My Watermark is the North Saskatchewan River, Alberta.

I'm an artist that works in Edmonton, Alberta. A lot of my work deals with the themes of the environment, the environment transformation, questions around technology and how it's impacting our bodies and the world. This is a recent piece I just completed called "The Flood".

The river valley has been a huge part of my life. Most of my life I've lived in Edmonton – I have lived in the US and other places – but most of my life I've lived here. My family we always go to the river valley, and almost every weekend it's a place we go walk, hike, sit and contemplate. It's a big part of my life and my whole family's life. It's a huge resource; it's one of the best parts of the city, for sure.

My daughter just turned three and right from the minute she could crawl she would crawl towards water. I think that's pretty common among kids, there's this innate love of water. And I think many people feel that, like there's this sense that's it's essential for life. It's part of life, we're water, and there's this sense that water is it. When you deal with questions around metamorphosis, change, having something that's essential to life being in jeopardy seems to me to be a potent thing to explore because on one hand we sense how important it is, but we also sense how fragile it is at the same time.

I think another reason is that it's something that's literally fluid, it's changing, so just as a device to talk about change and transformation, it's a good tool to use. For me what I love about Edmonton and about the river valley is actually watching it change over the seasons. This was impactful for my wife too when she first moved here – she's from Tokyo, the climate's a bit more mild – in the first winter when it starts the freeze those ice patties begin to form and she was just mesmerized by it. Looking at the river over time and seeing how it changes.

What I've been watching a lot lately is its level: I'm quite concerned how low it is, and recently, especially this year, I'm noticing you can see sand banks in the river that I never used to be able to see. Is that connected to other factors in terms of the watershed? I'm sure it is. I both enjoy it, but I'm troubled by the changes I see. Maybe art's a place that allows for people not to point fingers quite so much and create bridges for people so that dialogue can happen in a way where more unexpected linkages might happen.

A lot of the problems we're talking about aren't simple, they're multifaceted. The ability for art to talk in allegory or metaphor I think is a very useful tool then to bring back to these other problems that are multifaceted and maybe shouldn't be seen in one dimension.