While in residence at BoxoPROJECTS, visual artist Deborah Thompson has been doing preliminary field and studio based research for her new project, Moth Sensorium. Through this research Deborah seeks to expand her visual art practice by exploring the secondary senses of scent and sound in the creation of new works. She is interested in developing a working relationship to esoteric qualities of these invisible senses and, through their inclusion, imagine a different world beyond the visible one. The Moth serves as a sensorial guide and poetic metaphor for the project with its nocturnal navigation skill, and whole body metamorphosis.

The project asks how might the de-centring of sight alter habits of perception and the gathering of knowledge?  What can secondary senses teach us about different modes of being that might ignite new processes of becoming and imagining a different humanist narrative? How might attention on sound and scent shape experience and helps us to locate ourselves in relation to the world around us?

Deborah has been working on soundscapes, scent poems, composite drawings, and stop motion animation works informed by her research and experience of the Hi-Desert Ecosystem. She looks will share her studio work with the public at the open studio at BoxoPROJECTS on April 27th.

Artist Bio
Deborah Thompson is an artist, educator and curator of settler ancestry. It is with gratitude she acknowledges the indigenous humans and their ancestral lands and waterways on which she lives and works. She has maintained an active studio practice since 1997. Her practice includes a range of mediums from painting, drawing, sculpture and stop motion animation. Through her figurative work, she investigates generative processes of transformation, somatic memory and instinctual consciousness that include death, decay, emergence and reemergence.

Deborah has an Associates Degree in Fine Art from the Ontario College of Art and Design (University), a BA in Southwest Cultural Studies from Prescott College and an MFA in Visual Art from the University of Montana. She has had solo shows at Oxygen Art Centre (Nelson), Kootenay Gallery of Art (Castlegar), Langham Cultural Centre (Kaslo), Gallery 2 (Grand Forks), Gallery Gachet (Vancouver), University of Nevada Art Gallery (Reno) and Nelson Museum and Art Gallery (Nelson).

Deborah has completed residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Vermont Studio, Sointula Art Shed, and the Center and Sitka Centre for Art and Ecology where she was the recipient of a Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency in 2021. This spring she was a resident at BoxoPROJECTS in Joshua Tree, CA. She has received awards for both her studio and curatorial work from the Canada Council for the Arts, Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance, Osprey Foundation and Canadian Museum Association. The work in Boat without a Boat was generously funded by a Research and Creation grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Artist website: Deborah Thompson