ArtsIceland, Isafjordur, Iceland

In August 2022, the Icelandic arts organization ArtsIceland invited me to undertake an artist residency in Isafjordur, Iceland. From February to March 2023, I lived in Isafjordur where I began developing a new body of photographic work in the country's Westfjords' region that examined coastal infrastructure, as well as the country's unique relationship to water and swimming. During the residency, I gave an artist talk at the University Centre of the Westfjords in Isafjordur, and my stay culminated in a public reception and exhibition of my studio research at ArtsIceland. The residency connected me with the University Centre's administrative leadership, particularly its director, Peter Weiss, and together we have been developing the framework for an Icelandic fieldwork studio course for Grenfell Visual Arts students in Isafjordur.

Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, USA

In December 2022, I was awarded a Getty Library Research Grant from the Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles, California. The grant supported a residency in the GRI's Special Collections in July 2023 to research the Allan Sekula Collection; this collection was still being processed and is the most comprehensive collection of Sekula's photographic and scholarly work in the world. I am the first artist to have gained access to these collections at the Getty, which have been a huge source of inspiration for my work in Newfoundland, particularly the public mural in Trout River. The Sekula collections are extremely comprehensive and included all his teaching files from Ohio State University and Cal Arts, his photographic prints, slides and negatives, as well as all his personal journals; it was window into his life's research around photographic systems and his interest in oceans as the thoroughfare for globalization, tourism, and trade. Sekula passed away in 2013, and the GRI introduced me to his wife, the brilliant Sally Stein, Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of California, Irvine; conversations with Sally provided me with an even greater understanding of Sekula's concepts and the research behind his projects.

Beast Bornholm, DK

The artwork and research developed in Iceland and Los Angeles led to an invitation from the Danish arts organization, Beast, to undertake an artist residency in May 2024. It also supported my successful grant application for professional artist funding from ArtsNL in Fall 2023. Beast, which is located on the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea and prioritizes photo-based artists, invited me to continue developing my work around ocean and coastal ecologies, as well as the island's unique environmental agenda. By 2030, Bornholm will be the first waste-free zone in Europe, through the implementation of an entirely circular economy. It is an agriculturally focused place, with many industrial farms as well as eco-farms, and unique bio-diversity programs; my residency was spent photographing the island's unique harbour swimming infrastructure, its agricultural landscapes, as well as unique bio-diversity experiments with European bison taking place within the island's industrial forests.