Buoyant
Schedule
Sat, 06 Sep, 2025 at 12:00 pm
UTC-06:00Location
1835 Scarth St., Regina, SK, Canada, Saskatchewan S4P 2G9 | Regina, SK
Window Gallery:Buoyant
j wallace skelton
September 6 – October 11 | 2025
Closing Reception: October 11, 2025 | In conjunction with the opening reception of Fruit to Fruit by Luke Maddaford
Dwarf Sperm Whale are the smallest of the toothed whales – they are so enigmatic, or we are so ignorant, that they were not identified as their own species until 1998. They are 2-2.7 m in length, make their own ink and weigh 300-600 lb – a weight class I am in. They are not sexually dimorphic (meaning the adult size and colour is not sex differentiated). They live in small pods, of 7-10 whales, making kinship and community with each other. Sperm whales are all misnamed anyway – they are called sperm whales because men decide that the spermaceti was sperm (it’s not). Anyway. They are my size, ocean living mammals that are misidentified and misunderstood. They and I, we are buoyant.
I carved a single life-size whale in linoleum (yes, the flooring). Ink was applied onto the linoleum, allowing for hand blending, making the colouring of each whale unique.
j wallace skelton makes art about queerness, transness, activism and place. j moved to Regina in 2022 to become Assistant Professor of Queer Studies in Education at the University of Regina, which has also allowed j to take print classes, and become part of the local printmaking community. There is an irony in showing marine mammals here, so far from the ocean.
j hopes Buoyant makes you think/feel about how much we don’t yet know about the ocean and creatures that live in it. That it encourages you to think/feel about kinship and fatness, and ways we can make the world better for each other.
