Re[Collection]

Re[Collection] is a gathering and tending of cast away “belongings”. Harboured remnants are recalled, re-scripted and amended with a renewed spirit of receptivity and devotion. Through ritualistic reckoning, the re-imagined objects are inscribed with attunement to the power of archetypes.

THE DOWSING DRESS

Soaked in words from plunges into daily creative rituals and collected writings on belonging, The Dowsing Dress holds ley lines for divining unseen influences.

Lifting the veils of inheritance summons resistance and acceptance as new vows are consciously expressed.

The iconography of the dress is overwritten as cloak, draper, selvage and witness to experience.

Traces of the artist’s wedding dress, Japanese paper, ink, cyanotype blueprints, journal entries.

2023

THE MILK DRESS

“When I was engaged many years ago, I thought I might like to wear my mother's wedding dress, and even had it altered to bring it up to date, but ultimately realized that it was 'her' dress, imbued with her story and that mine ought be my own. In resurrecting this dress today, many years later, it has become a current metaphor for personal sovereignty and 'self-marriage'.

The dress has been embellished with stitched words mined from a daily channeled writing ritual, and a running collection of inherited maternal wisdoms from my family's and others' wise and eccentric matriarchs. These ‘milk lines', inner directives and divine downloads, represent a process of personal discernment, re-patterning and rebalancing. What do I choose to revere and reuse and what can I release and rewrite? What might be nursed back to health through reconnection the sacred?

Little glass bottles rescued from the fires of a defunct dairy farm in Lac St Jean (once used to sample and test the quality of the milk) are repurposed here to collect these archetypal adages that are a kind of braille of the spirit.”

Altered wedding dress worn by the artist’s mother, milk collection bottles from farm in rural Quebec, stitched cotton, collected adages

2023

UNTETHERED

Mending and healing is relational and requires a mutual willingness to see what is in need of repair. To become unbound from one’s own habitual ideas, dogma and conditioning is a path to communion beyond previously limiting boundaries.

To make never-ending mending visible is to acknowledge of our well-worn patterns and can invite humility and imagination to play.

The fabrics and stitches used were passed down from generations and speaks to a globe-spanning history of sewing and embroidery, and those who have used a simple needle and thread to carry powerful messages.

Stripped soccer ball, vintage hand-me-down fabrics, cotton threads

2023

AMULET

Collected off the ground over the course of several years by the artist and her friends, circular washers take on new catechism as talismans of wholeness.

Stacked vertebrae articulate the support we receive along our journey and prompt us to consider what we cherish, covet and collect…and why.

Each disc reminds us of the rewards of noticing and gives evidence that we tend to find what we’re looking for.

Found rusted washers, ribbon, velvet cushion

2023

EMergency entrance (SOLD)

Fixed on points near large bodies of open water, life buoys offer a ring of safety in crisis on the water. Crisis offers an opportunity to step into new awareness; to cut yourself adrift to change or return to the familiarity of a safe harbour. The circular laws of both alchemy and physics dictate that matter can be neither created nor destroyed and you can only gain in proportion to what you lose.

Discarded life buoy, paint

"We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss, some sundry equipment." - Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck

2023

Private collection

SHADOWBOX SKETCHES - POUCH COVE

A trio of shadowbox fibre sketches were created in the heart of winter during an artist residency in Pouch Cove, Newfoundland. The gift of time and space allowed for the [re]collection of everyday objects found at the local convenience store.