What goes into making a 'home'? 

 For humans, we gather and carry materials through time to surround ourselves with distinctive character, identity, and what eventually become memories of places we once existed in. Birds also spend time gathering a unique combination of materials to create an ideal nest to call their home. Whether crafted by human hands or shaped by animal instinct and necessity, our dwellings speak to a shared desire for sanctuary amidst the chaos of the world. Living in the rural environment of Salt Spring Island, I have a great awareness of fauna living around and sharing our home spaces with us. Every day, I see a variety of birds, both large and small, from the window of my current home, from great herons to tiny hummingbirds. 

 The pieces in A Place Called Home are similarly in conversation with one another. A series of treehouses, symbolizing places I once called home, that exist in a space between reality, memory, and dreamscape. A collection of bird nests that come from this same surreal place. Between the two, an arrayed inventory of printed objects that have resided in these spaces. These works reflect the places that create our identities as well as the nature of memory -- an occasionally unreliable narrator that makes up our ongoing character development. They are also a reflection on the similarities between the birds that currently surround me and my identity as a collage artist, both constantly sourcing, harvesting, and combining new materials to create something meaningful.

 Working with techniques such as mono-printing and collage in this work, I explore the potential of paper as a versatile medium of expression in both two- and three-dimensional approaches. What may be considered scrap material from the printing process is foraged and upcycled, as if birds themselves were exploring my art studio to create new homes. The fragmented nature of collage and the inherent glitches and imperfections of the mono-printing process speak to the characteristics of memory itself. Repetitive layering of printing acts in much the same manner as how our thoughts revisit the same recollections frequently – sometimes welcomed, sometimes not. My use of vibrant colour is an invitation into an aspirational space, where joy, magic, and playfulness are celebrated.