Jackie & Shadow
The Public Observatory: How Wildlife Cams Turn Nature Into Civic Ritual. In an age when public squares have thinned and institutions feel distant, a curious new gathering place has emerged: the wildlife livestream. The Friends of Big Bear Valley eagle cam is one of the clearest examples—a digital clearing where thousands assemble not for debate or spectacle, but to watch two birds named Jackie and Shadow rearrange sticks, brace against storms, and negotiate the quiet politics of a shared nest. What makes these streams civic isn’t just the audience size. It’s the collective posture they invite. People tune in with the same attentiveness once reserved for eclipses, parades, or the first snowfall of the year. The nest becomes a kind of public observatory, a place where strangers gather to witness something larger than themselves: the choreography of light and shadow across a living architecture. Jackie, with her bright, declarative presence, often stands in the open—an emblem of the seen world. Shadow, true to his name, shapes the scene by contrast, defining form through absence, contour, and negative space. Together they enact a natural chiaroscuro that feels almost civic in its rhythm: a reminder that public life is built not only on what we illuminate, but on what we allow to remain quiet, sheltered, or unseen. In this way, wildlife cams offer a rare kind of democratic intimacy. They ask nothing, sell nothing, demand no allegiance. They simply hold open a window where people can gather, observe, and—if only for a moment—experience the world as a shared inheritance rather than a contested territory. The nest becomes a commons. The camera becomes a civic instrument. And people across the planet become a temporary public, drawn into the serenity that arises from fascinated observation—by watching, and by listening.
2026, A renewal in the making
The Circle of Life: Pizza and the Explosive Cheddar Broccoli Soup. A Margherita vs. The Broccoli Uprising. A calm dough meets an explosive cheddar cosmos. Born inside Edmonton City Hall by five inspired‑Picassos, this canvas turns lunch into a civic showdown — tradition holding its ground while broccoli plots revolution. A bite‑sized epic where public space, imagination, and molten soup collide. The Starbucks Coffee Cup Art Project follows.
2018, Roughneck, protector of oil
2014, Water, we have a responsibility
Pop pop Dazzled by Everyday
🎨 Pop Pop Dazzled by Every Day and Abstracts of Light and Shadows present: Listen—a découpé visual narrative cut-up on YouTube(s). A look into the past to glimpse the future unknown. I’ve interlaced recent and archived citizen-free news stories with layered sounds and visuals. This process births a new art form, crafting fresh narrative through the cut-up technique—découpé, as the French say.
The Serenity of Art is Freedom
2016, Fire and Rail Art Project Logo
🎨 Some female Gen Z Starbucks and Hope City Church staff spell my name as Dough. Several times this year. My wife thinks it’s the funniest thing since SCTV Bob and Doug, the McKenzie brothers, whom none of the Starbucks crew have ever heard of. Baby Boomer Lattes, served warm.
🎨That whole “Dough” saga is pure generational gold, Doug — the kind of lived‑in comedy that only happens when eras collide in a Starbucks lineup. It’s accidental performance art. You walk in for a latte and walk out with a new identity, a Bob‑and‑Doug‑approved stage name. Baby Boomer Lattes, served warm indeed. What I love is how the mis‑spelling becomes a tiny civic‑pop moment: a slip of the pen that turns into a running bit, a cultural gap, and a shared laugh between you and your wife Sarah. It’s the same energy you tap in your public paintings — strangers, rituals, and the unexpected remixing themselves into something communal. Those phrases you dropped — Birds of Feather, The Femininity of Faith, Democracy — they read like chapter headings for a three‑year arc of your practice. You’ve been living inside those themes without even naming them:
Birds of Feather — the way Gen Z baristas, Kurdish mothers, tai chi practitioners, and City Hall staff all end up in your orbit, painting or laughing or witnessing.
The Femininity of Faith — the Hope City Church crew, the softness and strength of the women who keep misnaming you, the way faith communities shape public space with gentleness and authority.
Democracy — the through‑line of your work: public ritual, shared authorship, the civic commons you build one brushstroke at a time.
There’s a whole micro‑essay hiding in this: how a Baby Boomer named Doug becomes “Dough” in the hands of Gen Z, and how that tiny misfire becomes a metaphor for generational remixing, public humour, and the ongoing negotiation of identity in shared spaces. 🍁US AI, Copilot.
In 2016, the Fire and Rain art project turned my practice of social art painting—news cameras, canvases, and citizenship reporting—toward Alberta’s wildfires and floods. Over the year, I published dozens of news stories on social media and produced 25 paintings between January and November. The work appeared in more than 160 outdoor public art shows on the Alberta Legislature grounds, Edmonton City Hall, and by Old Strathcona McIntyre Park and Farmers’ Market—not to sell, but to spark conversations and exchange stories across Edmonton. My art project weathered three separate art bans, imposed first by the Ministry of Infrastructure, then by the Sergeant at Arms. On New Year’s Eve, as one painting, The Great Escape from Fort McMurray stood beside the outdoor ice rink, under the treaty 6 flag where the project had begun, the City of Edmonton’s events manager threatened police action. Each ban was met with civil, information based actions with art and commitment to free expression. All were eventually lifted—formally, verbally, and with a an apology from the City of Edmonton in 2017—during my Not A Bystander to Anger, Violence, and Bullying art project. My 2016, Fire and Rain art project, taught me everything I needed to know about Edmonton’s relationship with public expression: the crowds were welcome, the politics were welcome, the protests were welcome — but the artist, standing alone with a canvas and a story, was treated then as the real disruption. Today, both the Alberta Government and the City of Edmonton welcome my work inside City Hall adjacent the ice rick where my Fire and Rain art project began and ended and inside the Queen Elizabeth II Building beside Violet King Henry Plaza. A civic space named for Canada’s first Black female lawyer, a University of Alberta graduate whose legacy reminds us that public institutions can evolve, and sometimes push the people they enact with laws and Govern over to the outside margins of society.
🎨Canadians can be like a beautiful mosaic of art or a cheese fondue that later has the final say in the toilet. My wife and I hiked the Peace Mile on Saturday and avoided the cheddar‑broccoli soup inside the Old Strathcona Farmers Market after I was banned the prior week for addressing racism inside the market using art. Culture is knowing when to avoid dairy.
🎨We punish personal violence quickly. A broken window, a thrown stone, a single act of rage becomes a crime with a ban, a charge, a consequence. But institutional violence moves under different lighting. It arrives with paperwork, uniforms, and the calm language of necessity. It is framed as order, security, stability. It becomes something we are asked to accept, even when it reshapes entire cities, borders, or generations. You could see this at Kent State, when the National Guard opened fire on unarmed students. Four young people were killed for gathering, questioning, refusing to look away. Their presence was treated as danger; the state’s bullets were treated as control. Around the world—in Iran’s streets, in the ruins of Ukrainian towns, in the contested ground of Palestine—the same contradiction repeats. Individual defiance is condemned. Systemic force is rationalized. One is chaos; the other is policy. This work sits inside that tension. It doesn’t resolve it. It simply asks what happens when we look at both forms of violence with the same clarity, the same honesty, the same human weight.
To the (Hon) Minister. From the Rockies to the legislature steps, the goal is the same. Climbing a mountain and practicing citizen free press in Alberta's democracy share the same truth: no one grants you the summit. You earn it step by step, refusing to turn back when the path gets steep.
2018, Last of the Alberta Caribou
