The 2024 silkscreen diptych print series deeptime consists of two editions: deeptime:un/told and deeptime:dissected. These works engage in a research-creation process rooted in the artist’s past research into the Kingston waterfront’s pedology and in Robert MacFarlane’s novel Underland: A Deep Time Journey. “Deep time” refers to the multimillion-year time frame within which the earth is studied through the natural sciences. The work’s title alters this term to exist in connection to yet outside of the scientific context. In deeptime, scientific and print technologies mutually engage in making the invisible visible. 

The work depicts photographs of soil and water samples captured through a microscope. The samples were collected at Emily Martin Park, bordering the Little Cataraqui River waterfront in Kingston, Ontario. The site has seen rigorous anthropogenic effects over the past two centuries. 20th-century industrial activity from the Kingston Woolen Mill, the Davis Tannery, and the Frontenac Lead Smelting Works have transformed the biodiverse region into a severe brownfield. Bulk concentrations of arsenic, mercury, copper, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PBCs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been found in the soil. The ecological effects of this led to the 2015 Emma Martin Park Remediation Project, where a Zero Valent Iron Permeable Reactive Barrier (or ZVI-PRB Wall) was installed at the site. This project has vastly improved the area’s soil toxicity, though ecological consequences persist.

deeptime:un/told presents a legible depiction of the soil samples. The samples are arranged in a five-by-eight grid, referencing a Western typological organization of scientific data. Slight misalignment throughout the composition nods to the inevitable margin of error in the human pursuit of absolutes. Of certainty. In mastery of nature. This digital composition is a stand-in for a future Xerox print that will appropriate the silkscreen CMYK layering method. When stacked strategically, these microscopic samples visualize the structures hidden within the soil. Simultaneously, the visual information in the negative space surrounding the circles is lost. deeptime:dissected narrates the story entombed within CMYK print—the same story buried within the site’s soil.

deeptime:dissected is a four-layer, three-dimensional installation. The CMYK composition in deeptime:un/told is silkscreen-printed onto acrylic sheets. The suspended installation dissects the layers, reinserting them into a visceral relationship with the audience and space. The negative space surrounding the microscopic circles on the black and cyan layers reveals narratives hidden within the soil samples. These layers embody the geological time scales within the soil. The black layer shows a collage with glimpses of the fossilized species that form the layer of limestone bedrock in the Kingston area. The following cyan layer jumps 990 million years ahead to a collage of the ‘Anthropocene.’ This collage alters late 20th-century photographs of the Kingston Woolen Mill, Davis Tannery Site, and Emma Martin Park sourced from the Queen’s University Archives. The collage also contains images of the raw lead, mercury, and arsenic introduced to the soil through industrial activity. Centred in the image is a copy of a lithographic depiction of a 20th-century generator. This detail references a story shared by an engineer who worked on the Kingston Rowing Club (KRC), now located on the site. In an interview with the artist, he explains that a land assessment team contracted for the KRC construction found a severe PCB hotspot at the water’s edge. The source remains unknown, though the assessment team suspects an industrial generator is entombed beyond reach. Its eroding metals will continue to leach into the soil and groundwater for tens of thousands of years. This generator is just one of many discarded human legacies.

deeptime:un/told and deeptime:dissected collaboratively navigate forensic themes within the soil. The process of their conception engages scientific technology to measure traces and echoes—particularly the echoes of the Anthropocene. The use of microscopic images questions the dynamism of scientific technology, an accomplice to both environmental connection and exploitation. Misregistration is thematized to separate viewers from a precise image and truth, questioning what stories exist beyond human time scales and understanding.