the great canadian road trip

The physical journey is a powerful metaphor. In Canada, the road trip is iconic. It is part of our shared experience. I grew up taking road trips and continued this practice in my adult life. I have been from coast to coast and always document these journeys by writing trip diaries. I have done this for 40 years. I have diaries from my youth, from the days that my husband and I travelled as a young couple, from travels with my own children, and most recently journeys without my children, who are now grown.
One summer, several years ago, I traveled to the west coast with my husband and sons. As we planned this trip, I began to imagine the road trip as an artwork. My goal was to create a piece of art that would become the centerpiece for my exhibition, Peregrinatio. The following are some notes from my sketchbook:

• A road trip is a memory-making journey.
• Challenge: how to represent the road trip in "fossil" form i.e. without photos or print material and, of course, without a computer. I think about the ways in which we preserve our memories. All are temporary.
• So how, then, do I represent this experience with the materialthings I encounter?
• If these were truly fossils to be dug up at some point in the future, how would they be interpreted?

I decided to use a method whereby I make moulds of objects and then create gesso replicas that can be collaged onto a canvas. The inspiration for the work is a natural landform composed of sedimentary rock strata in the badlands of Alberta.