the covidian garden party: a coming of age / exhibition
In the garden there is a washing line suspended with white Irish linen to invoke the spirit of my Northern Irish Grandmother. My grandmother grew up in an orphanage in Belfast and when she was old enough (probably 12 or 13) she went to work in the linen factories. At 21 she emigrated to Canada. 63 t-towels suspended in 3 rows of 21. 63 represent the coming of age alongside my current age.
The 63 Firescapes drawings installed on the perimeter walls demarcate the horizon – thus holding the space together. These drawings were created for this install using inks and wildfire charcoal collected on wildfire site visits around 2 vast wildfires – the Little Bobtail of 2015 and Shovel Lake 3 years later. Both of these fires were situated an hour’s drive from my back door. My relationship with the burned remains has matured beyond the immediacy of the fires’ destruction to one of recognizing a rebirth.
The Covidian Garden Party, the artists-book, is a collaborative project that emerged from the question, posed by the Curator ,‘what does an artist consider during a pandemic’. This question came up as a commission in the early stages of the pandemic when we were all experiencing isolation for the first time. My immediate response was to organize a garden party and in that I invited 24 artists living in Canada, England, Scotland, Germany, France and Singapore. The artists responded to the question alongside a story about a vision I had during recovery from surgery to curtail pancreatic cancer. The resulting artists-book gives insight into the individual’s sense of purpose within the collective consciousness of pandemic isolation.