This work was made while I lived in Washington DC. Barack Obama was in office and the completion of the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline was being considered. This pipeline would move crude from The Tar Sands of Northern Alberta, straight through the American MidWest to refineries in The Gulf. As I started to scrutinize my own reliance to petroleum products in my sculptural practice.  I became increasingly interested in this massive and devastating extraction project that currently rules the Canadian Economy. In the winter of 2012 and 2013,  I traveled to Fort McMurray Alberta and was serendipitously able to gain access to The Suncor Energy Reclamation Sites, tour the upgraders, the mechanics shop, the work camps and the Wood Buffalo Indigenous Reservation. In 2013 I took a small bush plane on an aerial tour of the extraction sites including the toxic tailing ponds and the bright yellow sulfur ziggurats. 

This research inspired a series of large-scale sculptural pieces including Rink and An Unkindness. These works were first made to be shown in my first solo museum show: An Unkindness, at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2013, Washington DC, curated by Sarah Newman. The work was shown again in 2015 at The Esker Foundation in Calgary AB curated by Naomi Potter and in 2019 at The Figge Museum in Davenport, IA.