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the stars over limerick.
A multidisciplinary project that uses film, photography & lyric to reflect on what it felt like to grow up on a farm outside of a tiny Saskatchewan town around the turn of the millennium. This project leans into the emotional experience of a chaotic underfunded school, an evangelical church at the height of purity culture and the sanctuary provided by prairie solitude.
This project has received funding from Sask Arts under their Independent Artist Program and we are fundraising to close the small gap left between the grant and the full budget. Please consider one of the options below to help check off the final budget items on the list.
*bonus points if you can spot me.
don't ask me about short poems.
I grew up on a farm outside of Limerick, Saskatchewan. (It's 10 minutes outside of Assiniboia. That's an hour south of Moose Jaw.) In 2003 when I graduated, there were about 85 of us from Kindergarten to Grade 12 It mainly consisted of people like me, whose families had lived in the area for generations but it also seemed to attract people who had no place else to go as we had our fair share of transient classmates. At one point, Wood Mountain School closed down and a whole swath of new kids bolstered our numbers. Of course, it was more a sign of things to come than it was a life infusion.
purity for 14 year olds.
I had a secret second life though. My parents had changed their ways and joined an evangelical church before I was born providing me with a secondary space to socialize in. Despite occasionally thinking that my family had been raptured and I was left behind, having a second perspective was probably enough to help me survive the chaotic little school where I spent my weekdays. I can't say I've unpacked the totality of Sunday school's impact on me, but I remember it felt like.
y2k, 9/11 & columbine.
You'll need to know when this happened just as much as you need to know where it happened. It was a strange time in the world and it seemed like everything in the world changed just as we were going through puberty. They brought in grief counsellors after someone from school killed themselves but no one wanted to talk to one for fear of appearing vulnerable. I can't blame them, vulnerability was a bad look in Limerick, 2001.
the project.
During the summer of 2024, I will be shooting a series of 10 of tableaux vivants on 16mm film, surreal editorials on 120 medium format film and a selection of improvised style shots on 35mm film. A large part of this project will be shot in and around Limerick SK and the farm where I grew up.
I am melding a couple of loose references as inspiration: The Color Of Pomegranates and absurdist film photography of rural America. The main driver of this project will be to recreate how it felt to live through these times and this space while nurturing the younger version of myself who only knew this world.
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