tideswept: Works Inspired by Bonne Bay, Newfoundland and Lab

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. 

With gratitude to Parks Canada, Atlantic Healthy Oceans Initiative, Bonne Bay Aquarium and Research Station, and scientists Michael Burzynski, Anne Marceau, and Laura Helenius.

We See Change: Tales from Bonne Bay features two videos, side-by-side, narrated with stories told by residents of Bonne Bay, Newfoundland (Gulf of St. Lawrence), about the significant changes they have seen in their communities and in the coastal environment during their lifetimes. This artwork explores the parallels between changes in our human environments and in their adjacent ecosystems.  For this work, I recorded the stories of several residents of the Bonne Bay coastal region. 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 fisheries, of winters past and present, of gardens, of ever-changing growing seasons, of demographic shifts, 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 soundscape. Above the sound collage are two video screens which accompany the narratives with imagery. The first video screen shows footage that I shot through my clothing while I was in the Bonne Bay area. By filming through my clothing, I forge a tangible connection with this place. This feeling of belonging is translated to the viewer who sees the footage through a softened, diaphanous lens which takes on the essence of a distant, beloved memory. Video of Bonne Bay residents' hands working, creating art, and making music, are integrated with this footage, establishing the connection between cultural knowledge, self-sufficiency, artistic expression, and place. The second screen shows an interweaving of video recordings of underwater life in Bonne Bay. ROV deep sea video is provided courtesy of AHOI (Atlantic Healthy Oceans Initiative).

Click here to view a short video clip.

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.

 The Atlantic Edge is a series of photographs (36 X 36") that explores ecotones, or in-between places, turning a lens on complex ecosystems that often go unnoticed beneath our feet. These works direct our attention to living and dying edges along the Atlantic coast's tidelines through broken and discarded, hand-blown laboratory glass. The glass becomes a two-way portal of observation between wrack-line organisms and their viewers.

The act of bringing scientific glass to the shoreline to photograph these tiny ecosystems questions our tendency to disrupt the relationship between organisms and place in order to remove them from their environment for scientific study and observation. When we interact through disruption, how can we make meaningful connections with the complex systems that sustain us?

Click here to see images.

Confiteri is an interactive, playful installation with serious undercurrents. Through the artwork, we are given the opportunity to allow the wild/natural world to hear our confessions about our contributions to climate change and other ecological disruptions of place. The root of the word, “confession” is “to acknowledge”. This installation invites participants into the ancient posture of acknowledgement and truth-telling, directing our confessions to the natural world itself.

The participant faces a wall projection of the boreal forest. They sit on a stool behind a wooden screen, which, although it evokes a confessional screen, is an antique fire screen once used to keep a person from getting too hot from the hearth fire. The fire screen sits atop a vintage wooden crate (soapbox) labelled: "polar dynamite". It is to this ancient but vulnerable landscape that participants are encouraged to voice confessions about their contributions to ecological disruption. Afterwards, the participant is given the option of taking a penance (an instruction to take a walk in the woods, for example) from a basket. Participants will be given the opportunity to record their confessions and expressions of mourning for use in a future artwork.

Click to see image.

 Plankton Parlour is an installation that poses the question: If plankton had a parlour, what would it contain? By definition, a parlour is a place of discourse and discussion. Loosely based on the Victorian parlour, Plankton Parlour reflects deep connections with place and is replete with memorabilia, stimulating nostalgia for the past, while foreshadowing an uncertain future. Elements that are anachronistic and out of scale disorient the viewer, sparking curiosity and contemplation.

It is absurd to suggest that plankton would furnish a parlour, film home videos, paint, write music, or pack suitcases; however, for millennia, we have been shaping our world to accommodate and profit only ourselves, disregarding and displacing earth's other living beings. It is just as absurd for them to thrive in a world we have shaped for our convenience as it is for plankton to have a parlour. It is also absurd that we are aware of the consequences, yet continue cause irreparable harm to others. By referring to plankton in human terms, using human (in this case, specifically Canadian) references and systems, the work itself becomes a metaphor for the great disconnect between humans and our environment.

Plankton Parlour seems lighthearted and often humorous on the surface, but there are deep underpinnings of urgency. The parlour is overstuffed with ephemera, objects, furniture, and the detritus of everyday life, each item relating to the living reality of the North Atlantic's calanus copepods, a prolific and important zooplankton species. Throughout the parlour, there is evidence that these plankton are experiencing disruptions to their sense of place as their waters are warming and their environment is changing. A current of displacement and anxiety is evident, for the plankton in this installation have packed their bags; their suitcases are at the door.