Home Making, Rustad Galleria, Two Rivers Gallery, Prince George, BC
cast paper models of the “smallest house known to man” .5inch:1foot
For many years I have been investigating the theme of “home” as it applies to my life and the memories that I carry with me.I developed a cache of memories from living in a small cottage-like house,“The Smallest House Known to Man”, in Winnipeg in the 1970’s that continue to influence my art practice today.I reconstruct the idea of “house” and experiences of “home” using the memory of“The Smallest House Known to Man”.I examine the universal concepts of home and homemaking by enveloping the viewer with overlappingwalls of “The Smallest House Known to Man” layered and floating in space. To lend them a fragile, amorphous quality, I used paper pulp to cast the house walls created from life-size and proportional stencils resembling the exterior walls of “the Smallest House Known to Man”.As memory dims, the house walls start to deconstruct, decreasing in size and disappearing into the atmosphere.Images performed by a pair of hands depicting domestic activities like sandwich-making, toilet cleaning, and dishwashing play over the walls in a continuous video loop.The video emphasizes the perpetuity of household tasks, their drudgery and uniformity but also imparts dignity to these ongoing endeavours.
poster
Essay by Maeve Hanna, Assistant Curator, Two Rivers Gallery
Maeve Hanna and I removing cast paper walls from crate for Home Making installation
gallery view of installation
walking through installation
homemaking video of sandwich making
homemaking video of making peanut butter and lettuce sandwiches
installing a cast paper wall with Maeve Hanna and myself
house walls deconstructing and disappearing into the landscape
detail of a house wall embedded in the landscape
view of house walls disappearing into the atmosphere
exterior walls of the ‘smallest house known to man” deconstructed and hanging in space
peephole through which viewers could see the interior of the “smallest house known to man”
detail of a house wall embedded in the landscape
visitor at opening reception
walls as they recede into the atmosphere
detail of a house wall embedded in the landscape
cast paper model of the “smallest house known to man”
cast paper clapboard and window detail
interior of the “smallest house known to man as seen through peephole
artist talk at opening reception
interior of the “smallest house known to man as seen through peephole