This Weds April 29th at 7pm I’ll be at the Oakville Museum to speak about The Sleeper. I hope to talk about community involved artwork, land history, feeling grief, strategies against silencing, and the creative potential for metaphor and ritual to strengthen us in times that threaten to pull us apart. There will be process and research images, and space for questions and conversation.
Tickets are $10 at link in bio.
The Sleeper project Moon garden is flowering now at the Erchless Estate/Oakville Museum, situated on Treaties 14 and 22 Mississaugas of the Credit land🌷🪻🌸
Thank you @onculturedays and curator @dave.dyment , @townofoakville , @canada.council and @ontarioartscouncil for supporting this project.
Photos by @john_jones_photo
Breath. Feel the spring struggling to be born. How are you?
How We Are
Art Gallery of Hamilton
February 14 - May 10, 2026
Psychoposcene, 2025
Ink and gouache on paper
Our world is in the crucible and I have a hard time not thinking, speaking and making art about it. For the first time ever all of my major works that seek to comprehend, navigate and process our socio-political problems and complicated human tendencies have been gathered into one focussed survey exhibition: How We Are.
Why shouldn’t our hardest political and relational conversations also happen through art? Put the phone down and come take care of your soul with us. How We Are is loving, hand-made, honest, challenging, and welcomes all.
🐸💜 link in bio 💜🐸
Here I am installing my 2007 overhead projector and cut-out paper mural The Clearances.
How We Are officially opens at the Art Gallery of Hamilton on February 14, happy Valentines day.
Free public reception is on Sunday February 22, come say hi and celebrate!
This event is shared with the great Ruth Cuthand @beadingqueencuthand , whose extraordinary retrospective (and public talk!) opens the same day. Do not miss her work.
I am honoured to share space, and very proud of How We Are. And deeply thankful for how fully supported curator Tobi Bruce and the whole AGH team has been to present this work.
Thank you
@at_theagh
Photo by @marciasnaps
On November 5th, during the Beaver Moon, I buried The Sleeper. I created its hollow biodegradable body to contain community worry and fear. Participants wrote their answers to the question ‘What keeps you up at night?’ on paper then put their notes into a slot on the figures chest.
Once the grave was dug and the figure with all those anonymous notes was interred, I performed a simple grief ceremony and filled the hole with soil.
I then drew a 6’ circle on top of the site, and planted over 150 white narcissus bulbs to close the ritual. The bulbs will keep stasis during the long dark, to bloom in early spring 2026. The Sleeper ‘Moon Garden’ (more beautiful at night) is bordered by white spherical stones I carried from the nearby shore of Lake Ontario.
Planting spring bulbs in autumn is a symbol of hope. Hope for the actions and seeds we plant to ensure growth and change. As a promise of transformation. To honour life in the darkest season, when all we can see is the cold night closing in.
I have been caught by dread this past year, and for a long time. It’s a daily fight to keep heart and insist on the good. It’s best done collectively. When you can’t bear your own pain, create and/or serve.
Come visit The Sleeper Moon Garden in April 2026, free to all on the back grounds of the Oakville Museum. Rejoice in our survival and fierce beauty!
Thank you to all who offered their notes, and joined together in vulnerability and ritual. Thank you to @onculturedays , @dave.dyment and @oakvillemuseum for inviting me to make something for everyone.
Gather strength friends! May 2026 remind us of all that is good in this world. Peace.
🌊On view at Patel Brown Toronto: Shary Boyle, Big Wave, 2024, Ceramic stoneware, glaze 🌊
Created during Shary Boyle’s three-month residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre in Oisterwijk, Netherlands, this sculpture emerged from experiments with new glaze techniques and recipes.
🏄♀️“The Olympics had been held in Paris that summer, introducing surfing’s official competition debut. I’ve always been mesmerized by big wave surfing, the courage and focus of one small human keeping upright under the most unknown and powerful force on earth.”🏄♀️
–Shary Boyle
//
🏄♀️🌊Shary Boyle’s work considers the social history of ceramic figures, animist mythologies and folk-art forms to create a symbolic, feminist and politically charged language uniquely her own. Boyle activates her practice through collaboration and mentorship, engaging other creative communities and disciplines with a characteristically inclusive spirit. Boyle has received the Gershon Iskowitz and Hnatyshan Award and represented Canada at the Venice Biennial in 2013. 🏄♀️🌊
//
Come see the sculpture in person before the gallery closes on December 20!
🌊🏄♀️🌊🏄♀️🌊🏄♀️🌊🏄♀️🌊🏄♀️🌊🏄♀️🌊🏄♀️
#SharyBoyle #surfart #PatelBrownGallery
On November 5th I buried The Sleeper on the Mississaugas of the Credit land, now the Erchless Estate Oakville Museum grounds.
The hollow sculpture in the museum’s master bedroom and three local library boxes collected the worries and concerns of the community for 6 weeks. All the anonymous submissions the library boxes contained were then stuffed inside the near-full body. Everyone became vulnerable together, equally.
I estimate there was close to 1000 notes, now packed tightly inside the sculpture’s chest. The participation in this project says everything.
The ritual began that morning when I dug a three foot deep, 6 foot long grave. This took some hours. I then gently transferred the biodegradable sculpture containing all the voices, from the bed into the earth. I conducted a humble layperson’s ceremony, with respect and care for the people’s concerns that had been entrusted to this process.
🍂
Thank you to every person who wrote their selves onto a note, and committed to sharing with your community in this ritual. I’ll make another post soon about what happened that day after the ceremony, and the future of this project.
Thank you @john_jones_photo for these beautiful images.
@onculturedays@ontarioartscouncil@townofoakville@oakvillemuseum
Sunday Nov 2 (1-430pm) is the last day to pay a visit to The Sleeper, before I bury the biodegradable sculpture in the garden of the Erchless Museum in Oakville, ON. One more day to answer her question: What keeps you up at night?
Thank you to all who wrote their worries down, and placed them inside the sculpture or any of the Sleeper receptacles in libraries across town. Your offering has made this a collective ritual of will and hope.
The Sleeper and every one of your responses will be buried privately this week. There will be a small ceremony to thank the earth for receiving our cares. Once covered in soil, I will plant hundreds of white daffodils in a moon circle on top. These will bloom in early spring 2026.
May the soil and seasons console and transform us together, as they have always done.
All gratitude for the amazingly generous and supportive staff at the Oakville Museum, Ontario Culture Days, Ontario Arts Council, Curator Dave Dyment and everyone who helped and participated. 🙏🏻❤️🌱
Sleep well.
@onculturedays@dave.dyment@ontarioartscouncil
Little Wave, 2025.
Raku-fired ceramic, metallic leaf.
7” T x 4” D x 4” W
Opening bid: $250
There are so many beautiful artworks to bid on in Tuesday’s fundraiser to support Palestinians, organized by @christi_belcourt
Please please visit the auction in person September 23 if you are in Ottawa, or online September 23 if you are not. Auction info and link found at https://christibelcourt.ca/blogs/recent-activity/art-show-and-silent-auction-for-palestine
❤️One day only 8am to 8pm EST❤️
Bidding opens September 23 at 8am!!
Auction link found @christi_belcourt
100% funds donated to Palestinian relief🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Often I find resistance in the small, subversion in the intimate, alliance in refusing the Very Important.
**Frog, raku-fired clay, 2025. Tiny.
Give me clay, amphibians, elders, and something I can fit in my hands. How much can we carry???
The First Time is a group exhibition of ceramic experiments on now @galerienicolasrobert in Montreal, until October 25, 2025.
Curated by @mel_arsenault
Thank you for eyes hands hearts water air dirt fire sand pigments the light that emanates underground
The Sleeper is a life-sized, biodegradable effigy of an insomniac, installed in the master bedroom at the Oakville Museum’s Erchless Estate. An accompanying sign asks “What keeps you up at night?” Visitors are invited to write down their anonymous answers and place them inside the sculpture’s chest.
I made this project by invitation of curator Dave Dyment and the Ontario Culture Days festival. It will open Sept 17, and run to November 1.
At the festival’s end I will dig a hole and bury the effigy containing the community’s concerns on the grounds of the museum. To complete the cycle of transformation, a moon garden (most beautiful at night) will be planted on top of the burial site. The garden will be open for public visits in spring 2026.
As climate, economic, and political threats course through our days and nights, The Sleeper offers a container and ritual to unburden and transform our fears, together.
Sleeper Boxes
The greater community is invited to contribute their responses to the title question via “Sleeper Boxes” located at Oakville Museum, the Oakville Central, Glen Abbey and White Oaks Public Library branches, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
I hope we can all keep creating ways to survive and heal together, through art and earth. I am finding it extremely hard, especially to participate in anything online. I try to turn to life. And remind myself despair is for the privileged
🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻❤️
@onculturedays
