Works Inspired by Bonne Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador

In September of 2023, I was artist in residence for Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland and Labrador. While I was there, I explored what it meant to live on the edge between land and sea, in the powerful churning and energetic flux of the intertidal zone. I contemplated the changes that are occurring along our coastlines and explored what these changes mean for the people who live in small, coastal communities and for the organisms that live in our oceans and along the edges where ecosystems meet and mingle. 

I returned to Bonne Bay in 2024 and again in 2025, collaborated with scientists and ecological organizations, recorded the stories of residents, developed friendships and broke bread with the remarkable people who live in the small, vibrant and resilient communities of Woody Point and Norris Point. I am currently developing a number of series of works that have emerged from this experience and this place:

This is a series of portraits of tiny, often unnoticed organisms that live in the waters that hug the coastline of Western Newfoundland. With clarity and energy, they reveal ecosystems that live and thrive on the tide's edges, often referred to as wrack lines. To make these images, I take dozens and often hundreds of photographs of each organism. I then use Photoshop to stack these images on top of one another so that every square millimetre of the subject comes into sharp focus. I do this digitally by hand. In other words, I do not use algorithms or machine learning to do this. I use a process that I call digital “painting”. Macro photos, if they are to bring the very smallest visible details into clarity, have a very limited depth of field. Each of the photos I take focusses on a different area. So an organism that is a few centimetres wide will need scores of photographs to bring every little bit of it into view. This is a painstaking and time-consuming process. Some of the images can take 40 or more hours to stitch together.

Once the images are complete, they can exist in two different ways: as stand alone-portraits, and as integral parts of larger compositions that evoke a sense of play, a sense of joyful living, and the interconnectedness we all share.

Click here to watch a video of the stacking process.

Click here to view a selection of the portraits.

This series of works (in progress) explores how we observe and interact with the environments around us. What do we fail to notice? How does our tendency to remove organisms from their ecosystems in order to study them affect our ability to interact and connect with the complex systems that sustain us?

These works view living edges along the Atlantic coast's tidelines through broken and discarded, hand-blown laboratory glass. The images allow us to observe what is under the glass but also suggest that what is under the glass is observing us.

We See Change: Tales from Bonne Bay is a multi-channel video featuring two videos, side-by-side, narrated with stories told by Bonne Bay residents about the significant changes they have seen in their communities and in the environment during their lifetimes.

This artwork is a collaboration with communities that are located on ever-shifting edges. It explores the parallel between changes in the communities and changes in the bay.  For this work, I spoke with several residents of the Bonne Bay coastal region (Woody Point, Norris Point, Shoal Brook, etc.). I invited them to talk about how life in their small communities has changed over the past 20 or more years. Their reminiscences include stories of the fishery, of wild winters, of gardens, of ever-changing growing seasons, and so on. 

The stories I recorded have been put together in a sound collage from which individual voices emerge and then re-integrate with the others to create a tapestry of voices, the strands of their stories woven together. Above the sound collage are two video screens which accompany the narratives with imagery. The first video screen shows video footage that I shot through my clothing while I was in the Bonne Bay area.By filming through my clothing, I suggest a strong identification with place. My own connection with Bonne Bay is translated to the viewer who sees the footage through a softened, diaphanous lens which takes on the essence of a distant, beloved memory. Footage of Bonne Bay residents' hands working and creating are integrated with this footage. The second screen shows images of organisms that live in Bonne Bay. ROV deep sea video is provided courtesy of AHOI (Atlantic Healthy Oceans Initiative).

Click here to view a short proof-of-concept video clip.