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    • Home
    • Portfolio
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    • Exhibitions
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    • Wild-Edge Offerings
    • Teacher's Corner
    • Performances
  • Home
  • Portfolio
  • Bio and CV
  • Contact
  • Exhibitions
  • Speaking
  • Media
  • Wild-Edge Offerings
  • Teacher's Corner
  • Performances

mary abma: artist

mary abma: artistmary abma: artistmary abma: artist

various new works

Portraits from the Wrack Line

We See Change: Tales From Bonne Bay

We See Change: Tales From Bonne Bay

Portraits of tiny organisms and ecosystems found in the wrack lines along Canada's coastal waters. These portraits bring the overlooked and unseen into view on a large scale. 30X40"

Portraits from the Wrack Line

We See Change: Tales From Bonne Bay

We See Change: Tales From Bonne Bay

We See Change: Tales From Bonne Bay

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.

We See Change

Living Lumens

We See Change: Tales From Bonne Bay

Lumen Time Study

These photographs, which are taken without cameras, are lumen prints with a difference. Lumens are typically made by exposing objects on old photographic paper under glass. These lumens, however, are made by exposing the paper in natural environments such as gardens, forests and salt marshes. What is recorded are the patterns of light and shadow that move across the paper over time.

Living Lumens

Lumen Time Study

Mapping and Tracing the Intertidal

Lumen Time Study

These lumens mark the passage of time in a landscape.

Lumen Triptychs

Lab Glass and Lenses

Mapping and Tracing the Intertidal

Mapping and Tracing the Intertidal

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 through discarded, hand-blown laboratory glass,  prisms, and lenses.



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Mapping and Tracing the Intertidal

Mapping and Tracing the Intertidal

Mapping and Tracing the Intertidal

In this new series of works,  still very much in the early stage of production, I examine the tiny beings (e.g. bryozoans) that thrive in the intertidal zone. Vulnerable to climate change, the small ones offer wonders and warnings if we take the time to pay attention to them. 


These pieces are process driven. They involve painstaking photographic stacking and then partial erasure. What is left behind are ghostly traces of the image's presence. These are transformed into maps of a newly explored and now-visible world.



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Portals to the 'Natural' World

Portals to the 'Natural' World

Portals to the 'Natural' World

This ongoing series of works explores portals and "thin places" that allow us to enter a space in which we can begin to perceive the intelligence and language patterns of other beings in the natural world. These works question, sometimes humorously,  human attempts to control or anthropomorphize our shared environment and offer glimpses into the possibilities and wonder that can result from a true experiential relationship with the world around us.


Paper Wasp Vending Machine


Gauntlet


Apertures

portraits from the wrack line

Coffin Box Bryozoans on Kelp. Click for a higher-resolution photograph.

Hairy Sea Mat Bryozoans. Click for a higher-resolution photograph.

Spirorbis (calcareous tube worms). Click for a higher-resolution photograph.

Knot Wrack (Ascophyllum nodosum) with bryozoans and hydroids. Click for a higher-resolution photograph.

We See Change: Tales from Bonne Bay

View Description

Clip from "We See Change: Tales From Bonne Bay"

With thanks to Atlantic Healthy Oceans Initiative for providing ROV footage of Bonne Bay.

living lumens: lumens made by placing silver gelatin paper into landscapes to mark the passage of time with light and shadow movements

    Lumen Time Study: Timed exposures of photographic paper in the landscape (ongoing additions)

    Portfolio

    through lab glass and lenses

    intertidal mapping

    paper wasp vending machine

    Paper Wasp Vending Machine

    Found Object Assemblage

    8X8X35"


    For raising educated wasps. With text from the Public School Grammar Textbook, 1886, Shakespeare’s Richard II, and the book of Genesis.


    2021

      gauntlet

      Found object assemblage with antique glove, soil, antique hardware drawer, threads, drinking straw and maple-tree seedling


      2021

        apertures

        Paper coffee filters with Ogham Rune Stone, Hornet Nest, and Human Hair.


        2021

        Apertures: Detail

        Ogham Rune Stone


        Ancient Irish writing system carved into stones. This stone was carved by artist, Rachel Adeline Holmes and given to me as a gift.

        Apertures: Detail

        Hornet Nest

        environmental artworks

        Ash Story

        Environmental Installation in Hampton Park, Ottawa

        Find out more

        Signposts and Traces: The Lost Ash of Canatara

        Memorial to the lost ash trees of Canatara in Sarnia's largest park.

        Find out more

          be-coming tree

          Be-coming Tree is a grass-roots community, creating, sharing and documenting close entanglement with trees and barefoot technology through collective global live-streamed events

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