Sideways …

I am experiencing the unexpected – the result of opportunities taking me in directions I couldn’t have anticipated.

Life’s taken me sideways, and it’s turning out to be quite the ride!

Little did I know that when I completed Boundary|Time|Surface last summer in Gros Morne National Park, that the fall of 2014 and the first months of 2015 would find me presenting a series of talks on the project … to geologists.

So far, my geologist-art-collaborator and I have given talks on the project for the ATLAS Graduate Students Association at the University of Alberta, at the Atlantic Geosciences Society conference in Sackville NB, and the Edmonton Geological Society AGM.

(We thought it particularly apt that the ATLAS talk was on Hallowe’en … )

And now … we will be doing a poster and multi-media presentation as part of the Education and Outreach Symposia at the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna, Austria, on April 17th.

It has been a terribly hectic time preparing for this trip (the proverbial ‘getting one’s duck in a row’ has been more like herding kittens on some days), and it hasn’t really felt real until now: we’re on the ground, settled in the hotel, and have attended the first day of sessions at the conference.

Admittedly, This still doesn’t quite feel real to me – jet lag will do that! But I have been having some excellent Viennese coffee to get me through, and taking the odd nap to deal with the waves of fatigue when they’d hit.

It’s going be a remarkable 10 days – opportunities to see some of the city, spend some time in galleries and museums, walk and explore.

It’s my first time in Vienna, and I’m already quite certain that I will barely have time to scratch the surface of what the place will have to offer. It’s beautiful in that complicated, accretive way of places long populated: the long history of politics, money, and social indicators of taste are everywhere in the architecture, in the graffiti, in the efficient movement of people from place to place.

Even the site of the conference itself speaks to this complexity: it is being held in a complex adjacent to UNO City … Home of the United Nations.

It will be interesting to see how Boundary|Time|Surface is received; I am looking forward to getting some feedback on this work from an international audience – a few of whom will also be practicing artists. In any case, it’s going to be an adventure.

Sometimes, sideways is a good direction.