Artist Statement

“Making Kin across divides of species, nation, gender and other borders is perhaps the most urgent task today.” ~ Donna Haraway

Caring Movement

Noun–Act of caring for and about one another. Caregivers’ movements. Direct Acts of Loving and caring deeply with empathy for another being. Act of caring for one’s grief.

Verb–Building a Movement of Caring through Movement. Seeking to Create and celebrate Beauty. Action of joining together in movement, staying present with folks to observe their needs, and taking direct action wherever one is called to. Actions of caring through grieving.

The experiences of listening to my mother’s needs, caregiving for her, was what pulled me back home to the Northwest and what also helped me to understand and articulate the roots that nourish the motivations of my artistic practices. The loss of my mother during a 10 year journey with dementia, slow incremental losses and ultimately her death in 2023, brought to light an invisible tree of grief that is part of my journey. What had grown invisibly beside me always longed inside me as a branch that entangled my heart. This called me to listen to the forests and oceans of coastal British Columbia.

I began to recognize an unexpected gift of being with her through these later years was to recognize how valuable and timeless some ways of listening are. My mother and I shared values of deep listening to nature through contemplation, sketching, meditation, and our embodied practices. A brilliant, deep thinking woman, the process of losing cognitive functions to dementia was one that my mother handled with grace. Even as she lost the capacity to read complex novels, we continued to share embodied practices, contemplations of Beauty, and Gifts of the Heart. My mother continued to share her wisdom with me–through her patience with her illness, through her loving kindness, through her pain and often her laughter about her own losses, through assertions of her humanity in the face of those who misunderstood her capacity to feel, through her love of family. I felt as though, through my deep presence with her in this illness, I could bring her back pieces of herself that would help anchor her in her love of family and her undying pursuit of Beauty.

During the last years my mother demonstrated to me, often by expressing a sudden thought, her understanding of the interconnectivity of our states of consciousness with all that surrounds us. I saw how, in the stitches between past and present, something important can be retained about the pursuit of Beauty and the Gifts of Loving. She shared her understanding of interconnectivity with multiple forms of consciousness in our universe that informs my artistic practices.There is a type of question that remains constant.

My art practices can be seen in continuity with these values because my work is about asking questions that go beyond my lifetime. Her heart sings through me just as we are still attached through an invisible tree. For example, in the 2010’s when she was still well I created several dances about water and healing. Some were performed at venues in North America, and others were performed beside a lake or an ocean. My mother and sister created a labyrinth of wildflowers to complement the dance.

As an artist I ask questions that might arise in contemplative meditation, How do I become the Water? Or in face of global water shortages and water contamination, Can water be healed? These are questions of hope that arise from tuning into a stillness and presence with nature, with concern for how the world is left to the next generations. Through these pursuits I have deepened my awareness about the land and water, including my position as a guest on unceded territories, and I stay receptive to learning from indigenous elders a more intricate relationship to water, plants, and many life forms.

An Ethos of Caring

I see the need for a movement of change, a Caring Movement on both a local and global scale. I perceived the toll of loneliness upon my mother during her neurological changes, and in her distress as she became dependent. I see the loneliness of caregivers in our communities when a partner becomes ill. I see the wounds and impact of climate change, global wars, and political distress that are at the root of despair for many.

I advocate for a more inclusive model of community–an ethos of caring that includes deep listening to the needs and gestures of elders, all those in our communities who lead through wisdom and kindness. I advocate for kindness, for celebrating our diversity in its many forms, and for focusing a movement through indigenous leadership and guidance. I believe in healing wounds and impacts of colonization within the self, family and community through mindfulness and deep work. I advocate for efforts of caring for future generations through artistry, education, support, and direct actions.

Dance Works

(2025) Where the Light Took Us–a daughter’s dance through memory and forgetting

Choreography, Dancer, Concept: Seónagh Kummer

Filmmaker and Camera: Theodore Lowry with Melissa Flagg

This poetic dance film explores a sacred bond between mother and daughter as we moved together through my mother’s slow, ten-year journey with Altzheimer’s. Once an avid reader and active in community, she later felt the quiet ache of losing access to those parts of herself. Yet even when she could no longer follow the thread of a novel or engage as she once did, her spiritual faith, emotional intelligence, and sense of humour endured.

Caregiving for elders is often framed as a burden, but I experienced it as something more expansive–an offering, a circle of wisdom. I received joy, tenderness, and love in the daily moments: helping her remember someone she cherished, helping bring a piece of her identity to the surface, or sharing the awe of a wildflower in bloom. Holding her, I felt her radiant presence. Her laughter, her grace, and her deep capacity for love.

Set among wildflowers, dappled forest light, and wide expansive skies, Where the Light Took Us is an elegy of memory, a meditation on the profound bond between mother and child, and a celebration of beauty that endures.