Breast Drum Project     2000 -2003

The catalyst for the Breast Drum Project, an audiovisual installation artwork, was my nine-foot high sculpture of the Breast installed at the MacLaren Art Centre over a one-year period, which precipitated astonishing conversations.  The Breast Drum Project is a storytelling work about women, who they are, what they do and how they live, think and feel. It is also a story about place; place in time and place in geography across this vast land that is Canada.

From Newfoundland to the Yukon stories were collected and recorded from women ages 27 to 93. These stories, about birth and life and death, cross an amazing spectrum of experience and reality. The Breast Drum Project is also a work about sound, of the voice as instrument and the drum as instrument. The breast drum, spun of steel and bronze with a three-foot diameter moose-hide drumhead, was sculpted for this work to evoke the phrase 'beating one’s breast.'

Each installation of the Breast Drum Project includes a Performance Event featuring Ray Dillard, percussionist, playing drum solos on the breast drum, that intermingle with the women’s stories. 

Title, Medium and Dimensions
 
Breast Drum, Bronze, Steel, Moose-hide, 165 cm h x 91.5 cm w x 96.5 cm d

LCD TV Screens x 3, 2 @ 38 cm, 1 @ 33 cm

Speakers x 6, varied height, x 23 cm w x 23 cm d

Breast, Bronze, 2.7 m h x 1.4 m w x 1.4 m d