This January, Pearl Van Geest and I got shot out of a cannon as we landed in North Bay on January to begin the installation of Wild Waysides: Queer Ecologies and the New Natural at the White Water Gallery. The artwork presented in this exhibition came form the cohort of the Inaugural Queer Up North Artist Residency we ran in Temagami Ontario last August.
Growing up in North Bay, I volunteered at the very gallery that now houses this exhibition, so it felt a bit poetic to return, this time as a curator and artist. The opening night was particularly special—sharing the exhibition’s themes of queerness and rural life with my hometown community was both personally and professionally rewarding.
At the opening reception, I had the opportunity to speak about John Weiss, a mentor during my time in North Bay, and reflected on how much his guidance meant to me. Though he’s no longer with us, sharing that connection with everyone present made the event all the more meaningful. The exhibition runs until March 15, after which it will move to Nova Gallery, also in North Bay.
With February coming at me hard and fast, I’m gearing up for the Red Head Gallery and Coordenadas Residencia exchange in Buenos Aires. This grassroots collaboration reflects what excites me most about the art world—artists connecting and sharing across borders on a personal level, rather than through large national initiatives.
One of the challenges we’ve embraced is creating artwork that can be easily transported. From textiles to paper-based works and videos, the participating artists have found unique ways to work within these parameters. I’ll be bringing a suitcase filled with 16 artists’ work, ready to share these creative responses with a new audience.
For my party, I am presenting a new work called Between the Lines. It is a set of four crochet jockstraps exploring nationalism and homo-eroticism. Each piece represents a national identity or sports team: Canada, Argentina, the Boca Juniors Soccer Team and Toronto Maple Leafs’ Hockey Team. It’s been fun working on these and thinking about how queerness can transcend other identities to bridge borders between nations.
I’m developing and exhibition for 2026 about the culture of trophy hunting. One of my concerns is the ethics of art making when dealing with a subject that can be viewed intersectionality. While reading through books like Beyond Fair Chase by Jim Prosewitz, I have had to think critically about the distinctions between ethical hunting for sustenance and toxic, preformative hunting culture. This distinction is at the core of Doe & Deery as a project critiquing toxic masculinity through queered, subversive art. As part of this work, Im unpacking its elements to ensure I am not also critiquing Indigenous practices or hunting for sustenance. I find myself often weighing what materials I could (or should) use.
While I have used beads in previous work and hand craft and camp aesthetics have become a pillars of my work in textiles, I wonder, given its history, if the bead is too close a totemic material associated with Indiginaity and are there other materials I could be using instead to align it more singularly with queer culture or should I open this up to it being a collaborative effort and include a greater plural voice. I think using beads is in keeping with queer culture and my own lived experience of making friendship bracelets as a child. Being careful to not use recognizable motifs might be key.
Ultimately, I am not arguing against hunting, but I am presenting some very real concerns about inter-generational homosocial spaces where toxic traits and ideologies are passed down and fostered though paternal bloodlines.
As a way to further unpack the thinking behind this exhibition, I’ve been experimenting with the use of natural fibres and textiles instead of traditional animal-based materials and drawing inspiration from drag culture’s great embrace of artifice and extravagance. Also re-reading Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp has offered great direction.
A few other books that I’ve got on the coffee table this month are:
Queering the Subversive Stitch by Joseph McBrin
Finding Form with Fiber by Ruth Woods
The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam
Great Women Sculptors, publish by Phaidon Books
While this month has been productive, I’ve also been mindful of the need to balance ambition with family time, play dates with friends, and rest. Winnie, our French bulldog, has been my constant companion, finding her own cozy spot in the guest room to bask in the morning light. It’s moments like these that remind me to slow down and appreciate the little joys amidst the busyness.