Windows for an Earthship (I)

glass mosaic and metalwork installation

110” x 63” x 90”

2024

Beans will climb where they are

metalwork and seedlings

11” x 10” x 33”

2024

Shatter>Melt>Print>Chime

fired glass silkscreen print and chain

13” x 9”

2024

Brownfield Ant Rehabilitation

nutrient gelatin mix, soil, Kingston ants, bff’s old fishtank

2024

Collaboration with Elizabeth Hunt

Seed Swap

participatory installation with instruction

2024

Do you smell the cedars?

scent diffusion

2024

One Day I’ll Build an Earthship explores the connections between sustainable art-making and agriculture. This series presents Steele’s research towards building an “Earthship". A concept born in response to the energy crisis of the 1970s, Earthships are passive solar homes built using natural materials and recycled waste. Common building materials include tires, scrap car metal, and glass bottles. They are designed to be self-sustaining–living symbiotically within the surrounding ecosystem.

Steele’s research into agriculture began through her work on Howe Island’s organic farm Root Radicals and continued through the Loving Spoonful’s Farm-Specific Trades Program. These experiences inform her material research and production combined with traded seeds sourced from the Kingston Agricultural Seed Saving Initiative (KASSI). Drawing from visual languages of divine immanence, this work engages the body in the physical experience of the 3-dimensional works. The theory of immanence holds that the sacred/metaphysical manifests in the material world. Reimagining and transforming materials through this lens, One Day I’ll Build an Earthship conceptualizes the Earthship as a space—a site of regeneration, connection, and learning from the earth and reciprocity. 

(just a pile of glass i quite enjoy) <3