Art: Sculpture / Installation / Performance
Wild Art Walk: Manifold Witness - October 2025
“In October Milburn Creek Nature Reserve in Battersea, Ontario becomes a gallery in the trees. Sculpture, site-specific installations, and art displays in a variety of mediums are set up along the trail. Art pieces interwoven into the natural elements makes for a surprising, inspiring and magical walk through this already beautiful reserve area.” – Battersea Wild Art Walk
Title: Manifold Witness
Materials: Wood, Photography, Mirrors
Artist Statement: This work explores re-wilding through embodied phytomorphic biomimicry, engaging with the invitations of the surrounding land and in turn inviting the viewer into shifting perspectives through invitational play, while highlighting the false dualism of human/nature separation and rekindling the community and interconnectivity of all things.
This work was created in two parts: A series of photo-documentations of a land engagement process, wherein the artist walked the Milburn Creek trail a few weeks prior to the installation with an openness to respond to any invitations from the land or more-than-human counterparts met along the way.
Four of the performance documentation photographs were then incorporated into four of the peep-holes, printed on transparency paper so that the natural shifting light and colour of the forest affects the lighting and colouring of the image over the course of the month as the leaves change colour and begin to fall. The rest of the peep-holes contain mirrors, creating periscopes that change the direction of what the viewer is looking at — anywhere but straight ahead.
The piece is housed in a form that references the appearance of a Parks Canada interpretive sign, a bat-box or birdhouse, a lookout telescope, a set of eyes in the darkness, and a peep-show – drawing the viewer through the familiar into the unexpected and into playful engagement with curiosity and mystery.
“It is curious to me that some other wisdom traditions consider physical emulation of creature kin as a means of practice, that embodying the natural other is a means of one’s fulfillment.” – Rachel Wheeler, Radical Kinship
“Join with all nature in manifold witness!” – Thomas O. Chisolm, Great is Thy Faithfulness
Walking & Art: More Discussions At The Wayside - June 2025
In June of 2025, I was accepted to be part of “Walking & Art: More Discussions At The Wayside” — a thematic residency at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts on Toronto Island, facilitated by Sarah Cullen and Simon Pope. We spent the week walking, exploring, discussing, and experiencing walking as an art practice. Above are photos of our final studio visits, the zine I created and some of the poetry I wrote during the week, as well as a participatory interactive installation I put together to share some of my experience and explorations during our time together. I also created a labyrinth on Hanlan’s Point Clothing Optional Beach, as an exploration of co-designation and co-creation of sacred space by collective participatory engagement with a location. A series of video/performance works from the week are available for exhibition or screening upon request.
Aqua Nova - September 2022
On the evenings of September 10 and 11, 2022, from 7:15 – 9:00 pm, the atrium of the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts was transformed into a larger-than-life projection screen, accompanied by live music and dance performances. This notable piece of architecture in Kingston became a playground for a myriad of giant swimmers exploring Kingston’s relationship with water. Aqua Nova created a conceptual platform and physical venue where Kingston multi-media artists Josh Lyon (Video, Projection Mapping), Don Maynard (Project Lead), Kay Kenney (Choreography), and Sadaf Amini (Composer, Musician), explored the language of water, how we move in it, and the physical and spiritual connections it has with our community. Aqua Nova invited viewers of all ages and from all backgrounds to be entertained and mesmerized as the Isabel was transformed into a unique and stunning art experience. The audience was invited to move freely through the space and experience the show from both within the atrium and outside of the Isabel. This free event invited all members of our community and visitors to Kingston to experience a unique and site-specific multimedia artwork.
Created with support from: The Kingston Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council, The City of Kingston, The Ballytobin Foundation
(Click the images below for larger versions)
nistijanan - June - August 2020
Next Door: Skeleton Park Neighbourhood Art Project — June 17–August 17, 2020
Artist Name/Collective: Corcoran Peppley and Josh Lyon
Project Title: nistijanan
(“Nistijanan” — Proto-Germanic root, \*nistijanan, which is the source of the Old English verb nistan meaning “to build (a bird’s) nest”. This root is directly linked to the formation of the English word “nest”.)
About: nistijanan is a human-sized nest suspended on a pillar (not unlike the Osprey nest in Belle Park) but installed just above human reach. Passers-by would be able to view the exterior shell of the nest, but the interior contents would remain a mystery. The nest itself was constructed out of natural found materials (ie. branches and grapevine) woven into a basket shape. As an exterior mounted piece of environmental art, the nest itself has morphed and changed over time.
nistijanan is a meditation on making a home and all that goes into it, a reflection on what it is to be ‘at home’ as a place of safety and separation during the COVID19 pandemic, and a reminder to consider our more-than-human neighbours that have become more visibly present in our neighbourhood during the course of the current social isolation.
Limestone - 2018
Who Is Bruce Kauffman? is an anthology film that explores and celebrates Kingston, Ontario’s vibrant poetic community through the eyes of a poet impresario who manages to be both ubiquitous and elusive. Kauffman’s influence is broad and longstanding – if one proceeds from any given place on an imagined map of Kingston’s poetry scene, then Bruce will show up somewhere along the trail, humbly and unassumingly encouraging all local writers.
Limestone is an excerpt from the feature length documentary, created from the vision of filmmaker Josh Lyon, in collaboration with the Kingston Stilters, and based on a poem of the same name by former Kingston Poet Laureate Helen Humphries. Just as Humphries’ poem speaks of the life within the rocks – of former sea creatures making up the mass of Limestone in the Kingston area – so this short poetry film blurs the perceptual boundaries between human and more-than-human.
Poem & Voice: Helen Humphries
Directed, Cinematography, Editing and Post-Production: Josh Lyon
Featuring the Kingston Stilters: Meredith Dault, Tracey Guptill, Marney McDiarmid, Corcoran Peppley, Sarah Wiseman, with Greg Tilson
Music Composed by John Burge: Chromatic Fantasy, from Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, 1996, and Limestone Original Soundtrack, 2018
Poem Audio Recording and Final Audio Mixdown: Matt Rogalsky
Production Assistant: Tricia Knowles
Production Stills Photographer: Liz Cooper Photography
Makeup Artists: Christine Harvey, Tricia Knowles, Josh Lyon
Thanks to: Helen Humphries, Greg Tilson, Gordon Darrell & Daphne Hand at The Night Pasture, Brent Nurse & Steven Spencer, Hannah, Molly, Ezra & Oscar, Angela Wiseman