I am interested in the role of art and artists within cultures and communities. When I say cultures and communities, I include wild places, other species – the other-than-human. We do not live in this world alone, and community is an ongoing intimate interchange – a relationship we do not often consider, since we dwell within it.

Embedded in our westernized psyche and lifestyle is a core belief that nature is alien, outside of the human, and that nature is to be tamed and utilized. At the same time, a lived individual, personal and emotional relationship with the other-than-human is fundamental to our lives and well-being. The health and quality of this relationship is reflected in our values, beliefs and choices, and since personal relationships ultimately matter to us, this relationship with the other-than-human just may be the fulcrum of change.

Art comes into this because artists navigate the liminal spaces between self and other, bring back visions, translate and articulate messages, develop models of interchange. Art facilitates a process of learning through the engaged senses, at times bypassing conditioned patterns of thinking, allowing other ways of knowing to come forward, at times subtly, at times overwhelmingly.

My work explores how we humans navigate our relationship with the more than human world. It seeks territory beyond the borders of dualisms such as mind/body, subject/object and nature/culture. It is profoundly concerned with lived meanings of dwelling and home. I’m curious about the intimacies of a shared biology, of the shared sensible – intimacies so obvious as to be unfamiliar. I question the taken-for-granted stance of human otherness.

My visual work reflects on the nature of intimate relationships that people have with places and the other-than-human – and ultimately, with the revelatory and interactive nature of light. Beauty and mortality, the layering of memory and the inscription of story and meaning on the hearts and bodies of people and places.

For many years I worked primarily in photo-based media, exhibiting locally and abroad. On returning to Canada from the UK and Europe in 1994, I was determined to try something different, to locate a practice that connected specifically to the West Coast of Canada with its rich, astonishingly intact and threatened habitat. It was necessary that such a practice engage critically and aesthetically with both intercultural and Nature/Culture relations. Because of this, I believed that it was vital to connect with community as a part of this process. A practice intrinsically connected to place.

In 1996, I began working with scientists, fellow artists and community groups to develop a project that would bring these aspects together and engage urban populations in an increased awareness of dwelling and place. The SongBird project was launched in 1998 and was so successful, that what began as a one year experiment became a 5 year intensive engagement, connecting artists, scientists, planners, architects and others with the wider community of our environing world.
The SongBird project archived website is linked here.

While all artworks are interactive and relational, advances in computer interactivity and sensor interfaces over the past 15 years have opened up new opportunities for collaboration and installation. Perhaps ironically, computer interactivity can bring embodiment to the fore, reminding us of our bodied selves in relation to place and other - to our environing world.