Cosmograms (2018)

Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity – Thematic Residency: Outdoor School
Open Studios Presentation

Cosmograms is a multi-component installation and video work developed during the Banff Centre’s Outdoor School thematic residency in 2018. The project examines interconnected biological, geological, and atmospheric processes, focusing on how information circulates across species, materials, and temporal scales.

The installation incorporates oil paintings (60”×60”; 48”×200”), sculpted beeswax on copper wire, bronze coral, aluminum branches (willow, ash, poplar), 3D prints in wax and PLA, tuning forks, laser-etched Baltic birch panels, textiles, foam, hydra-cal coral casts, and video footage. Materials such as lichen, coral, and decades-old beeswax function as reference points for considering extended durations of life, growth, and decay. Their presence raises questions about longevity, particularly in organisms like lichen, which may exhibit atypical or near-immortal life cycles, and how such durations operate in relation to planetary processes.

Throughout the residency, I explored how these diverse materials could be arranged to reflect patterns of communication, resonance, and exchange found across ecological systems. The resulting work brings together organic and fabricated elements to consider how information, biological, structural, or energetic, moves within and between living and nonliving entities.

Cosmograms contributes to my broader research into multispecies relations, ecological timescales, and the material conditions that shape how living systems register and respond to the environments they inhabit.