Signs of Change 2016

Signs of Change 2016 represents over 10 years of outdoor installations of words made from ice, which melt in the landscape as a poetic gesture towards the ephemerality of all nature. Like headlines conjured in a dream, they also herald in the new Anthropocene epoch, alerting us to the impact of humans on the environment. Unlike the loaded headlines in today’s media, the anticipated melting of the word acknowledges the absence of the word as it relates to the land. They act more like questions than certainty. They ask: what is the true cost of this View, who owns this …

A Dressing the Future Exhibition

New Exhibition and Art Residency  “A Dressing the Future” Lycoming College Art Gallery Williamsport, Pennsylvania, USA September 11 to October 10, 2015 WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. – The Lycoming College Art Gallery will host Nicole Dextras’ “A-Dressing the Future” exhibit from Friday, Sept. 11 to Saturday, Oct. 10. A reception and gallery talk will be held and Sept. 25 at 25 W. Fourth Street, Williamsport from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. These events are free and open to the public. In addition to having Dextras’ exhibit on display in the Lycoming College Art Gallery, she will also be an artist-in-residence at Lycoming College from …

Street Intervention in Paris

After the Mobile Garden Dress was in the Jardins Jardin garden show in Paris, we headed to the district of Montreuil to do a small street intervention where the dress left all of her plants on the fence of an abandoned lot. This site has an interesting history as it is occupied by the metal shell of an old factory attributed to Gustave Eiffel. This beautiful structure has stood empty for many years and until recently it was a squatters camp for the nomadic Roma people. They were evicted by the municipality in 2013, after which a fence was erected. …

Mobile Garden in Paris

The Mobile Garden Dress was invited to the Paris Garden Show, Jardins Jardin in June 2015. It is located beside the Louvre in the Tuileries Gardens in the heart of the city. The dress was presented by Val ‘hor, the French association of horticulture, floristry and landscape, who was running a national contest to get young people interested in plants. During the 4 day show the dress roamed the site inviting the public to identify some of the plants in her dress, which were common herbs and flowers. Dubbed Le Jardin Embulant, Parisians of al ages embraced the theatricality and style of the colourful …

Urban Botanicals

The Urban Botanicals Project is an outdoor installation consisting of botanical name identifiers for plants that are no longer growing in the area due to urbanization. The names of the original native plants are interspersed within the imported classical Chinese plants in the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Park. Cut from leaves and attached to bamboo stakes, they spell out the names of plants of the region, acknowledging the original landscape that the downtown east side and the city of Vancouver were built upon. For example, the Coastal Western Hemlock Zone of Vancouver’s land surface was once “covered with some of the …

Weleda Video

The Weleda Company created a video about their new demonstration garden featuring the dresses I made for them. It is in German but it tells the story visually by showing the garden and how they process the Calendula plants onsite. I make a brief appearance at the end talking about the dresses I made, plus footage of the models wearing the Wild Rose Dress and the Pomegranate Dress.  

Landesgarten Show in Germany

In June 2014 I was invited by the Weleda Company to create botanical garments for the Landesgarten Show, Between Heaven and Earth, in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany. Weleda has just opened a new garden complex in this area and my work for them was part of the opening events for this new site.  Weleda makes organic beauty and medicinal products based on the Biodynamic© farming concepts begun by Dr. Rudolph Steiner in 1921 and this new 56 acre demonstration garden/farm was a fantastic place to be! The State Garden show was throughout the town but concentrated near the Weleda garden site and around the beautiful …

MGD @ Eco Art Fest

The Mobile Garden Dress, part of the Urban Foragers series, participated in the first Eco Art Fest in Toronto during the summer of 2014. This new outdoor festival situated at Todmorden Mills is presented by No 9 Contemporary Art and the Environment, an arts orga­ni­zation that uses art and design to bring awareness to envi­ron­mental concerns. It featured 8 public art installations hidden throughout the site, live music, homemade organic dishes, beer and wine. Plus Public Art tours, Watercolour Painting Workshops, Sustainable building workshops, and Clay Stein Making. The Mobile Garden Dress was on hand at all the events onsite and she …

Art And Ecology Now

Art And Ecology Now is a new book written by Andrew Brown and published by Thames and Hudson. My work is featured among 95 creators in a compendium of ecologically responsive work. Art and Ecology Now is the first in-depth exploration of the ways in which contemporary artists are confronting nature, the environment, climate change and ecology. As Brown argues in the introduction, “Once an area of interest for a relatively small group of people, art that addresses environmental issues has in the last five years become part of the artistic mainstream.” He adds that “there has been a growing tendency in contemporary art …

Banff Winterjourney Art Residency

The Winterjourney art residency was held in at the Banff Centre for the Arts, in Banff AB from January 13 to February 21, 2014 and led by visiting artist Andreas Siqueland from Oslo. This residency permitted me to further my exploration of ice as a medium. I was happy to meet fellow artist Del Hiller who was also experimenting with making icicles and who graciously lent me some of his equipment to play with. It was also a time for me to try my hand at video, which i discovered i love as much a photography. It will be a …

Queens, meet the characters

Queens in the Desert series, Meet the Characters: Dame Dracaena La Puente, heiress to the great Shelly oil conglomerates is still seeking paydirt with her fashion savvy. Oblivious to the environmental repercussions of her family’s over one hundred year legacy of natural resources exploitation, she still dresses to the nines to impress. Even though the oil wells dried out years ago, her privileged LA upbringing entitles her to the finest luxuries. She favors the exotic pedigree of the Dracaena Draco leaf, often called Dragon’s Blood, a red resin extruded from the plant, which was used in ancient times as varnish, …

Queens in the Desert

I spent the last 3 weeks of my art residency at Cal State Fullerton creating new pieces at the Fullerton Arboretum. It was a fantastic experience for me because Chris Barnhill, Director of the Living Collections let me pick a large variety of plant material from their extensive botanical garden, tucked away on 26 acres within the university campus. It was my first time experimenting with tropical plants such as Palm trees and Citrus peels and i could have spent months there experimenting with new materials. I built 3 dresses based on the Little Green Dress Project, which were worn …