bio

I want you to know that I care deeply and I work from a place of love. I hope to generate, to contribute forward, despite a changing world — I use my hands and make to cultivate an ancestral and place focused practice, Here.

Here, is Katalisk, Ktaqmkuk — my home community. Katalisk is one of my traditional territories where much of my kin network is too; I am also connected to Kumcheen, or Lytton. I am an internationally Indigenous person of Mi’kmaq and Nlaka’pamux descent; I come from the Samms, Noseworthys, Halls, Youngs, Gagnons, Cennames, Watkinsons, and from Spintlum.

I live in my home community and one of my two traditional territories and I’m informed by my very specific place in the world and how I fit in and around it, though not if I do. I look at decolonial values, love and care, at multiplicity and contrastingly, at fragmentation. I am interested in the sense(s) of inter-dependance and capability that come from this way of working and looking, of seeing. I collaborate often, think and work intergenerationally, and consider working together with place and people integral to creative process and makings. I am driven to practice as an artist to learn more, to unearth specifics about place in a meaningful way, to visit with past and present people.

I hope that my practice(s) serve then, now, and yet-to-be relations. I try to articulate decolonial values, perspective, care, and love by examining story-in-place, living-in-place, experience-in-place, and interwoven relationship by making work to generate more story-sharing and more living. I tend to work with a diversity of media in my creative practice, not limited to: fibre, handweaving, and natural dyes for more than ten years now; paint, photo, and words for as long as I can remember. Though growing food and tending to bees is a creative work too. I have shared work in exhibitions, videos and interviews, talks, panels, books, and artful publications like the Guild of Canadian Weavers Bulletin, Riddlefence Magazine, Beside Magazine, and more. I’ve received very generous coverage from other media outlets such as CBC, Downhome Magazine, East Coast Living Magazine, Visual Arts News, the Globe & Mail, and others.

note: Katalisk, Ktaqmkuk is known colonially as Codroy Valley, newfoundland.

If you require a bio or need to view my CV, please contact me.

I co-run an off-grid, regenerative farm with my partner in love and life, Ash Hall. It’s cute and called Tuckaway Farm, Apiary & Apothecary. You can read about it, here.

We host a very grassroots residency on our farm, in the Loom Shed! Read about our Artist in Residence program here.

I am grateful for the support and opportunities gifted me from ArtsNL and Canada Council for the Arts. I am hugely grateful for the support from my family, friends, by collaborators, readers, and those of you who engage with my work. Biggest thanks!

Follow @livetextiles on instagram to stay in touch, for thoughts, day-to-day stuff, and one-off sales of handwovens.