As an avid hiker, paddler, swimmer, and skier I am deeply rooted to the land and water. Connecting with and recording the natural world is essential to my spiritual, mental, and physical well-being.
The Port au Port Peninsula continually calls me back to explore its geology; to paddle the caves and hoodoos; swim in its crystal-clear, turquoise waters; and hike the rugged limestone barrens. The word barren has many negative connotations. Barren is to be poor, lifeless, unproductive, bleak, infertile, empty of meaning or value, arid, bald, nude, or naked. A barren place has nothing to offer in terms of usefulness. If there is nothing there, then there is nothing worth protecting however, there are many lenses through which we can view a landscape: historical, economic, environmental, recreational, industrial, and aesthetic.
Limestone barrens are not barren but support rare and endangered plant species which are perfect metaphors for survival and adaptation.
Botanists Michael Burzynski and Anne Marceau studied rare plants in this area and produced a book on the ecological importance of limestone barrens. In the past twenty years, there have been two important art projects headed by Charlotte Jones (former Grenfell Art Gallery curator) that looked at the cultural, aesthetic, ecological, and historical importance of this area.
My installation looks at the long view of this area and how it will be forever changed by the construction of a wind farm mega-project.
The focus of this immersive work is inspired by the timely topic of the wind generation project proposed for the Port au Port Peninsula. The Nujio'qonik project intends to produce hydrogen from wind energy and export it to Germany. The developers want to erect 164 wind turbines, each 200 meters tall on a piece of land the size of the city of St. John’s. It is my hope that this work will inform, challenge, and stimulate a conversation about how we view the natural environment and ecosystems of this area and the exploitation of natural resources to feed our consumptive habits.
