Pictou Island Porgage was a week long residency organized by Eryn Foster for seven artists on Pictou Island in July 2014.
Pushing a large piece of driftwood with chalk attached to one end, I walked the length of the island. I anticipated multiple lines left on the road after each day of walking. I had little idea how strenuous the act of pushing the stick with chalk the 18 kilometers would be, or how fleeting the line of chalk with traffic on the road. My focus grew to include the places in which I rested between the act of walking. I began to outline those resting places with circles in chalk. That which existed inside the circle was deemed rest -- breaking the line, making a new gesture. A gesture that questioned the authority of linear time by making a circle for rest, into the land.
2014
Photographs from My Feet Walking
in Photographic
Eryn Foster organized a week long residency for seven artists on Pictou Island in July 2014. Pictou Island Portage residency was invitation to walk, think and create while traversing the 9.5 kilometer long island on a daily basis.
I approached the act of walking as a process photograph. Each morning I strapped photo paper to my feet and walked on the paper, while pushing a line of chalk down the road to the end of the island. The photo paper was developed at the end of the day and washed in the ocean. Each day has two pieces of photo paper, one for each foot.
Body Transmission Tower
Body Transmission Towers completed during residency at Struts & Faucet. Driving into Sackville from Nova Scotia on the first day of the residency, I immediately felt the loss of the Radio Canada International shortwave towers. I had become accustomed to them as an anchoring feature signaling arrival into Sackville. The towers were removed in March 2014, after 67 years of service. I was struck by how their memory was visual yet also felt - a way of orienting the body in relation to space. I thought of the body as its own transmission site, where emotion and memory are projected outwards, always holding us in subjective relation to a space. In this case, I thought of thirteen bodies acting as their own transmission vessels. The body transmitting memory back to the RCI site. I ran ads asking for people to drive (or walk) with me to their most remembered spot for viewing the RCI towers. Quickly, I had many volunteers. Some had worked at RCI Sackville, others had lived around the area for much, or all, of their lives. I enjoyed the drives and conversations with all those who participated.
Many thanks to the fine folks (Amanda, Elliott, Cynthia) at Struts & Faucet and the good people of Sackville.
Available as sets of thirteen postcards at Art Metropole, Toronto.
Mothers March
Studio at Struts and Faucet, Sackville, New Brunswick. Banners in preparation for Mothers March.
MOTHERS MARCH is an opportunity to celebrate and acknowledge the multiplicity of ways in which we can navigate motherhood. Good mother, bad mother, angry mother, queer mother, single mother, working mother, stay at home mother, tired mother, mother to plants, generational mother, children of mothers, COME MARCH.
Statement on May 10 of Conflicted Ambivalent Glory of Motherhood
