A visual artist, writer, and teacher, I have multiple interwoven strands of professional engagement with the world. My artistic and scholarly work has both an individual studio component and an orientation to collaborative, participatory projects, taking up questions of home, belonging and spirit of place, with a particular reference to the environmental and other-than-human components of the post-industrial city-scape. These coalesce in questions of ‘home’ and ‘the city’, with mapping practices a favoured mode of inquiry. I also explore artmaking as a form of research — in particular, collage as an interdisciplinary research method — and the nature of interdisciplinarity itself.
I am currently Concordia University Research Chair in Art + Education for Sustainable and Just Futures as well as Professor of Art Education at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where I teach graduate and undergraduate courses and supervise MA and PhD students engaged in studio-projects of artistic and community-based research.
As an independent consultant, my contract projects include advocacy, research, education, and policy initiatives in arts, culture, broadcasting, and education, as well as creative work in television production.
A dog lover, I am intrigued by the nature of human-animal connections from ethical, relational, and aesthetic perspectives. These I explore in my creative and scholarly work, inspired by my life with my standard poodles, first Auggie and now Baloo.
News
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Wool/Work: The possibilities of wool NOW!
What does making and crafting with the beautiful natural fibre of wool offer us? Does the comfort of handwork and the chance to work in community with other makers bring us comfort in this time of [post?] pandemic anxiety? Does wool’s biodegradability ease our ecological grief as our planet faces what seems like catastrophic climate…
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Through the garden’s walls….
An off-Biennale project about Venice’s hidden Eden garden, 2017.
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The Meanings and Possibilities of Materials
A week ago today (meaning Thursday, May 26), I awoke with the strongest feeling of wanting to bring some silk with me to Iceland. Silk? Really? Silk and not wool? Silk in addition to wool? I had had the question of which materials to bring on my mind for weeks, but had been too busy with other…
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