About
Artist Statement
My work explores relationship, between the elements within the work and the relationship between the sculpture and the viewer, informed by their memories and knowledge.
My inquiry has been profoundly shaped by my twenty five year practice learning and teaching traditional Inuit qajaq building. The familiar materials, forms, tools, and movement of qajat can be seen in my work. Wood, soft curves, and the marks of hand tools or hand processes all have a voice in the finished pieces.
Across disciplines, media, and time, my practice has been informed by transformative experiences that have heightened or changed my awareness or understanding. I pursue these moments of change in making my work and aim to generate or catalyze them for the viewer.
I am deeply interested in the properties, forms and movements intrinsic to materials, in particular their “agency,” a quality of presence that is more than simple material existence. I am conscious of the importance of working in collaboration with, rather than on, these materials.
In my work, movement is reminiscent of the grace of an approaching or passing qajaq. Do these lightly balanced, autonomously moving forms transform a viewer’s awareness or understanding of themselves, materials, balance or movement?
I was born in Etobicoke in 1961, lived in Iqaluit from 1965-1968, Toronto and Montreal until 1986 when I made Vancouver my home . I Completed my BFA at Concordia University, AOCA at the Ontario College of Art and Design and BEd at Simon Fraser University and MFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
I launched Brewery Creek Small Boat Shop, a qajaq building school with a friend in 1993. My qajaq work with the elders of Kugaaruk, Nunavut, is the subject of the NFB documentary Caribou Kayak, and forms a chapter in my book Building Skin on Frame Boats. I currently teach high school photography, animation, graphics and fine art, and have taught design, jewelry and blacksmithing.
Process
The core of my practice is my relationship with material and processes. When I slow down and feel the texture and scent of the wood. When I pay attention to the weight and sharpness of the tool. When I listen closely to the knife or the saw or the fibres of steaming wood as bends around a form. Then I’m collaborating with my tools and material as we create something together.
Step 1.
The foundation, starting point of any successful work, is my physical connection with materials and tools. Traditional hand tools like the drawknife, spokeshave or hand plane allow me a deeper knowledge and understanding of my work.
Step 2.
Sensory experience ranges from the touch, to the sound, to the smell of the materials and tools I’m using and what I’m making.
Step 3.
My direct and intimate understanding of the materials and tools allows me to work collaboratively with, rather than on them.
Step 4.
The qualities of sawdust, the nature of the sound of a blade cutting material, the scent of friction as a tool is introduced to a material, these are the web of tiny signals that connect what I know, to what I want to achieve, and what the material and tool will support, allow or fight.