I'm an artist living on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations.

 

I started playing the piano when I was about 4 years old. There was an old upright Heinzman in my grandparents' basement. On Sunday evenings, after dinner, I would disappear down there and just play on it. It was really out of tune. I was fascinated.

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​I spent my childhood getting better at it, and eventually started writing my own music.  I played in bands-jazz, rock or whatever genre came my way. I helped organize local concerts and shows as well as participating in classical music competitions and festivals.

​In 1996 I went to the University of Western Ontario to study music theory and composition. I started to explore sounds more through electro-acoustics, soundscapes and extended techniques. I started to explore different ways of thinking about these sounds; how our experience of them is affected by physical, psychological and cultural spaces. I continued to work as a gigging musician to financially support myself, playing in churches, temples, dive bars, convention halls and hotel lobbies. For me, this work threw into relief the inter-relationships between music/sound, genre, culture and identity.

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I moved to the West Coast and attended the MFA program Simon Fraser University. My research was in acoustic ecology and performance practice. Along with technical sound based studio training, my research moved between communication studies, and theatre. These practices informed a further understanding of collaborative art making, and a more interdisciplinary approach, both in method and theory, to my creative process.

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Since then, I've continued to work and collaborate with artists across disciplines and media: literature, film, theatre, media art, dance and radio. I was a co-founder and co-artistic director of Proximity Arts, an interdisciplinary arts collective. I'm also an educator, running workshops and classes that develop critical thought, creative problem solving and resources for spontaneity, engagement and collaboration. My community work involves creating and developing programs in theatre, film and creative writing at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts and I’m currently acting as board chair at Vancouver Improvised Arts Society.

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My most recent work represents a renewed interest in art making from a conceptual standpoint and discovering accessible and thoughtful ways of engaging in playful meaning making. Still deeply rooted in my fascination of listening as a process, I am considering materials in their broadest sense-objects, memories, ideas, words, colours, bodies, plants, etc..- and engaging with them in cross inquiry and conversation, creating spaces for them to resonate and intertwine into new and unexpected confluences.

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