After much revising (thank you, David), this is my “civilian” artist statement… aspirational as it may be. (Again, for our class, David asked us to write what he calls a “civilian artist statement,” by which he means “a clear, non-poetic, communication. It explains your art work and practice to an intelligent reader who knows nothing about your art and little about the art world or theory. It is the base for longer, specialized, and creative versions.”)

My artistic practice is an elegiac response to ecological devastation, an act of self-preservation, and a call to action. The work includes ceramic sculptures that document the effects of climate change, a pottery practice which sustains me and offers an alternative to our throwaway culture, and performances through which I express the sense of urgency needed in order to address this global emergency.

My recent conceptual ceramic work is a series of cup-shaped porcelain sculptures that represent glaciers facing climate change (2018-19). One set of these cups, “Athabasca Glacier 1918-2018,” appears to be melting. Another, “Calving,” comprises unfired cups that disintegrate in water while calving particles of clay. The third set, “Saskatchewan Glacier,” is constructed of snowflake shapes that barely hold together in the form of the cup. The pieces are so fragile that a draft could destroy them. Many break during installation. Their destruction results in porcelain snowflakes on the gallery floor, further indicating the ephemerality of the glaciers they represent. In this sense, these works are performances as much as they are physical objects: the care needed to prevent their demise replicates the present state of our glaciers. I mourn their loss, and this work is my tribute to them.

I also create ceramic functional ware for everyday use. While less explicitly conceptual, even this practice reflects a concern for ecology. The act of creating these works out of clay puts me in touch with the sustaining effect that being in places of natural beauty gives me, and the pieces communicate this reverence for nature through their soft, irregular, and organic forms and surface treatments. Handmade pots offer a counterbalance to our disposable culture, and the practice of creating them enables me to recoup the energy I need to continue responding to the crisis we are facing.

In my performance work, I explore ways to reach a broader audience. I choose to perform in public to draw attention to climate change by taking people by surprise in places they would not expect art. Apathy towards this issue has catastrophic consequences, and my work conveys this urgency while also offering ideas of how to take action to reduce the damage we are causing. Despair, detachment, and passivity can go hand in hand. To counter this, I often use humour. For instance, in Hurdles (17 Oct. 2020), I jumped over “I vote for climate action” lawn signs in a garish tracksuit in freezing weather. Other performances include participation that encourages meaningful engagements with the subject matter and exemplifies, via the cooperative nature of the events themselves, how we can work together to lessen and mitigate the coming challenges.

Climate change is the most complicated threat our species has encountered, and I feel the need to respond to it in a multifaceted way. In moving between the physicality of ceramics and the ephemerality of performance, between a quiet reflection on the beauty of nature and an outward communication of a sense of urgency to protect it, my practice explores how each medium can respond to my concern for our planet with such diverse methods and results.