Intermedia

PLAYHOUSE

This piece is a small, see-through playhouse that is suspended above and just out of reach of the audience. It represents the mourning of the loss of childhood uninhibitedness.

It is designed to stimulate vicarious nostalgia or remembrances of your own past, as well as triggering the elements of one’s own imagination. In that moment of reflective creation you are drawn out of your present physical space and into a contemplative state of past memories, the potential to fantasize and create new ones.

You then might become aware that you are never physically able to return to a past state of memory and those fragmented memories are the only things which remain. The house is empty and out of reach of the audience in order to emphasize the reality that what you’re experiencing is only in your mind. This ghostly house represents the loss of something that you will never get back, something that is lost in time. All that remains is what we can remember or imagine. You can read full artist statement here:

Playhouse, 44”W, 31.55”H, Floating Outside Sculpture,Photoshop, 2020

DOES THIS SENTENCE MAKE SENSE ?

In my Intermedia practice, I’m interested in exploring the different facets of dealing and working with a learning disability. With this project I want to focus on the balance of burden and comfort within the physical and mental struggle. My performance includes a wearable piece and will present the opportunity for the audience to observe this balance. The difficulties of my learning disability is represented by the sand. The unachieved small and basic processes of learning become, grain by grain, an overwhelming and constant weight. Managing these struggles has been done by slowing down, isolating, compartmentalizing and dealing with each individual obstacle. The wearable represents the management of the struggles. The sand is compartmentalized into channels throughout the area of the piece. When it is worn, one feels the weight as burdensome and awkward but the distribution of it makes it manageable and to some degree comforting. This comfort, when experienced, reflects my acceptance of who I am and the management of my abilities and limitations as they grow and evolve. You can read full artist statement here:

You can watch part of the performance HERE

 53°29′49″ N  113°33’21″ W

For this project, I began looking at the idea and meaning of seclusion. I wanted to explore the concept and idea of a relationship between a human (myself) and the space that was still uninhabited and unclaimed by someone. Seclusion can happen when a person chooses to spend time outside and away from a bigger population of people. They choose to find this space and carve out their own area and call it their own. What I wanted to show was how the environment naturally reacts to this intervention. Then after a time lapse, you could see a visible difference in the growth and changing of the environment. I wanted to work with this idea and the potential relationship with the environment. I was aware that I did not ask the environment or nature itself to erase my claimed space within this wild and unpredictable forest. As time went on, I realized that the space and the environment did not ask me permission to take back the space that I made for myself. You can read full artist statement here:

53°29′49″ N 113°33’21″ W, 1min 20 sec video, Screen shot of the video, 2019  You can watch the video HERE 

LOOKING UP THE NORTH. LOOKING FOR RAIN

For this performance I chose to walk across and around the four corners of a crosswalk intersection. At each of the four sections I planned to stop in the same spot at each rotation and look up at the sky, while facing my body North where wildfires are causing a major threat to communities. I did this 13 times. To represent the number of days my cousins, and the rest of our family members have been evacuated from their homes in HighLevel, Alberta.What happens next is up to the people around me. My action might stop the flow of the people walking beside, behind and infront of me. And the simple curiosity to look and see what I am looking at. I want to explore a person’s curiosity and wonderment of the question of why and what I am looking at. I want, just for a moment, to have their attention and to hold it just for a moment and then let them continue on with their own flow. You can read full artist statement here:

Looking Up, To the North . Looking For Rain, Intervention performance, 2019

Red Checkmark or X

For this performance I wanted to explore privilege of education and how as a child I felt the Pressure to keep up with my fellow classmates and to be grateful for the opportunity to learn while discovering I had a learning disability. You can read full artist statement here:

Red Checkmark or X, Children’s desk in a university classroom, 45 min Performance, 2019

The Stuffy Coat

I deconstructed each plushy/ Beanie babies but cutting or ripping out the stitches, pulling the stuffing and plastic beads out of the body cavity and cutting out the nose and each of the eyes. I then laid out and then placed together each fur to create a pattern that consisted of haft the coat being made out of colorful pelts, and the other half made out of the transitional and natural colour you would see on a live animal. I chose to do this because I wanted to show( whether the fur was real or not) the difference between what a average fur coat would look like vs the fun and colourful version that I came up with. I wanted to comment and compare the difference between the mutilating and changing of an animal’s body so that we can wear, poses and own the animals pelt, verses the same actions being done to an object from our childhood that we would have loved and cared for just as some of us do for our pets and live animals. You can read full artist statement here:

45” Waist, 20” Arm length, 29” Hight, Size Medium, Stuffed animal Faux Fur Coat, Performance, 2019

The Stuffy Coat, 45” Waist, 20” Arm length, 29” Hight, Size Medium, Stuffed animal Faux Fur Coat, Performance, screen shot, 2019

Body Bar, Body Dysmorphia, Photo of Performance, 2019

Collaboration performance with Adrianne Beauregarde

LATITUDE: 53.876922 LONGITUDE: 119.130256 ALTITUDE: 199 METERS,

      It is 25 inches x 20 inches, Wearable Sculpture. Based on the concept of a place that gives me a sense of comfort and safety. The forest behind my home in Grande Cache, Alberta, is where I gathered moss from the forest floor. I used this moss, green yarn and blue velvet on the underside to represent place and feelings of comfort which are my response to a hug. I casted my shoulders, creating a sculptural landscape which can only be worn comfortably by me. I experience a sense of peace when the sculpture is wrapped around my shoulders. The result is a sculpture that is cave like but also reflects back on the mountains of my home town.

The Will To Fall

Photography by: Pam Witkowski

Fallen Angel, Part 8 of series of photographs, 2017