I’m really excited to tell you all about my upcoming show. I know it’s been pretty quiet over here (let’s blame life, shall we?), but I have been working in the studio, even if I haven’t been writing about it. If you are in or around the Kitchener (Ontario, Canada) area, anytime from March 1 to June 30, 2024, please make sure you stop by Homer Watson House and Gallery to see my latest solo show: Rigged.  Back when I was on the Bonn Park podcast as part of the 25th anniversary celebration of the City of Kitchener’s Artist in Residence program, the hosts Sara and Marshall asked me what was ..read more

Being so busy this past year (and barely even making art!) really got me thinking about how to make sure what I’m doing is sustainable. For way too long, I’ve felt like I’m always just one step away from burnout. So I decided to set some ground rules for myself to help me make good choices about what I commit myself to, with the idea of eventually turning it into one of those spiffy decision tree flowchart things.  It’s funny, as soon as I began sketching it out in my head I started making better choices. I said no to things I would have said yes to before without hesitation. I started pr ..read more

I know it’s been quiet around the blog. Heck, it’s also been quiet around the studio. Part of that is just, well <waves hands vaguely at the state of the world and sighs loudly> and part of it is that this summer/fall was jam-packed with me giving talks, so prepping for those took up all my bandwidth (plus my day job was super busy!).  Anyway, I thought maybe I should catch you up on a few things I’ve been doing around the internet over the last several months, in case you want to read/listen. In addition to talks at three of the big mosaic association conferences (SAMA, BAMM, and M ..read more

This mosaic started with a tweet. Elon Musk tweeted that he was going to donate a $100M prize for the best carbon capture technology. Immediately he got hilariously trolled (and rightfully so) by thousands of people, all saying some version of “I present to you: trees. I’ll take that cheque now, please.”  The tech bro billionaires of Silicon Valley (Bezos, Gates, Musk, and the like) are increasingly wading into the climate sphere. Yep, the same dudes who are flying to space just because they can and who have ridiculously large personal and corporate carbon footprints. Those dudes. Unsurpr ..read more

When Giulio Menossi invited me to participate in the First Mosaic Symposium in Patagonia (alas, virtually…) and told me the theme was “Colours of Patagonia,” my mind immediately went to the blues and whites of the Patagonian glaciers. Threatened by climate change, those glaciers seemed like an obvious inspiration for me. Oddly enough, the more research I did, the less inspired I felt. I even started to worry it was a sign that I wasn’t ready to get back into the studio, despite my year-long hiatus.  Feeling slightly panicky, I broadened my search beyond climate change and glaciers, and in ..read more

Wow, it’s been a while! I hope you and your loved ones are staying healthy and safe amidst this pandemic, and my sincere thanks to any frontline workers reading this.  My studio is still shut down, so I don’t have any new art to share with you, but I did want to let you know that I wrote an article about my work for American Scientist. This project has been a few years in the making. Actually, I got their first email asking if I’d write a column for them way back when I was in France rescuing my piece from customs (remember that saga?). But we just couldn’t seem to get our respective ..read more

I wanted to just take a minute to let you know that I’m going to be going fairly quiet over the next few months. There are a few reasons for this hiatus.  First: I’m getting a new studio! I’ll probably write more about this in a future post, but the general plan is to knock down some walls to join my small basement studio with the rec room, making it one big(ger) studio. I’ve already packed everything up, so the hiatus has officially started. Second: I am exhausted. I’ve been going almost non-stop for a year, pulling together the line-up for my solo show while also working full-time at my ..read more

A few months back, I put out a call for people to send me a piece of their place, which I would then incorporate into a mosaic of crowd-sourced materials. I didn’t want just anything. No, I wanted something that spoke to their experience, their place in the world. I wanted to provide a counterbalance to an increasingly individualistic world where people are out for number one and are disconnected from their fellow humans and from the landscapes and beings that surround them.  If we’re going to survive the uphill battle ahead of us (read: the seriously apocalyptic shit headed our way), we ..read more

I’m what’s known in layman’s terms as Really Bad At Self-Promotion. So bear with me for a sec as I awkwardly tell you about my upcoming show… In case you haven’t heard, I’ve got a solo exhibition coming up this fall. It’s at the Agnes Jamieson Gallery (Minden Hills Cultural Centre) in Minden, Ontario. The show opens October 24, and I’ll be there on October 25 for the opening reception and artist talk (4:30-6:00pm). I would be absolutely honoured if you could join me. If you can’t make it on that particular day, the show runs until December 21.  I’ve been really hard at work for the past ..read more

Let me tell you about the time I—a mostly vegetarian—ate Spam for my art. Years ago I read a story about how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) found a can of Spam and a can of Budweiser in the Mariana Trench. This story, and subsequent ones about the litter and contamination scientists are finding in the deepest part of the ocean, seemed to me to be so symbolic of the Anthropocene. Yes, we can talk about deforestation and strip mining and soaring levels of pollution and overfishing and plastic-choked seas and mass extinctions and the climate emergency and and and… But a c ..read more