give way to this space
last breaths still to come
awakened to necessity
it is here
work to be completed
leave it be
to the very end
quiet the rush 
hurdling toward tomorrows
heart open
to the in-between

erin stinson 

Over the Family Day long weekend, my husband and I, along with 3 other couples from the Wood Buffalo Photography Club, journeyed up the winter road to Fort Smith, NWT.  Traveling over frozen rivers and icy marshes, through lush forests and over winding sand hills, the trip is an experience like none other.  Having made the trip before we knew more of what to expect and added an extra day to soak up the experience.  

The first day we drove all the way from Fort McMurray to Fort Smith, arriving 11 hours later with our hearts full from the foxes, ptarmigan and northern hawk owls that came into our view.  The beautiful white ptarmigan were on the top of my wish list so I was over the moon to finally see them!  The road North takes us through a variety of landscapes, each of them stunning in their own special way.  The next morning, in particularly frigid temperatures, we were privy to a lovely soft sunrise, with the fog from the Pelican Rapids streaming across the Slave River valley.  We made our way back through Wood Buffalo National Park where we saw many signs of the bison who make their home there but they chose to stay tucked out of sight.  The next night was spent in Fort Chipewyan where we were greeted with a huge sun dog over the Canadian Shield and we had the opportunity to learn about some local history at the Bicentennial Museum. I am eager to visit Fort Chipewyan in the summer months and see it when all the ice has melted.  It is an absolutely stunning area with a rich history.  

Our last stretch back home was a snowy day but we were delighted to see great grey owls and witness a flurry of activity involving an otter, a snowshoe hare and some panicking ptarmigan.  I'm already wondering what wonderful things we will see on our next journey North.  

Before Beaverville, Liana and I had planned on collaborating for a dual exhibition filled with mixed media works on a smaller scale.  Giving each other creative freedom we decided that we would focus on the natural surroundings of the boreal forest where we live, create small mixed media pieces and the rest was up to our own creative process and interpretation.  We created our works individually, only allowing ourselves to bring the works together for the final exhibition.  I found myself drawn to the challenge of creating things on a miniature scale, exploring a variety of techniques and finding new ways to use natural and recycled materials.  Here are the works I created along with my personal interpretation of ​Little by Little:

I have the great privilege of having been chosen, along with 5 other Fort McMurray artists, to represent our region in the Art Gallery of Alberta's Travelling Exhibition program.  Our exhibition has been called Beyond 'the Patch': Stories From Wood Buffalo.  The submission process took place before the wildfire of May 2016 and we were notified of our successful applications during the evacuation.  I was already excited to be able to share the natural beauty of the Wood Buffalo I know and love but the works we would create had even more significance in our post-fire reality.  

What an honour to showcase the beauty and heart of our region with this exhibition.  Our artwork is travelling around the province for the next year, acting as ambassadors to tell a more accurate and balanced story of Wood Buffalo.  My home is special and unique - and we do a lot of things differently.  Our oil industry is the oil sands (not 'the patch') and that land is reclaimed over time.  We are resilient, generous and community minded.  Our multi-cultural diversity is celebrated, with people who are born and raised here and others who have travelled from all around the province, country, and world to be here.  This is a place of great opportunity with the ability to take risks and experience growth.  And our beauty- that’s undeniable - we can take a walk through Birchwood Trails, a drive up the winter road to Fort Chipewyan, go kayaking on Gregoire Lake, or spend a night star gazing with the aurora dancing overhead.  It's amazing.  The whole, balanced story of beauty and stillness, hope and opportunity, vibrancy and diversity - has, by and large, been neglected by the media.  But, our collective works will give you another look because our Wood Buffalo exudes all of these characteristics and more.  And hopefully, as these paintings, drawings and photographs travel, others will learn how special we are too.  Wood Buffalo most certainly has life and soul in and ‘beyond the patch’.

The following photographs were my contribution to the exhibition. In the months after we returned home after the wildfire evacuation, the boreal forest was undergoing a remarkable and stunning recovery.  It served to many of us a symbol of resilience and rebirth.

Resilience: Morning on the Athabasca Watching the mist lifting off the Athabasca River on this cool autumn morning was a soul-stirring experience.  I desired to capture the light and hope of this moment, with the gull soaring high over a changed landscape.  

Resilience: Juvenile Bald Eagle  In the fall of 2016 this lovely Juvenile Bald Eagle made his presence known in a section of completely burnt out forest.  It was an area my husband and I had explored plenty of times and when the forest was thick with conifers we wondered how much wildlife was watching us while we were completely unaware!  With the branches bare we were grateful for the opportunity to enjoy this young eagle's company and overjoyed to see signs of wildlife returning.

Resilience: Pine Grosbeak  This image, of a puffed up Pine Grosbeak and a perfect heart shaped leaf was made on a very cold December day.  So cold, in fact, that we had an extreme cold weather warning.  The beauty in every season must be found if one is to thrive in a Northern winter.  

Resilience: Fireweed  Living up to its namesake, the Fireweed was more plentiful and vibrant the summer after the wildfire than I had ever seen.  Even though the forest floor was completely charred and black, within days of the fire, new shoots were springing through the ash and soot.  We had never seen such vibrant greens.  By the end of the summer entire fields of Fireweed, up to 5 feet tall, were emerging all around us.  

This summer, an open call for igNIGHT was posted by the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.  igNIGHT is a 10 day temporary public art exhibition of illuminated artworks with this year's theme of Canada 150.  I love art installations and find myself dreaming up all sorts of wild ideas - but with no place to install them (or a lack of a budget to make it happen in the first place.)  So, I was excited to see a local opportunity and began to dream and ask questions and research and budget.  My friend and colleague, Liana Wheeldon came alongside me in the journey and we were thrilled to bring this idea to life.  

Wanting an accessible and playful way to approach the Canada 150 theme, we created a 5' x 8' beaver lodge, complete with illuminated beaver lanterns.  The entire structure was surrounded by 8 interpretive panels with all sorts of fun and crazy beaver facts and lovely sketches created by Liana.  We amalgamated our skill sets and got to work!  Home, Sweet Home (or my nickname for it: Beaverville) was the culmination of construction, sculpture and assemblage  I love the finishing touches of the wicker patio lights - those beavers are good decorators!  

I took on the construction elements, using 2x2's to organically create the beaver lodge frame.  I loved the minimalism of the frame just as it was and will have to revisit this process for another project.  The lodge is constructed in 3 sections so that we could transport it separately and have access inside for the lighting elements.  Thankfully, we had the gracious support of friends who offered up their garage and driveway so we could continue the process in a sheltered location.  We gathered fallen branches from the surrounding forest and selected the best ones to cover the frame - systematically pre-drilling and attaching them, creating a bit of a puzzle as it all came together.  The inside was covered with outdoor fabric to ensure that we had the light diffused enough to allow the lodge to glow at night.  

Each of us created our own beaver lanterns, starting with moulds we made of plastic, cardboard, tape and newspaper.  The moulds were then covered with vellum and rice paper using a papier mache technique.  I lovingly named mine Buckeye and Bernadette (and Beavis for the tail sticking out of the water). ;)  Lights were installed inside each beaver and they were attached to both the lodge and the frame.  A lighting dress rehearsal took place late one night to ensure that everything had power and all the cords had their place in the crazy maze underneath.  Planning, executing, tweaking, planning some more, tweaking some more... all a part of the day to day work to make all the details work together.  Countless hours were spent at each stage and I can certainly attest to having learned a great deal through it all.  

Creating a design and proposal on paper naturally leads to some oversights in details and the troubleshooting became an integral part of the artistic process.  Taking the bones of the proposal and bringing it to 3-dimensional life meant that we were constantly experimenting and refining elements of the design, making the project stronger as we progressed.  There were many challenges (including having to install in the pouring rain and frigid temperatures) and the timeframe was intense but we completed our project!  We were over the moon to share our blood, sweat and tears with the community and even more thrilled to watch how people interacted with our beaver friends.  

One of my favourite elements was the use of nature sounds so, in the dark, you were transported from the middle of the city to the peaceful beaver world filled with creaking toads and quacking ducks and even the sound of the beavers splashing in the water.  The temporal nature of our project also pointed to the ever-changing natural environment around us and the importance of the process.  

Back in May I became enamoured with this photo that popped up in my twitter feed, created by Paul Zizka.  (View the full image here!) The colours, the lines, the composition... they spoke to me in a special way.  I see a lot of amazing photographs in my social media feeds but they don't often stop me in my tracks like this one did.  And what made it extra special is that I immediately saw this image in other visual expressions.  My brain automatically transferred the photographic image into acrylic paint and watercolour and paper versions. I contacted Paul to inquire if he licenses his photographs to artists for reference usage and I was in luck - he does just that.  So, you can imagine how excited I was that he was willing to license his image to me to explore in different mediums!  (Thanks, Paul!) I decided to give myself a goal of 5 pieces for this image study. The first step was a digital drawing, extracting the lines and forms that I felt were necessary to tell the story of this image.  I worked and reworked it to find a balance between detail and minimalism - and I chose to keep the image as a square, since that is how I first viewed it.  

The next step was to explore these same lines and shapes using acrylic on wood panel.  After producing such clean and crisp lines in the digital painting, the acrylic version felt much looser, the texture of brush strokes creating a different feel for this second piece.  

The third piece required a loom and yarn.  I discovered that weaving is extremely addicting - I ended up binging in two sessions and 14 hours later the weaving was complete!  In this version I chose to make the iceberg larger so it wouldn't get lost in the other yarn textures, as well as eliminating some sections to give the weaving more lines that extended from edge to edge.  

Then I got lost in a sea of paper, using layers that were painted with watercolour techniques and cutting others from solid cardstock.  Each piece was cut and placed in various heights, venturing away from the simplified design I started with and adding more lines and colours for increased movement.  

And the fifth study was a return to the original lines, with the iceberg enlarged and sculpted out of clay.  The mountains were also sculpted with the remaining sections left two-dimensional.  This series proved to be a wonderful study that, as an unexpected side bonus, gave me increased clarity on a number of elements within my art practice.  No matter the medium there's always a need to let go, trust the process and get to work!  ​