Our Neighborhood 2023

Relief Print w/ posca markers, varied sizes, and cardstock paper affixed to string lights. 

In November, 2021, I had traveled to Moncton, New Brunswick, for a printmaker’s residency with Imago: Atelier d'estampe Imago Inc. During a three week stint in which I met my partner, I had explored the city’s narratives of deteriorating housing situation, abandonment, and still standing communities. The finished artwork, aptly entitled The Neighbourhood was an honest attempt to accumulate these notions and quaintly express their accounts through reduction printing, repetition, reclaimed materials, and varied media. Yet while I consider this project a success, it was undeniably an outsider’s perspective into a town I was unaccustomed to. 

Our Neighbourhood is not only as a response to this original project, but a foil to the eye of an interloper by allowing public participants to create, curate, and cherish their own communities; in particular, rural communities which are so often overlooked in comparison to bustling centres. 

With the guidance of Caitlin Wilson of Maplewood Studio, we will be offering an interactive demonstration where attendees of Radiant Rural Halls will create their own neighbourhoods in the form of a large two-day installation. Each attendee will carve a house from a readymade template and print using Maplewood Studio’s portable Woodzilla (A4) press. Prints will require at least twenty-four hours of drying before assemblage. The following day, printed templates are cut, folded, and glued to form a 3-D paper house with all windows cut free. Once assembled, each house is mounted as a lantern to a string of LED fairy and/or holiday lights, and displayed at the Glenaladale House. 

Forlorn is a series of printed works detailing the forgotten, abandoned, and questionable areas of New Brunswick. Forlorn has been funded by ArtsNB and the Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation grants.