Artist Statement

Abstract

T

hese mixed-media watercolour collages were made in response to a participatory museum workshop and collaborative art making event held at the Redpath Museum at McGill University. These research-creation collages, part of a larger series of eight, draw on participant discourse relating to critical concepts of habitat loss, species containment and the finality of extinction, inspired by a Whooping crane (Grus americana) specimen housed in the museum. The artworks play on the visual language of the museum habitat diorama and reverse the “window on nature” concept inherent in that tradition. In these collages, the highly endangered whooping cranes are depicted in two distinct contexts; first, in their natural prairie wetland habitat as if undisturbed by human influence, and secondly, framed in the window of the Redpath museum, gazing longingly at the sky in which it will never again fly free.