood fibre was re-constituted to create a tree form.

Current interests include further investigation into the relationship between nature and architecture, exploration of material and form, and the role of sculpture to create place. I am presently working on a series based on the Platonic solids². It explores geometric patterns in nature and how this relates to our ideas of nature-made and human-made environments.

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