CLOUDS OF COLOUR

Year: 2022 Dimensions: 16’ x 16’ x 10’ Medium/ Technique: Powder Coated Hand Bent Wire **Produced with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts Clouds of Colour, commissioned for Harbourfront Centre’s main entrance foyer, is conceived as both drawing and sculpture—an installation where hundreds of individually hand-formed wire units hang from single points to create a tactile environment filled with line, colour, and movement. Each sculpture is shaped from black annealed wire using lashing and bending techniques, then powder-coated in vibrant plant-inspired colours: yellows, pinks, purples, reds, and oranges. The accumulation of these units, ranging in size, creates a large expansive canopy that envelops viewers as they pass through this transitional gathering space. Through the repetition of floral imagery and circular motifs, the installation achieves a presence that is both delicate and substantial, activating the passageway with shifting layers of shadow and light. My interest in this work stems from finding connections between scientific research and decorative patterns found in textiles and wallpaper. While much of my practice involves creating lace-like embroidered pieces by sewing into water-soluble stabilizer—building stitched lines on a temporary surface that dissolves to leave only thread—Sunset Canopy translates this approach into wire. Here, colourful wire forms replace thread to create lines that exist in space, shaped on-site during installation to respond to the architecture. The work lives in a place of movement and gathering, inviting people to pause and look up—to encounter a daily moment of wonder as floating forms shift with ambient air currents. I believe strongly in art that welcomes everyone, making space for joy, care, and reflection through the sensory...

BLOOM

Year: 2022 Dimensions: 16’ x 16’ x 10’ Medium/Technique: Powder Coated Hand Bent Wire **Produced with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts Bloom translates the mathematical roulette curves of Spirograph toys into sculptural wire lines that combine the playful gesture of drawing toys with the radial patterns found in textile structures like crochet rings and tatting. I am drawn to wire for its lightness, the shadows it casts, and its capacity to exist as both line and form. This interest in mathematical patterning embedded within textile traditions results in a hanging, mobile work where each circular form is individually shaped and suspended, creating a dense collection of fine lines arranged in the gallery ceiling. The installation presents a floating cloud of colour in bright blues, pinks, and purples—a vivid atmosphere of saturated lines that suggests simultaneously a galaxy, a bouquet of flowers, and a surreal cloudscape. Viewers are invited to move around and beneath the work, experiencing how it shifts subtly with air currents and transforms from different vantage points.  This work has been included in the following exhibitions: Exhibition: Bright Little Day Stars at The Columbia Museum of Art Exhibition: Bloom at The Lake of the Woods Museum (links to be added) Exhibition: Wanderings and Traces at Cambridge Galleries (links to be...

Floating Garden

Year: 2011-Ongoing Dimensions: 25’ x 20’ x 9’ (Dimensions Variable)’ Medium/ Technique: Thread, Machine Embroidery **Produced with the support of The Ontario Arts Council, The Surface Design Association and la Maison des mĂ©tiers d’art de QuĂ©bec In my work, I use a sewing machine to create thread drawings. By stitching into water-soluble fabric, I build up layered lines on a temporary surface. The crossing threads create structural integrity, so that when the fabric dissolves, the thread drawing holds together without a base. With only the thread remaining, these images appear fragile and seemingly on the verge of unraveling, despite their actual tensile strength. I am interested in this paradox—thread’s assumed vulnerability, its potential to come undone, and the surprising resilience it gains when sewn together. “Floating Garden” emerged from my fascination with idealized spaces and dreamlike environments. The installation addresses the history of botanical themes in traditional embroidery, liberating flowers from the confines of embroidery kits and pattern books to create an immersive, experiential space. While researching English embroidery, I noticed the persistent recurrence of certain flowers—buttercups, English asters, daisies, and other blooms common to North America. These standardized motifs became the foundation of this piece, though it felt essential to interpret them anew, creating my own versions rather than reproducing historical patterns. In “Floating Garden,” I have extracted these flowers from their original contexts—the samplers and botanical illustration books where they were catalogued and contained—and reintegrated them into a simulated garden environment. The installation transforms disembodied embroidery motifs into a spatial experience, surrounding viewers with suspended, stitched forms. The work exists in a state of tension: delicate yet...

NEON HERBARIUM

Year: 2023 Dimensions: 12’ x 8’  Medium/ Technique: Thread/Machine Embroidery “Neon Herbarium” draws from pressed flower specimens native to Ontario that I studied at the Wisconsin State Herbarium. The work investigates the intersection between scientific documentation and decorative tradition—specifically, how botanical forms migrate between herbarium sheets, embroidery samplers, and textile patterns. The vivid neon greens and yellows I’ve employed push these botanical forms away from the muted, aged tones of preserved herbarium specimens and into the realm of synthetic materials—evoking the artificial brightness of plastics and their unsettling presence in contemporary environments. Each piece is created by sewing into water-soluble fabric, building up dense layers of stitched lines and crossing threads. When the fabric dissolves, the thread drawings hold together through their own interlocking structure, suspended without any backing. This technique mirrors the subject matter: just as plant ecologies function as interconnected biological networks where individual organisms sustain each other through invisible bonds, these thread works depend on accumulated connections to maintain their integrity. This work has been included in the following exhibitions: Exhibition: In Her Garden at the Peel Art Gallery  (links to be added) Exhibition: Wanderings and Traces at Cambridge Galleries(links to be...

MOVING BOXES

Year: 2015 Dimensions: 2.5’ x 1’ x 1’ each (Dimensions Variable) Medium/ Technique: Thread, Wire/ Machine Embroidery In my work, I use a sewing machine to create thread drawings. By sewing into water-soluble fabric, I build up stitched lines on a temporary surface. The crossing threads create structural integrity so that when the fabric dissolves, the thread drawing holds together without a base. With only the thread remaining, these images appear fragile and seemingly on the verge of unraveling, despite their actual tensile strength. I am interested in this paradox—thread’s assumed vulnerability, its potential to come undone, and the resilience it gains when sewn together. “Moving Boxes” recreates the cardboard fruit boxes I used to move my belongings from Toronto to Philadelphia and back again. Constructed at 1:1 scale, these highly decorated moving boxes are sewn flat and then assembled into three-dimensional forms. Through my water-soluble fabric technique, I render these solid, utilitarian objects transparent—transforming the opaque container into something you can see through, something that reveals rather than conceals. The work explores the intersection of labor, movement, and value. Cardboard fruit boxes are mass-produced objects designed for transit and disposal, marked with colorful graphics that advertise their contents and origins. By meticulously recreating them in thread—a process that requires hours of careful stitching—I invert their disposability. The contrast between embroidery’s associations with craft, domesticity, and slowness, and the box’s purpose as a vessel for commerce and rapid transport, creates a tension between permanence and ephemerality, care and efficiency. These boxes also hold personal resonance as containers of transition, marking the physical act of relocating a life between cities....