Keeping pests out of our homes has been a constant struggle for humans since we became an agricultural society. This is particularly the case with mice and rats, who have adapted to thrive in human spaces. The impacts of sharing space with rodents varies hugely based on socio-economic location; while mice and rats are everywhere in urban environments, those who have the closest contact with these creatures tend to live in buildings that are poorly maintained. For those who are unhoused, there are few options for keeping food secure and animals out of tents. Rats and mice are seen as carriers of disease and a marker of poor hygiene and upkeep, but they exist in both high- and low-income areas; everywhere that humans accumulate waste. They have evolved to thrive in the spaces we call home.

In Vancouver the rat population seems to be on the rise, with footage capturing rats swarming outside Burrard Skytrain Station in the downtown core. Some blame the apparent growth of the rodent population on the banning of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, which inadvertently kill birds of prey, cats, dogs, and other creatures who consume poisoned rodents. Others emphasize that removing food sources by securing trash and properly maintaining buildings is the only way to control the population- a tall order in a city known for slumlords and sky-high housing costs. While humans struggle with the cost-of-living crisis, mice and rats continue to thrive, taking up residence in our walls, attics, and basements.

Mice and rats have succeeded in establishing themselves in new areas at least in part due to colonization, as humans in search of new homes intentionally and unintentionally brought flora and fauna with them, sometimes with devastating impacts. Our ability to control the spread of this life, through rodenticides and pesticides, continues to have major impacts on native species. It can be easy to ignore these impacts, closing the doors to our homes and leaving the wildness of nature outside, until it comes inside to join us.

These works explore the sense of horror, fascination, revulsion, and wonder that can be elicited when confronted with the sight of mice en-masse. Decorated with sprigs made from a mold of a mouse, from a distance, these vessels are recognizable as highly decorated ceramic vase-shapes that might be familiar or welcome in domestic spaces, but upon closer inspection the mouse details become visible. One rodent might be cute, but a swarm can create a sense of intense discomfort. Similarly, a mouse outside can be acceptable, but in the home is immediately unwelcome. The vessels range from stoneware to high-fire clay and are decorated with slips, fired raw, or soda fired.

This project explores Vancouver’s housing crisis through my personal experience of repeated shifts in housing. Each fortune teller represents a house I have lived in, and their position in the space references their location in the city. They are each paired with a photo of the house, printed using the cyanotype method and toned using botanicals scavenged from their gardens. The level of tannins in the botanicals transform the cyanotype’s traditional blue into unpredictable colours, entirely dependent on the plants growing at that location.

It is strange to view houses from the outside/as a stranger who doesn't belong there any more when they were once so familiar, and to be transported back in memories to such a different time in my life. Embedding the soil, leaves, and plants into the cement fortune tellers, and the parallel chemical process that bonds the botanicals to the iron in cyanotypes was a way to process feelings of anxiety about the future and a desire for groundedness and belonging. The botanicals in the cement are already starting to dry out and lose their colour, but their shapes will be imprinted in the fortune teller forever.

In this project I was thinking about the ways that places leave their mark on us even as we try to let go. I dropped leather-soft stoneware bottles on a mold made of cockleshells from my home town. At peak cockle season the waterfront around the cockle sheds is covered in mounds of shells after the creatures have been extracted for selling at the fish stalls. When the bottles hit the mold they contort and compress, taking on the impression of the shells. Some of the pieces are left as raw stoneware, some were glazed and reduction fired, and a few were painted with cyanotype emulsion so they bear the trace of my fingers before the drop.

The animation was also made using cyanotype stills. This animation was a way for me to preserve a moment through a process that is time-intensive and tactile, elevating the significance of the action being captured. The process of making digital recording into analogue means spending time with the images; seconds are broken up into many smaller moments and time stretches out. Slowing things down and spending time in a moment is an interesting way to force myself to stop, observe, feel, appreciate- something that I find so challenging in a world where you're always moving, building, hustling, and (for me at least) often avoiding being present.

This greenhouse was installed next to the ‘Food Forest’ garden at Langara College. The images are printed on glass using cyanotype, and show edible plants from forests around the Vancouver area including Stanley Park, ancestral and stolen territories of the Musqueam.

This piece was installed in December 2022 and remained on display until the spring.

This piece was created for the 2021 Small File Media Festival. Streaming video is responsible for 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions- the data centres, networks, and devices we rely on for streaming are mostly powered by fossil fuels. The Small File Media Festival celebrates videos of under 5 megabytes that show movies don’t have to be big HD files to be beautiful and inspiring.

This piece experiments with datamoshing, compression, and a lot of reverb to celebrate the stripping down of high rez, high bandwidth video down to its pixelated components. And is there any better feeling than stripping down/dismantling your facade at the end of the day?

Another small file piece for the 2021 Small File Media Festival, updated in 2022 to feature Betty Roché singing Trouble Trouble.

This piece uses slow movements and close shots to allow for a high resolution while keeping the file size low, and explores the meeting of old and new communication technologies.

This project is part performance and part archive, and took place from January to March 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. I recorded a daily audio journal entry for seven weeks. Each day I responded to the previous day’s recording, and then contributed some new reflections, slowly building up into a conversation between my past, present, and future selves. The recordings were edited so they would be heard through the left or right ear, depending on which ‘self’ is speaking. After the three months, the accumulated recordings were remixed into background ‘filler’ sounds of ums, yeahs, and laughter. The identifiable conversation focuses on time, the future, and the past.

Along with each audio recording, I took a photo with a long exposure in which I moved part way through, creating an image of two selves. The length of the exposure was calculated based on the amount of time that day’s audio recording had taken.

This piece is designed to be viewed with headphones so as to hear the stereo recording.

The women sit first (2021)

Bronze and beech wood with a ferric nitrate patina. This piece is a bronze drop spindle in the shape of a teacup based on my grandmother’s china tea set. It is pierced through the centre and on an angle by a beech wood spindle.

Nineteen-Ninety Five (2021)

Soapstone walkman from 1995, with steal headband and wires.

Petrosphere (2019)

Red clay, white and black slip, clear glaze

This endurance-based piece uses the ritual of getting dressed up to explore the tension between gender, identity and performativity. This piece plays on a loop so the gesture of tying goes on forever, and the performance is never complete.

An animated short exploring ideas of binaries and gender expansiveness.

The word gnossienne was invented by compeer Erik Satie to define a series of his compositions that didn’t fit into any of the musical styles of the time. They are mostly written in free time and highly experimental in structure.

Alternative photographic process including cyanotype, anthotype, and chlorophyll printing.

Cyanotypes can be used to print negatives or to make silhouettes by placing objects on treated substrate and exposing them to the sun. Every print is unique as many variables affect the final piece including time of year, time of day, weather, solution application, temperature, humidity, and alkalinity of the water. These variables produce subtle differences in tone and colour that tie each piece to the location in which they were made. Some are also toned with plants to create different colours- the iron in the cyanotype binds to the tannins in the plants to make reds, greens, blacks, purples, and other colours. Tri-colour cyanotypes are made using a process of printing, bleaching, and toning in several layers.