Shove: Fill, 2007 Outdoor Site-specific Installation, Dawson City, Yukon.
consisting of three works - Shove: Fill I, II, & III
- installed at sites along the Yukon River from
the Ferry Landing to the mouth of the Klondike River.

Harvesting resources of the northern borealis forest, I propose to build multiple structures reminiscent of buckets and scoops found on heavy construction equipment and the Yukon's dredges. The material is fastened together using instinct and ingenuity in only a primordial principle of what is found in the local landscape, to build from my surroundings. The life-size scale and accurately represented bucket-ness stand alone, severed from the machine, providing the potential that they could be attached to bucket-less equipment. I hope to communicate the urgency and immediacy involved of having to build a structure in a short period of time.

To evoke the feel of a nomadic shelter, vital, essential, utilitarian, and yet not necessarily human. The dam, the den, and the nest, when constructed by ancient mega-fauna could seem similar in scale to the imposing manipulation of heavy construction equipment. To use what is available to me in this environment to build the modern extension of our bodies, from the shovel to the front-end loader, I hope to engage the viewer in comparisons and contrasts of how we are in some ways Natural, and in other ways, how delicate Nature can be. The uselessness of the hand crafted wood bucket if attached to the front-end loader, in turn makes useless that equipment.

The Natural side of mining's Load:Haul:Dump unit then, can be Nature's own Shove:Fill.

Shove: Fill II

Shove: Fill III