Sooo...new stuff, new stuff.
I have a photography weekend coming up with work so I thought I would post an update before I flood the inbox.
Life is crazy busy, I have two shows coming up at the end of April a week apart from each other and two more shows to send out applications for by April 1st. Also looking for summer job, hopefully a new place to live, coordinating summer plans and all that good stuff. Its tiring just writing it!

My main body of work that will probably end up being in both the upcoming April shows is a bit of a deviation from the last few pieces I have posted. Going back to the talisman series and away from my Iraq works. Looks like soon I will have fodder for some Iran pieces, but lets hope not...ha.

Anyway, some other unrelated stuff is also in the works. I'm working on a 15 page copper book using news articles on the current middle eastern conflicts, inspired by the Al Mutanabi street book market bombing. That and two of my other related altered book works should be up here in the not too distant future. Also I just finished a mural for the University daycare center that I could post pictures of, just to prove that I am actually capable of bright fluffy happiness (and god is it bright fluffy happiness...there are sheep). Is anyone who watches this page really interested in bright fluffy happiness though? Really.

Artists Statement:

In the Christian context of postclassical Europe the memento mori, images of bones and decay, acquired a moralizing purpose, using the prospect of death to emphasize the emptiness and transience of earthly pleasures, luxuries, and achievements. I am interested in this concept of ‘memento mori’ as it relates to our societies treatment and understanding of the environment.

My close relationship to the land and environment I have grown up with in Alberta lead me to be increasingly concerned with how our society relates to this environment, especially in a province economically centered on the extraction of natural resources. I have always felt a close spiritual connection to this land when I am alone with it and this sense of spiritual reverence is central to this body of work. My intent is to present these issues in a poetic, rather than overtly moralizing context, where art might offer what scientific research and news media cannot in the increasing debate on our environmental practices.

The sculptural ‘talismans’ presented in these images are visual manifestations of my search for the ‘spiritual’ in our environment, through combining traditional Shamanistic and Christian imagery and symbolism. The object becomes a metaphor for the land, a creation imposed upon but bound by both natural and artificial elements into a whole. Not only a metaphor for environment, the talismans become a metaphor for self, referencing both land and body. The work plays with our opposing practices of violence and sanctity as they relate to our understanding and treatment of the landscape; The significance of burial and growth or ‘unearthing’ and in the vein of the memento mori artists, the connection to the land’s mortality and with it, our own.



If anyone is in Edmonton around the end of April and interested in coming to some kick ass art shows, drop me a line and I'll give you details. There will be free food, and cheap booze! cheap!