Rituals of Loss:
Finding Kinship with the Land and the Other Than Human
Ochre • Oil • Sap • Water • Blood • Cloth • Ice
Ökra • Olía • Safi • Vatn • Blóð • Dúkur • Ís

By
Caitlin ffrench
BFA, University of British Columbia Okanagan, 2007

A THESIS SUPPORT PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN

© Caitlin ffrench, 2024

Abstract

Caitlin ffrench’s research/praxis thesis maps the parallels between the anthropogenic
world and the ongoing impacts of multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and endometriosis on
her body. Her ritual practice explores natural materials and processes, including natural plant
dyes and ochre pigments, along with textiles, ceramics and documentary photography of
important sites affected by climate change. Conceptually centered around the term solastalgia—
grief felt for the dying world— ffrench invites her audience to reflect on their own experience of
grief and its relationship to the devastation of climate change. Employing methodologies of
phenomenology, observation and walking the land, along with technologies of magic,
dreamwork, intuition, bibliomancy (the use of books in divination) and geomancy (earth
divination) to lead her investigative processes, she creates installations on the land and in the
gallery that provoke and encourage a heightened awareness of the destruction of the natural
world.

Figure 1: McDougall Creek Fire (August 17, 2023). 2023.

Acknowledgements
This research has taken place on the unceded and ancestral territories of the
xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples
where I live, the tm̓xʷúlaʔxʷ Syilx (Okanagan) peoples while on field research trips, and in
Iceland. As an uninvited guest to these lands, I will continually commit to reconciliation, to aid
in land repatriation, and work towards decolonization. I acknowledge my privilege in both living
on and working with the land, and I must work to undo the harms that colonialism and white
supremacy have done and still do to Indigenous peoples and the land. Care must be taken when
working with land-based materials as they are our kin.

Thank you to my partner Arlin for your unwavering support and love.
Thank you to my mother and my sister Alissa for encouraging me to take on this degree.
Thank you to Mimi Gellman for supervising me through this journey.
Thank you to Jen Hiebert for your guidance, and for bringing me back to my love of creating
woven cloth. My work would not have been possible without you.
Thank you to Sara Osenton for reading and re-reading my words, and for explaining exactly why
I cannot cite a dream.
Thank you to all the folks at the library for your help finding the books and articles I’ve been
searching for, and for your words of encouragement as I’ve sat and written.
Thank you to all the technicians, cleaning staff, and other folks that make the school a magical
place to work in.
Thank you to the instructors that I had the honour to learn from over the past two years.
Thank you to my cohort for being made of magic.
Thank you to Jaqueline and Heidi for sitting on my panel.
Thank you to the land for holding me when I thought I would break.
Thank you to the body that I live in. I love you dearly for all that you are.

Table of Contents
Abstract

2

Acknowledgements

4

Table of Contents

5

List of Figures

6

Introduction (situating practice and body)

10

Material Research Methodology (ochre as collaborator)

21

Previous Thesis Research (learning and exploration)

25

Thesis Installations (storytelling land/storytelling body)

32

Conclusion (looking forward)

40

Works Cited

42

Bibliography

43

Reflection

44

List of Figures
McDougall Creek Fire (Figure 1), August 17, 2023. Shot by Caitlin ffrench from the base of
Knox Mountain. The wind was blowing between 50km/h and 60km/h, and moments before this
photo was shot the fire jumped the lake. The lake is 2km wide at the place the fire jumped.

Coming Home (Figure 2), Driving into the Okanagan Valley in the summer—fire season— when
the sun is deep red, you can’t see across the valley, and the air smells of burnt pine and hot
sagebrush.

Meeting Svínafellsjökull (Figure 3), This photo was taken the first time I met Svínafellsjökull
Glacier during my first trip to Iceland. This trip was taken as a pause in my regular life before
returning home to have a hysterectomy caused by endometriosis.

Smoke Pillar (Figure 4), The pillar of smoke rising over the mountain in West Kelowna. It was
surreal to witness people carrying on with a summer afternoon when it was apparent that the fire
was starting to burn out of control.

Burning Red Alder and Other Magic (Figure 5), I had gathered red alder trees from the Squamish
Valley to work collaborate with in an installation, and this image is from when I brought them
back and burned them in ritual.

Gathering water from X̱á7elcha (Lynn Canyon) (Figure 6), I gathered water to use in painting
and ritual work. I often gather water from sites that have significant meaning or connection. I
consider this a collaboration with the water and land.

Ochre in X̱á7elcha (Lynn Canyon) (Figure 7), Rubbing small stones onto a larger and harder
granite stone to see if the small stones would be good for working into finer pigment. Although
all these small stones would have been able to be worked into usable pigment, I left them all at
the river. I asked their permission to work with them, and I felt they wanted to stay with the
river.

Ochre Sanctuary (Figure 8), Heidi Gustafson’s Ochre Sanctuary. This space is filled with ochres
from around the world that were gathered by or gifted to Heidi. There is great magic in this
work.

Reunited with Svínafellsjökull (Figure 9), Taken on my most recent trip to Iceland in 2022.
Having not visited the site in over three years, the loss of ice was startlingly apparent. When I
walked over the hill and laid eyes on my dear glacial friend, I sat down and cried uncontrollably
for over twenty minutes. I could feel the loss of this beautiful being.

Svínafellsjökull Retreat (Glacial Bones) (Figure 10), This weaving was the first time I melted
ochre encased in ice onto my textile work, and it is a significant point in my thesis research.

Library of Water, (2007) (Figure 11), Roni Horn. Taken on a day of almost unending daylight in
June 2022. My partner Arlin and I were the only people in the space and got to spend time
communing with the spirits of the glaciers and glacial tongues.
Extended Death Rituals (1) (Figure 12), An exploration into hanging and display methods for my
thesis exhibition. This piece includes seventy-three important objects/beings that I have made
connections with. These include a stone from the 2021 eruption at Fagradalsfjall in Iceland, a
glass vial of tears that I collected after I heard of the death of my friend’s mother, and plants that
I have used in ritual.

They Are Lost as Soon as They Are Made (Figure 13), an image shot by Karen Zalamea. Karen
froze water that she gathered from the site the photo was shot, froze it in a mold to make a
camera lens, shot the photo, and let the lens melt.

Weaving on TC2 Jacquard Loom (Figure 14), Caitlin ffrench working on the jacquard loom at
Emily Carr University.

Rituals of Loss (Figure 15), The installation Rituals of Loss. There are sixty-eight other than
human entities in this work. There is wool, walk, silk, and bones among these beings. Some will
be kept, some will be returned to where they were gathered, and others burnt in ritual.

Finding Kinship (Figure 16), The installation Finding Kinship. The sticks used to build this
structure were gathered from places I have left my heart- the tree I climbed as a child, the site of
a forest fire that had burned in 2015, and the fallen arbutus branches from a grove of trees on the
Sea-to-Sky highway.

Scent Memory (Figure 17), Spending time smelling the poplar buds soaked in olive oil in Rituals
of Loss. The smell of this oil brings me to both Iceland and the Squamish Valley. Both are places
where I’ve left parts of my heart.

Returning (Figure 18), In January 2024 I returned to the site where I shot the McDougall Creek
Fire. I drove up into the hills where the fire burnt, and I was stunned at the destruction the fire
caused.

I didn’t understand you when I lost my sight

Bodily decay pushed my work into parallels with the seen and unseen
Kinship with the environment as the environment moves into a new epoch
The mournful observation of the land and self

Brain on fire/Forest on fire
Numbness of Limbs/Melting ice
Swelling joints/Rising ocean

I am an artist that works with gathered ochres and plants. As a settler, I work with local
natural materials with a set of ethics I have established for myself. When gathering ochres, I ask
permission out loud to the land, I gather very small amounts, and I gather from human-disturbed
sites. When gathering plants, I take care to gather only what I will use, I ask permission of the
plants, and I take care to leave enough for the pollinators and other than human beings that live
nearby. I work in collaboration with the land and with an attunement to the magic that exists in
the world.
I grew up in the Okanagan valley on the traditional and unceded territories of the Syilx
people (Oyama, Canada). My earliest memories are of building nests and forts out of sticks and
fresh cut grass. My parents were orchardists, the thinned branches from the apple trees and grass
from between the rows of trees were the first materials I used to make artwork. I have always
remembered having a deep understanding and connection to the land. While in high school I
learned about artist Andy Goldsworthy and his sculptural practice, and I felt an instant kinship
with his ways of working. In his book Time Goldsworthy writes “My commitment to what are
described as ‘natural materials’ is often misunderstood as a stance against the ‘man-made’. I

need the nourishment and clarity that working the land with my hands gives me…”
(Goldsworthy) Reading this text when it was first published helped me understand that my work
as a land-based artist could exist within the canon of fine art.

Figure 2: Coming Home. 2023.

The central narrative of this thesis work revolves around the relationship I have with the
environment, and the rituals that I enact in collaboration with the land and its plants and
waterways. Specifically, my work investigates the entanglements between the anthropogenic
changes brought about by the climate crisis that we are collectively grappling with, and the parts
of my body I have been losing to disease. In Gathering Colour I write to the challenging nature
of describing intuition and ritual. ‘How I connect to the land, how I make art, and the rituals that

I’ve adopted are intuitive; articulating them is difficult. I have held these beliefs and ways of
working for as long as I can remember.’ (ffrench) Trusting my intuition to lead me towards new
methodologies and rituals in my practice allows me to connect with my unconscious mind as
well as outside energetic forces. This includes spirits of the land, spirits of the other than human,
and spirits of those who have come before me. My intuition comes in quickly with new ideas,
popping into my mind as though they are being spoken to me by someone outside of my body.
These intuitive thoughts are more abundant when I preform rituals more often in my daily life.
The rituals I work include daily invocations, offerings to the land and my body, and
ceremonies to mark important dates. I live with endometriosis, multiple sclerosis, and
rheumatoid arthritis, and I think of them as entities that I share my body with. These entities need
to be cared for and nurtured in the same manner as I care for myself. In this nurturing, I have
found I can make peace with these diseases, and to include them in my rituals. At the time of this
writing, I inject myself with a medication for my rheumatoid arthritis on Fridays and have a
ritual I perform with each injection. Turning this medical intervention into a ritual has helped
form a bond between myself and my disease. When I use the term ritual, it describes the careful
actions and ceremonies preformed as parts of my spiritual practice and art making. Ritual is a
way of living with magic. “[A]rtists have long been interested in rituals and routines; they will
no doubt continue to invent and embellish them in the future, opening up new possibilities for
understanding and making our lives more meaningful.” (Harvard)
I am a pagan witch, and I carry my beliefs through all aspects of my life. I perform rituals
each day, and throughout the eight pagan sabbats to mark time, and to celebrate each season as it
passes. I work earth-based magic both outside of and within my art practice. I believe that stones,
plants, water, and all other natural beings have agency and spirit, and must be treated with

reverence. I use dreamwork to lead investigations, and I turn to what I am seeing in nightly
dreams to inspire what I make in waking life. When I wake up from dreams, I document
experiences or lessons that came to me while I was asleep. I believe that there are both intuitive
thoughts and magic that come to me while I am sleeping.

Figure 3: Meeting Svínafellsjökull. 2014.

For the past ten years, I have been studying the shrinking of Svínafellsjökull Glacier in
the south of Iceland, not realizing that I would be seeing a notable recession of ice upon each
visit to the foot of the ever-shrinking glacier. Svínafellsjökull is a glacial tongue of Vatnajökull
in Southeast Iceland, and the recession of this glacier has notably sped up since 1995. (Lifandi)

Reading about the ways climate change affects glaciers does not convey the magnitude of loss
that is happening over such a short time and bearing witness to the retreat of Svínafellsjökull has
driven my artistic explorations.
More recently in locations closer to my home (Vancouver, Canada) I have been
researching sites that have experienced catastrophic flooding, fires, and droughts due to climate
change. In the summer of 2023, while on a field research trip documenting anthropogenic sites in
Southern Alberta and British Columbia, I happened to be in Kelowna, BC the night the
McDougall Creek Fire peaked. I watched the smoke cloud rise above the mountain in West
Kelowna as the fire crest the top ridge, and the entire mountain become engulfed in flames as the
night fell. Homes ignited in flames while I stood with hundreds of people on the opposite side of
the lake. We all were bearing witness to the loss of homes for both human and more-than-human
beings and this has caused many of us to experience solastalgia.

Figure 4: Smoke Pillar. 2023.

Solistalgia was first coined by environmental philosopher, Glenn Albrecht, who states,
“solastalgia is the pain or sickness caused by the loss or lack of solace and the sense of isolation
connected to the present state of one’s home and territory.” (Albrecht) Albrecht’s description of
the pain or sickness of missing a connection with the land is deeply familiar to me. Upon
learning the term solastalgia I was overcome with the realization that I am not alone in the grief
that I feel for the land. The grief that I experience as I become increasingly disabled by multiple
sclerosis reflects the grief that I feel for the environmental disasters that are resulting from the
changing climate. Multiple sclerosis is a disease that degrades the myelin sheaths in one’s brain
or spine and leads to long term disability. Living with this condition is forcing me to confront the
degeneration of my body. The basic fear of living with multiple sclerosis is not knowing what

abilities of mine will be taken away by the disease. This dilemma parallels the way climate
change is altering the land in ways that we cannot predict. My research took a reflective turn as I
drew connections between my body and the environment. My kinship with Albrecht’s concept of
solastalgia has only strengthened as I have read how other artists and theorists have grappled
with its meaning. The connections of environmental grief I share with so many others are
building. Many theorists and scientists writing about the climate emergency are not hopeful for
our future, but American writer Rebecca Solnit writes in her book Not Too Late, ‘It is late. We
are deep in an emergency. But it is not too late, because the emergency is not over. The outcome
is not decided. We are deciding it now. The longer we wait to act, the more limited options, but
scientists tell us there are good options and great urgency to embrace them while we can.”
(Solnit) Reading Solnit’s text has alleviated much of the stress that comes with acknowledging
the climate crisis, but it has enforced the idea that we must act quickly to save the planet.
In addressing these notions over the course of my MFA, I selected the materials,
methodologies and processes that best express the exponentially increasing changes that are
profoundly altering my body and the world. This thesis project and explorations are multifaceted
and include painting, sculptural installation, performance, sound, print making, photography, and
writing as modes of creation. My praxis lives the values I carry and reflects an ethos of care and
sustainability. Rather than driving to places to wildcraft ochres or plants, I walk or cycle when
possible, and source fibres for dyeing from as ethical and as local a source as I can. I deeply
consider the land-based materials that I work with believing that these materials have their own
spirit and agency and should be treated with reverence. I have gathered or grown many of these
materials, demonstrating the intent I hold to not create more “waste”. While I understand that
there are ways in which my practice is still harmful to the land, I work to lessen these impacts. I

don’t want the artwork I make as a part of the research I am conducting to take up unnecessary
space, and this ethos leads me to compost, burn, or otherwise return the artwork to the earth in
some way once it has lived its life in the world.
In Potawatomi professor Robin Wall Kimmerer’s seminal text, Braiding Sweetgrass, she writes
about kindship and connection with the land. Kimmerer outlines how climate change,
industrialization, and loss of connection with the natural world are leading to lasting
consequences that could lead to the end of humankind. In her writing and lectures, Kimmerer
explains how Indigenous ecological knowledge can be linked with Western scientific
methodologies to establish ways and protocols to slow the climate crisis and reconnect humans
with the natural world. (Kimmerer) I continue to re-visit this book to investigate my connection
with the land, and to be reminded that I must continue to nurture my relationship with the natural
world.

Figure 5: Burning Red Alder and Other Magic. 2023.

“What we contemplate here is more than ecological restoration; it is the restoration of
relationship between plants and people. Scientists have made a dent in understanding
how to put ecosystems back together, but our experiments focus on soil pH and
hydrology—matter, to the exclusion of spirit. We might look to the Thanksgiving
Address for guidance on weaving the two. We are dreaming of a time when the land
might give thanks for the people.” (Kimmerer)

As an artist working with the land, I have been influenced by the land artists of the 1960’s and
1970’s—including Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson— but I choose not to align my work with
theirs. Whereas these artists would make large earth works that carve, dig into, and alter the land,
I am working to make as little impact on the land as I can. When I gather from or work with the
land, I exercise an ethos of care. I want to leave as little trace as possible. I hope that the spirits
of the land understand that I am doing my best to care for them.

Figure 6: Gathering water in X̱á7elcha (Lynn Canyon). 2023.

Melted ochre as pain sigil/Woven pain sigils

Sigils laid over top of images
Constellations representing the major pain or problem areas in the body

Areas of rot and decay
Areas of disease
Areas of organs lost

My creative practice is largely installation-based, and I consider these installations as
offerings to the land, to the materials that I work with, and to my ailing body. Using geomancy
when gathering mineral pigments, I imbue magic into every aspect of the making process. When
using water, plants, or other natural materials I take care to know these materials are living
beings with their own spirits to be tended to. I have been collecting an ochre-archive as records
of where I have been, and how I have witnessed the changing planet. I keep detailed records of
where the pigments were found, the dates that they were gathered or gifted to me, and any other
details about them. For example, when I collect carbonized wood from forests that have been
changed from wildfires, I document when the fire burned through the area as well as the date and
exact location of gathering. In taking care with how I work with these materials I am
collaborating with them, rather than exploiting them as an extracted resource. I work with these
mineral and carbonized pigments to make into paints, inks, and ceramic underglazes that are
used in my research.
Gathering and collaborating with minerals gathered from specific sites is a form of
geomancy — divination using earth (Cummins) — and this geomancy connects rituals, magic,

and my art practice. Ochre connects one directly to the land, and by using them I am
intentionally engaging a form of geomancy. I believe that minerals hold energy and magic, and I
believe that working with this energy and magic should be done with care.

Figure 7: Ochre in X̱á7elcha (Lynn Canyon). 2023.

I see the land as my collaborator, and I believe ochre is a sibling. Mineral pigments are
non-renewable, and I take care not to gather much if any at all. I make altars or reliquaries to
honor pigments in my studio and as artworks. These pieces are offerings to the spirits of the
places where the ochres are from. I do not take working with ochres lightly, and when I teach
others how to gather and process mineral pigments, I make sure that ethical harvest is at the

forefront of my teaching alongside the health and safety needed to work with fine particulates.
This methodology is also inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s writing in Braiding Sweetgrass
where she teaches about the honourable harvest. Kimmerer writes about asking permission of the
land and taking care to treat the land and other than human beings as kin. (Kimmerer)
I have made connections with ochre-workers around the world, and I am inspired by Heidi
Gustafson’s practice. Gustafson’s work explores the ways that land holds spirit, how humans and
other beings engage with ochres— mineral pigments containing iron—in their lives, and the
pedagogy of ethically collaborating with land-based materials. Gustafson works with mineral
pigments, specifically ochres to create art and as a part of her archive Ochre Sanctuary.

Figure 8: Gustafson, Heidi. Ochre Sanctuary.

Gustafson's book published in 2023, Book of Earth describes the history, uses,
processing, and magic that come from working with ochre. Gustafson’s ochre research is broad
but includes communications with ochre through spiritual and magical means, methods of
decolonization, land repatriation of mineral pigments and ochre, and forms of ritualistic
geomancy among other things. Gustafson’s work is often centered on the land and minerals
collected in her local environment in the North Cascade mountains in Washington, but she also
gathers while travelling to other lands. My work is akin to Gustafson’s in both our proximity to
one another where we gather as we live close to one another, as well as our ethics around
working with the land. Gustafson and I have aligned ethics around gathering and processing
ochres, and we both live on unceded territories and are settlers on the land where we are
working. To work in a good way with mineral pigments we must take care to not gather from
areas sacred to Indigenous peoples and to take no more than a small handful of pigments when
gathering. We both make ritualistic objects, employ geomancy when working with ochres, and
hold high ethics of gathering within our pedagogical practices.

Ritual to reach the Otherworld
Ceremony as repeated connection to the Old Ones

Gestures to remember the past/Beings laid out to trace memory
Concentration of actions/Energy bound in more-than-human beings
Wool, wax, silk, and bones

Figure 9: Reunited with Svínafellsjökull. 2022.

In 2020, I received my diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, and in 2022, I attended the SIM
residency in Reykjavik, Iceland where I explored how to create while living in a disabled body. I
felt drawn to research the changes my body was experiencing, and how I could collaborate with
the Svínafellsjökull glacier. I spent a day photographing the glacier and gathering ochre from the
site, and I realized the slow degradation that I am experiencing in my body is comparative to the

melting of Svínafellsjökull. In 2023, I began a series of jacquard weavings using the photographs
I took while on residency as a ritual for grief.

Figure 10: Svínafellsjökull Retreat (Glacial Bones). 2023.

During the time I was first weaving on the jacquard loom for my thesis research, I dreamt
of seeing a constellation of ten ochre marks on the front of the weaving and realized in the dream
that they mapped a constellation of sites on my body that had been altered or lost to disease. The

red ochre used for the dots was collected at the base of the glacial lake of Svínafellsjökull on the
same day that I captured the photo for the weaving. When Svínafellsjökull Retreat (Glacial
Bones1), was created, my brain, spine, shoulders, hands, uterus, an ovary, and my knees were
represented by the ochre marks of the constellation. As disease has taken over more places in my
body, I have added new dots to this constellation pattern. In October 2023, I had a relapse of my
multiple sclerosis, and there are now thirteen dots in the constellation.
Svínafellsjökull Retreat (Glacial Bones) is a woven cotton photo-based weaving with red
ochre marks layered on the front and is flanked on both sides by bundles of cottonwood. I used
these branches because Cottonwood trees grow in both Iceland and Vancouver, and it allowed
me to express a connection between the time that I spent in both places. The buds of the branches
contain strong smelling sap, and when I smell cottonwood buds it activates scent-memory.
The labor needed to weave on the jacquard loom tracks the parallels between the receding
glacier and the receding abilities of my body. When working with the Jacquard loom the
weaving takes time and physical energy to produce. Each warp thread requires five body
movements to set it into place. First the foot pad needs to be stepped on to open the weaving
shed (lifting and lowering the warp threads), next the shuttle that contains a bobbin of weft
threads is thrown through the open shed of strings, the shuttle is set down on the side of the
loom, the reed is pulled towards the artist (beating the thread into place), the shuttle is picked
back up, and these five steps are repeated again. While weaving this cloth I experienced many
symptoms of my disease (multiple sclerosis) and I believe that I have woven the experience of
pain, loss, and resilience into this cloth. The actions taken to weave the cloth changes my state of

1

Glacial Bones is a term I first heard from ochre-worker and researcher Heidi Gustafson in her pigment offering for
the Wild Pigment Project in May 2021. Wild Pigment Project is a monthly pigment offering from participating
artists and Tilke Elkins to raise awareness and funds for land-based artists and research.

being, each step grows the work as my body and the ice disappear. By the end of a weaving
session, and for the rest of that day I experience tremors in my body, loss of motor function in
my left leg, and my voice stutters. I deliberately pushed myself to this point as an offering of my
body to the weaving. I did not experience lasting harm in this process, and by the next day my
body returned to its normal state.

Figure 11: Horn, Roni. Library of Water (Vatnasafn). 2007.

Svínafellsjökull Retreat (Glacial Bones) was inspired by Roni Horn’s installation
Library of Water (Vatnasafn) (2007). I visited this work in June 2022, while on residency in
Iceland. This work is made up of 24 plexiglass columns, each filled with the ice of a glacier or
glacial tongue from the Icelandic landbase. The building for Horn’s installation overlooks the
ocean, looking north to the West Fjords and the first thing that struck me about the installation
was the awe of the daylight passing through ancient, melted ice. Horn managed to capture a
sense of reverence in the work that is haunting. One of the glaciers that Horn gathered water
from for her installation has since fully melted. The glacier has died. The disappearance of this
glacier makes the water in the glass columns of Horn’s work so much more precious and shows
the viewer the reality that we are facing in a world being altered by climate change. Witnessing
this artwork in person is not easily described. Communing with glacial spirits strengthened my
kinship with the Icelandic landbase. The day after visiting The Library of Water (Vatnasafn) I
went to the Svínafellsjökull glacier, and the link between my work and Horn’s was established. I
consider Svínafellsjökull Retreat (Glacial Bones) as a love letter to a disappearing friend.

Figure 12: Extended Death Rituals (I). 2023.

Extended Death Rituals (I) is an installation of seventy-three objects hung in a circle on
the gallery wall. This work was inspired by a dream where I hung my father’s bones on a wall in
a circle to bring him back to life. When I woke up and wrote down the dream, I knew I would
want to use various natural entities instead of bones, but the shape would be the same as in my
dream. Each being in the installation was chosen for its emotional significance or to signify
where it was gathered. Each object is hung with silk thread, as I contend that silk acts as a
protective fibre from negative energy. I have been told by other pagans and witches that silk is a
protective fibre. In my years of experience working with silk I have learned to understand its
protective qualities. The works are pinned to the wall using entomological pins as a signifier of
death or loss on display. The objects include stones gathered from sites affected by climate
change, burnt wood, plants, photographs, and woven cloth. The objects were hung in ritual
where I was guided by my intuition on where to place each object on the wall. The wall was
washed with water from Kalamalka Lake at the start of the ritual to open a portal to the
otherworld. Kalamalka Lake is where I scattered my father’s ashes nineteen years ago, and I use
water from this lake during grief rituals. The center of the circle is positioned in the middle of
my chest where my heart is. The circle is five feet (1.5m) wide so that I can extend my arms and
hold all the objects within the space of my body as an act of care. The work is accompanied by a
leaflet that has the title and a numbered photograph of the work on one side, and the list of the
seventy-three objects and their descriptions on the other side. The viewer is invited to investigate
each object, and to learn why they were chosen for this installation.
This work is the first in a series that explores memory, personhood of natural materials,
and intuitive sharing. Future reincarnations of this series will explore other shapes and hanging
methods while using similar objects and rituals to make the work.

My haunted body is an altar

Fingers in ochre to connect with the land. Smelling smoke and feeling kinship with the
disappearing spirits. Homesick for a memory of light

Smoke/Ritual
Ice/Loss
Land/Self

My work for the thesis exhibition— Rituals of Loss (Finding Kinship with the Land and
the Other Than Human)— is comprised of two installations. One is an indoor interdisciplinary
installation (Rituals of Loss) that includes ritual, jacquard weaving, ceramics, photography, plant
magic, ochres, and other natural materials. The second installation (Finding Kinship) is a
sculpture built from gathered sticks and trees installed outside of the building.
For the indoor installation the walls were first dressed2 with water in a ritual and then rubbed
with ochre gathered from both the Okanagan Valley and from the base of the Svínafellsjökull
glacier in the corner of the installation. This large ochre mark signifies for me a portal to the
otherworld. This portal is a space where spirits and entities can come and visit and commune
with the living. At the edge of either wall, I have hung two jacquard weavings. The woven
photograph on the left is of the Svínafellsjökull glacier that was taken in 2022, and the woven
photograph on the right was taken of the site of the McDougall Creek Fire taken in January 2024.
Carefully placed, on the front of each weaving is a constellation of 13 ochre marks. The ochre
constellations were adhered to the front of the weavings by mixing ochre with cherry tree sap
into a paste, putting the paste into a silicone mold with water, freezing the mixture, and melting

2

The term dressed is used to describe washing or coating an object with magical intentions.

the ochre ice onto the front of the work. I use cherry tree sap gathered from trees around my
home in place of the traditional watercolour paint medium gum arabic. These two mediums both
have the same qualities as paint mediums.
The act of melting ochre and ice onto artworks is a ritual I perform as offerings to the
places I have photographed for my research. I use this ochre in place of blood to represent the
body of a dying glacier, the site of a catastrophic wildfire, and as a representation of my
degenerating body. My work with melting ice as a means of speaking to the melting of glaciers
in Iceland was inspired by Vancouver artist Karen Zalamea’s book and work They are Lost as
Soon as they Are Made. During an artist residency in Iceland, Zalamea gathered water from
multiple sites across the country, froze the water in a concave mold to form an ice camera lens,
and shot photographs through these ice lenses. The lenses would melt as soon as the photo was
taken.

Figure 13: Zalamea, Karen. From They Are Lost as Soon as They Are Made. 2020.

I have visited Svínafellsjökull glacier over ten years during five trips I made to Iceland,
and with each visit there is significantly more ice melted from the glacier. When I processed the
ochre that was released by the glacier, I was able to find solace in speaking to the minerals.

Figure 14: Weaving on TC2 Jacquard Loom. 2024.

When I gathered these minerals, I asked permission to collaborate with them, forming a
kinship as permission was granted. I spoke aloud to the stones, and I waited to have an answer
given. If I had felt the stones or minerals did not wish to be worked with, I would not have
gathered them. This practice requires me to be in tune with the land, and to trust my intuition. I
gathered a few small red stones that I ground with a mortar and pestle, washed, and then sieved

before drying to store until use. The ochre bones of a dying glacier become the pigment for a
series of work about loss.

Figure 15: Photo of Rituals of Loss. 2024.

Situated underneath each weaving is a cherrywood shelf and on each shelf is a ceramic
bowl. The shelves are hung at the height on my body where my uterus would have been had I not
lost it to endometriosis in 2014. Getting a hysterectomy at age thirty was a significant loss, but
the suffering I was experiencing from endometriosis was too great to hold onto this organ. The
ceramic bowl underneath the Svínafellsjökull weaving is filled with olive oil and black
cottonwood buds that I gathered and put in olive oil on Imbolc. Imbolc is one of the eight pagan
holidays, it falls on February 1st each year, and it is the midpoint between the winter solstice and
spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. Underneath the weaving of the McDougall Creek
Fire is a bowl of honey. The honey is from hives that are in the north-east area of British
Columbia which absorbed smoke for four months during the devastating forest fires in the
summer of 2023. I chose the honey and oil for this installation for their olfactory properties.
Scent can be a powerful trigger of memories and emotions and be used to lead the viewer into a
specific atmosphere. Sharing scent memories with the viewer situates them within the
installation and gives them a sensorial experience. As scholar and professor Viveka Kjellmer
wrote, “If we close our eyes and no longer rely on vision, a different set of rules applies. To
experience the artwork, we would have to inhale and incorporate it in our bodies. A physical
interplay occurs when the artwork becomes a part of us.” (Kjellmer) Inhaling the scent of the
honey and oil connect the viewer physically to the installation space as the scent molecules enter
their body through their nose.
Along the floor of the installation and piled up in the corner of the walls is soil and ash
gathered from the site of the Elaho Valley fire. I am using this soil and ash because it is from
land that was significantly changed by fire. The fire burned so hot that the land it burned has not
been able to regenerate easily, and nine years later is still struggling to support new plant life. I

will return the soil and ash back to where I’ve gathered them, and I will perform a ritual of
thanks for its collaboration in my installation.
Hanging in the center of Rituals of Loss are sixty-eight objects hung in a constellation.
These objects include photographs, stones, plants, and other precious objects. Around the corner
from the installation is another cherrywood shelf holding papers with a numbered photograph
map on one side, and on the other side is each number describing the items in the installation.
Some of these descriptions are concise, while others are poetic.

Figure 16: Finding Kinship installation. 2024.

Finding Kinship is an eight-foot-tall structure built from sticks and fallen trees with a
doorway that faces north. The door of this sculpture faces north with the intention of facing the
old gods and the dead. In my beliefs the northern direction is where these entities reside. The
sticks and trees used for this installation have been gathered over the past two years from various
sites that I consider important to my research. Among these are birch branches cut from a tree in
front of the home I grew up in, windfallen arbutus branches, and English walnut tree branches
from the tree I climbed as a child. This structure is built in a circular architectural feature and
installed in the circle at the east end of the Emily Carr University campus plaza. This circle is
normally filled with soil and planted with grass that is often patchy and dry throughout the
summer and autumn. Once this installation is deinstalled I will be reseeding the ground with
grass as an act of thanks and remediation to the land.
Finding Kinship is a performance-based installation, and I will be visiting the site each
morning for the duration of the installation to spend time with the wooden sculpture to bring
offerings of ochre and ice to the site, and to sit with the work to hear what the sticks and trees
wish to say about this part of their life journey. This will be a daily ritual for the duration of the
exhibition.

Figure 17: Scent Memory. Taken in the installation Rituals of Loss. 2024.

There is hope in watching the light disappear
The light will always return
Moments of Solistalgic hopelessness are met with the joy
Working with the land as kin
Hand caress stones/We are washed by rain
Grief/Joy
Bearing witness

Bearing witness to climate disasters and making artwork in response to it cannot solve
climate change, but this research brings awareness to the reality we are all facing. In conveying
the challenges I face with my diseased body into the conversation I give space to the viewer to
find their own kinship with the world in crisis. I offer solace and space to connect with the other
than human beings that coexist in our world.
These woven jacquard works have become a series about loss and the affects grief holds
for both the artist and the viewer. Experiencing a natural disaster of the magnitude that the
McDougall Creek Fire holds has had a lasting impact on my art practice and writing. Witnessing
the retreat of the Svínafellsjökull glacier has been seemingly slow, taking years to witness the
retreat, and the McDougall Creek Fire happened in what felt like an instant. This series explores
pivotal moments of witnessing Anthropogenic disasters.

I will continue to work with the land as collaborator as my body exists with disease.
Our collective grief can be a catalyst to help slow our ascent into the anthropocene.

Figure 18: Returning. 2024.

Works Cited
— Lifandi Kennslustofa í Loftslagsbreytingum/ A Natural Laboratory to Study Climate Change.
Vatnajökulsþjóðgarður, 2017.

Albrecht, Glenn. Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change. Australasian
Psychiatry, February 2007.

Cummins, Alexander. Geomancy for Dirt Sorcery.
https://alexander-cummins.squarespace.com/talks/dirtgeomancy. 2022.

ffrench, Caitlin. Gathering Colour: Foraging Magic & Making Art from the World Around You.
Nine Ten Publications, 2024.

Goldsworthy, Andy. Time. Harry N. Abrams, 2000.

Harvard. Rituals and Routines. Harvard Art Museums, November 19, 2020.
https://harvardartmuseums.org/article/rituals-and-routines

Kjellmer, Viveka. Scented Scenographics and Olfactory Art: Making Sense of Scent in the
Museum. Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History, 90:2, 2021.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed Editions, 2013.

Lutunatabua, Thelma Young and Solnit, Rebecca. Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story
from Despair to Possibility. Haymarket Books, 2023.

Zalamea, Karen. They are lost as soon as they are made. Karen Zalamea, 2020.

Bibliography

Bogard, Paul. Solistalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World. University of
Virginia Press, 2023.

Ellis, Erle C. Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Gustafsson, Heidi. Book of Earth. Abrams, 2023.

Horn, Roni. Island Zombie: Iceland Writings. Princeton University Press, 2023.

Horn, Roni. Library of Water (Vatnasafn). 2007. Glacial water, plexiglass tubes, metal text inlaid
into the floor. Stykkishólmur, Iceland. Roni Horn’s library of water.

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archeology, Art, and Architecture. Routledge, 2013.

Muñoz, Bárbara Rodríguez. Health. Whitechapel Gallery, 2020.

Myles, Eileen. The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art. Semiotext(e), 2009.

Pencil, Nigel. Magic in the Landscape: Earth Mysteries and Geomancy. Destiny Books, 2020.

rawlings, angela. “Tears: Grief Ritual.” Against Death: 35 Essays on the Living, edited by Elee
Kraljii Gardiner. Anvil Press Publishers Inc., 2019.

Yusoff, Kathryn. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or one. University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

Upon presenting Rituals of Loss: Finding Kinship with the Land and the Other Than Human in
both the gallery installation, the thesis support document, and in defense I was struck by the reactions of
the readers/viewers. My research is deeply personal, but I had hoped that I could convey a space in which
the viewer could see themselves (and their personal struggles) in relation to the land experiencing climate
change. The feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive, and the research I have embarked on
during my time at Emily Carr University has opened new areas of research that I will be continuing for
the coming years.
This summer I will be attending the Ós Textile Residency in Blonduos, Iceland to continue my
weaving research and collaboration with the Svínafellsjökull glacier. This residency will allow me the
time and space to explore avenues of working with plant and mineral pigments in woven works.
In the autumn/winter of 2023/24 I explored methods of working with photographic methods of
weaving that can be done without a digital loom, but I had to pause this work while finishing my thesis
support document and thesis installation. I will be picking up this research in the autumn of 2024 as a
visiting researcher/lecturer at the Alberta University of the Arts for the 2024/25 school year.
The connections I have made between the land and my body will continue to drive my work, and
I look forward to explore the many avenues of research that have come up in my time at Emily Carr
University.