Emily Neufeld uses recovered building materials as she tries to capture memories and psychic history
West Coast contemporary artist Emily Neufeld gave a talk and presentation about her unique art practices and sculptures to UFV faculty and students on March 18. The Alberta-born artist now lives and works on the unceded territory of the Squamish, T’sleil Waututh, and Musqueum in North Vancouver. She walked us through many of her pieces and offered in-depth analysis and descriptions behind her work.
Around 2010, Neufeld wanted to expand on ideas she had for art and sculpture practice and began searching through empty and dilapidated houses on the prairies in eastern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Exploring these old houses, she would think up stories about the homes and the people that lived in them and how their history was tied to the location. She scavenged about for materials and objects she could use in her art practices and make sculptures out of.
Neufeld’s art practice looks at location and how people change and can be changed by the location and its surroundings. Over the years, she says, “Locations inherit layers of memory and psychic history forced onto it by the people living and using the location.”
These explorations continued to develop over the past decade after Neufeld moved to Vancouver to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She started researching and finding old houses scheduled for demolition in the North Vancouver area that she could look through trying to find some materials to work with. Neufeld spoke about trying to connect with or imagine the history of the homes, the rooms, and how the unique patterns of wear and tear on the various materials like carpet, linoleum, and wood were created.
Neufeld explained the limited time she has to gain access to the empty homes (with permission, of course): “There’s a five-day window from when the [demolition company] fences are put up to get in and use the home for artistic expression before they are demolished.”
Neufeld spoke of one prominent house she was sketching — the home where famous musician Bryan Adams started his first garage band. She thought about how the house was a piece of North Vancouver history and trivia but was scheduled to be demolished. “If Bryan Adams were to come back to this neighbourhood, would he really be able to identify the house he started the garage band in? Because the physical house is gone and a new house is in its place. It got me thinking about how our memory is so tied to a home.”
Neufeld draws additional inspiration from the way people try to incorporate nature into their homes; she also tries to incorporate nature or natural materials into her art practices. “How we think of and use space, and how we try and kind of contain nature within these boxes of windows or murals and artworks — there’s always soil cast into things because I’m thinking about the land and what land has value.”
With so much change happening in our world and the constant redevelopment of land for residential properties, the future bodes well for Neufeld. She is excited about the prospects of working with larger properties like condos, townhouses, and apartments in her future projects. She’s constantly asking herself where the content of a building or home ends and nature and the real world begins. Time will tell, and Neufeld will definitely continue to search for the essence of where we came from and how that helps guide where we are going.
Prairie Invasions. (Emily Neufeld)
Steve is a third-year BFA creative writing/visual arts student who’s been a contributing writer, staff writer and now an editor at The Cascade. He's always found stories and adventures but now has the joy of capturing and reporting them.
