> Mason House artist statement (click here)
The "Mason House" as it's called in the area near my studio is a 100-year-old derelict farmhouse, where two women lived alone and died there. I was exploring the house and discovered a box of porcupine quills with two beaded hair clips on leather inside. The house was falling apart and abandoned, with lath walls exposed. It was older lath ripped from saplings and not squared. The house seemed to represent the cultural transition we're in with the older Victorian and modernist eras now being replaced by the digital age, post-modernism and post-colonialism. An entire way of life, similar to that lived by my grandparents, is rapidly passing away. So, I began imprinting the walls as a record of this history in rural Ontario.
Printing the lath walls (process and details), bee tray pieces (process).
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"East", 54" x 70", 2009. Latex, gauze, lath wall fragments, porcupine quills and urethane.
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"Snap Dragon Quill Dress", 54" x 70", 2009. Latex, gauze, lath wall fragments, dried snap dragon stalks, porcupine quills, blood.
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These two pieces occurred on the same wall, and ended up representing two women.
"Lath wall", 60" x 60", 2009
"Mason House Doorway", 3' x 7', 2009
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"Wild Grape Vine Couple", 70" x 54", 2009
"Airplane Exhaust Manifold", diptych, 36" x 42" (each half), 2010
Additional smaller works not shown.
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