The Other Side of the Fence

I recently completed my MFA (just waiting to defend my thesis) and I thought I would share the final pieces of my project.

The main focus of this MFA project is to explore the adaptive relationship between wild roses and a metal, gridded fence found on the edge of a golf course beside a small forest near my home in Northern Alberta, Canada. My theory is that this interactive relationship is a metaphor for the connection between humans and the natural environment. I am principally interested in how the human-built fence conforms, over time, to the natural shapes of the wild rose and is eventually overtaken and deteriorates. Despite the invasive human interaction with the natural environment in the act of fence-building, the wild rose grows back from its root system, adapts to its new surroundings and continues to flourish.

While I feel passionately about the seriousness of the negative impact humans can have upon the environment, I am choosing to look at the other side of the fence... literally. There are many plants that become endangered and eventually extinct due to human contact; however, there are also many plants that are walked on, dug up, ploughed under and littered upon, yet they grow again and again and continue to flourish. The wild rose is a plant that flourishes.