cut a path through the weeds and call it a garden (2026)
cut a path through the weeds and call it a garden
October 10, 2026 – January 2, 2027
Tom Thomson Art Gallery
Owen Sound
Curator: Shannon Bingeman, Curator of Exhibitions & Collections
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
D’Andrea Bowie’s process-based sculptural practice is driven by experimentation and attention to how materials behave and transform. Working with plaster, cement, ceramics, copper, glass, and stone, she engages with materials extracted from the earth that have long been used to build infrastructure and reshape the land. Through casting, forming, assembling, and other processes of transformation, Bowie considers how these materials carry traces of touch, labour, geological history, and human intervention, drawing attention to our relationship with the land and how we shape it.
In cut a path through the weeds and call it a garden, Bowie turns her attention to the geology of Owen Sound and the surrounding region, allowing the particular materials and formations of this landscape to inform the work. Bringing geological processes into conversation with histories of building, surveying, and altering the land, the exhibition considers the ways we impose boundaries and order upon the natural world. Through an exploratory approach to making, Bowie encourages a slower kind of looking-one attentive to material, place, and the traces of change that accumulate over time.
ARTIST STATEMENT
For cut a path through the weeds and call it a garden, I respond to the geological features surrounding Owen Sound that have been a long source of inspiration. A plaster relief developed from studies of root growth at nearby Bruce’s Cave, along with limestone dust collected through carving, connects the work directly to the geology of the region. By embedding materials of place within the work, I consider extraction, geological histories, and our relationship to landscape.
Through the lens of sculpture, the exhibition reflects on the acts of measuring, mapping, and claiming land. The Gunter’s chain, a historical surveying instrument, becomes a point of departure for considering settlement and shifting ideas of “nature,” from the cultivated garden to an expansive wilderness.
Throughout, I continue to explore the porous relationship between material, process, and place. Working with world-building materials such as plaster, cement, ceramics, copper, glass, and stone, I investigate how materials carry traces of touch, memory, and geological time. The ever-changing index brings material tests and samples from my studio into the gallery, alongside the projection #slowrealz. Together, the works foreground experimentation, observation, and a sense of wonder in and with an elemental world.
Images: John White