I spent my residency at Deep Bay in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, investigating and making work about local human parasites. I was thinking about how we experience the natural world mainly through the skin. The natural forces that truly impact us involve things that literally pierce through our barriers, like a tunneling parasite or the proboscis of a mosquito. I created skin-like surfaces with stretched hog gut, embroidering images of local parasites like mosquitoes, ticks, leeches and the organism that causes swimmers itch.

I had spent most of the previous year creating work about insect infestations and it was strangely fitting for me to experience an ant infestation in the cabin. I also witnessed one dragonfly eating another dragonfly (I actually heard the crunching long before finding where it was coming from). Another time I found myself right in the middle of a massive swarm of mating fish flies. They were all around me and I watched the males go to the females and pair for a few seconds and then separate. In the morning the porch of the cabin was covered in tiny dead fish flies. Thanks to the Manitoba Arts Council and Riding Mountain National Park for this opportunity to focus on my work.