A Place for Fire and The Matter of Deep Time

Fire is the subject, matter is the object. This paper is written to accompany my MFA thesis exhibition, Stone like Fruit, Fruit like Fire. Emerging out of fire, objects made of metal, stone, wood, and paper, in addition to a series of paintings, the central body of work, will be on display April 25-30, 2022 in The Gales Gallery at York University. The idea for this series arrived from an encounter with a wood stove in Ireland. The wood stove and the fire within became an allegory for a climate in crisis and my own life and grief cycles as I struggled with my health, matters of the heart and the making and articulation of this work. I reference the work of philosopher Gaston Bachelard to investigate the "doing" of fire and political theorist Jane Bennett to explain the "thingness" of matter, and how these two entities (fire and matter) shift with our own social, political, spiritual, and ecological ideologies. As a reflection of my practice and like the building of a fire, this essay is written with a stacking and positioning of the biographical and theoretical, where stories and concepts create fictional frictions illuminating paths within the work.