Week one.

 

July 10th, 2015

 

 

Week one has come to a close here in Blairmore! Follow along for updates if you're interested, it's been an interesting transition into town, meeting lots of friendly people and also stepping on a lot of toes (not literally, thankfully)! But first, a bit of background to Gushul Residency and why I am here.

 

Gushul Residency is situated along Crowsnest Pass, in Blairmore, Alberta. The residency is run by the University of Lethbridge, and has been in operation since 1988, housing artists and scholars ever since. There are two buildings, a studio (formerly used as a photo portrait studio by Thomas Gushul), and a smaller cottage to house a writer in residence. This particular residency had caught my eye due to its location, being not far at all from where my current body of work first started in Southern Alberta, where the landscape that has and continues to inspire much of the work, and has even literally shaped it. The work centered around questions of where, and what home could be. In 2014 I had the opportunity to visit Hong Kong, China on my first artist residency, to visit the city my Dad still calls home and live life on the other side of things, making work about place, and belonging. If you're interested in a recap of that experience, click here. A return to Southern Alberta meant the work could come full circle both physically and conceptually to its place of origin, and that meant that I could tackle a couple of questions that were brewing in the work, detailed below (you get a screen shot of something I had written before that I cannot copy and paste and am too tired to write out again, hence the font change).