Primary Futures

In recent projects, my practice explores the shifting ecologies of forests in the context of climate change, tracing the material and sensory imprints left by environmental stress and transformation. In a series titled Primary Futures (2025), I focus on Canada’s primary and old-growth forests, particularly the Western Red Cedar—a keystone species, vital carbon store and culturally significant tree. Through processes of burning, dyeing, layering, and printing with cedar, textiles, and natural pigments, I reflect on how elemental forces like fire, sun, and water, once stabilizing, are now reshaping these landscapes under industrial and climate pressure.

I work with charred wood, dyes, and layered textiles to evoke the deep entanglements between land, species, and elemental forces. My process draws from fieldwork, ecological research, and collaboration with forestry scientists, but is equally rooted in the tactile rhythms of the studio—where I mark, burn and build up surfaces to mirror the cycles of disturbance and regeneration that forests undergo.

Through this work, I trace how landscapes hold memory: bearing the disturbances of wildfires and the scars of industrial extraction, and shifting climatic rhythms, while also offering sites of resilience and renewal. By layering organic and synthetic materials, I aim to make visible the textures of environmental change—registering both damage and adaptation. Across my practice, I see forest systems not as static backdrops but as living archives of disturbance, resilience, and ongoing negotiation between human and non-human forces. 

Seed Sphinx

Seed Sphinx is an ephemeral rammed earth sculpture, packed with seeds, created for the Burgoyne Bay Community Garden on Salt Spring Island. This project is shaped by research and practice with seed bombs, rammed earth, ephemeral sculpture and the use of sentinals (gargoyles and other mythic creatures) for adornment, utility and symbolic protection.

All soil layers for Seed Sphinx were locally sourced within a kilometer of the garden. Soil, compost, manure, clay, sand, crushed eggshells, and bird and pollinator feeding flower seeds—were pressed into a sphinx-ish form which bloomed for three months. As the flowers and volunteer plants grew  out of the Sphinx, the structure became less visible, transformed into a blooming earth creature.

In the Fall, seeds will be collected from the blooms, with the rest of the soil returning to the earth as part of the garden bed where it lies. I think of this work as a regenerative sculpture and living installation. An experiment in how ephemeral and seasonal art practices can engage with ecological communities.

This project was supported by a Catalyst Grant from Salt Spring Arts and the Wilding Foundation. I’m deeply grateful both the Foundation and to the gardeners and broader community at Bourgoyne Valley for welcoming this little experiment into the landscape. Designs for future outdoor sculptures are in process due to requests for the Sphinx’ return. 

Constellations

Constellations are portraits drawn in shaped and burned cedar with moonstone beads. Two figures, drawn from sketches of daily life are indented into thick chunks of charred cedar. Moonstone beads are affixed in the grooves of the drawings, creating constellations. Artworks made from a storm damaged red cedar collected on Salt Spring Island. 

Cedar Chorus

Cedar Chorus, part of re:location, a group exhibition at Salt Spring Arts, brought together artists engaging with the complexities of place, ecology, and cultural narratives within the Salish Sea.

This work reflects the unique ecological and cultural significance of the region. These landscapes are home to ecoculturally significant species, including camas, chocolate lily, coastal Douglas fir, and red cedar. Distinctive sandstone beaches that define the area’s geography. Cedar Chorus invokes the interwoven stories within these places exploring the layered relationship between land, stewardship, and the resilience of native flora. Presented as a collective "chorus," the five works underscore a shared voice through variations in form. 

Sink Or Shiver

Sink or Shiver (SOS) is a series sculptures exhibited with Zalucky Contemporary. Sink Or Shiver is composed of charred pine, electric pigments mixed by the artist, and resin cast, cupped hands and bent knees. The artists hands and knees are inset into holes in the charred planks. The hollow shells in multi-coloured resins, become egg-like emergences from the charred wood. At each end of the charred pine strands, carved tips mimic both boroque architecture detailing and skate eggs, also called ‘mermaids purse’. 

Laura Hudspith, Liljana Mead Martin & Lee Henderson
Vessels, Orbs and Pyrophytic Pods
June 4, 2022 - July 2, 2022.
Documentation by Laura Findlay.

“  The artists assembled here perform various forms of alchemy to explore the inner life of things. Their work exalts the inherent mutability of matter, the constant state of becoming that might not always be perceptible to the naked eye. Employing the corrosive power of salt, the powerful energy of fire and the transformative effects of vapour, they attempt to bear witness to the ‘changefulness’ of inanimate objects and how, in that state of flux, new forms of knowing can emerge. ” - Zalucky Contemporary.