This sweet little homegrown piece was originally a part of a project commissioned by the Calgary Public Art Program. That piece did not survive but the heart did and found it’s way to the very edge of town in Claresholm Alberta. It didn’t even take 24 hours for someone to take this little guy home.

A collaboration with the quietly brilliant Janet Turner. This intervention was generously sponsored by Kari Brawn and Gary McMillan with continued support from the AFA.

This is the only rest area on the #2 Highway running through Southern Alberta. It is the final piece in my Highway 2 Transfusion series and acts as a quiet prayer for rest and re-growth.

My friend Sharon Stevens spotted this lonely spinning sign frame from across the highway just outside Nanton when she came along for the installation of my Premiere Heart Series last April. A year later it was still waiting for me ... a Spinning Heart!

Green Stripe was a deliberate attempt to ‘Bomb the Fort’. It only took two trys to find our success! Very much a collaborative effort, it would not have come to fruition without the extraordinary talents of seven prairie artists: Patti Dawkins, Angela Inglis, Romana Prokopiw, Sally Raab, Mia Rushton, Cat Schick and Joe Sweder. I would also like to add a special thanks to Larry Deglow for his material suggestions, welding expertise and outrageous pipe bending experiments!

The paint found it's way here from Paris through time and space via Edouard Adam's nephew. Edouard Adam developed the ultramarine paint patented as Yves Klein Blue.

The location of the AGC was chosen for The 2013 Heart in direct response to the May 2012 news release regarding the organization’s CEO and the embezzlement of some 500,000 dollars. The whimsical piece was created with latex gloves, jay-clothes and copper scrubbies. While making light of the darker side of our human nature, it directly calls out to the AGC for the deeper cleaning that is clearly necessary here.

Much thanks to Sharon Steven’s for her help with installation. Photography by Janet Turner.

BJ’s Heart was created at the time of the closing of BJ’s Gym in the East Village here in Calgary. Owned and operated for 40 years by members of the Hart family and a vital part of the neighborhood, the gym was targeted as an ‘undesirable’ in terms of the ‘new vision’ proposed for the East Village. It simply had to go. In the end, BJ’s Heart was a tribute to the central role they played in a community rich in history if not veneer.

In October of 2010, I arrived in New York for the second wave of Guerrilla Hearts which I dubbed Invader Hearts: The Mini Series.  These tiled pieces were installed throughout New York city in the fall of 2010 as an homage to Parisian street artist “Invader” and his space invader mosaics. More specifically, the action was motivated by my need to connect with Invader’s dream of taking his project around the world. Although Invader has managed to install a total of 113 pieces in New York city alone, it took me ten days to locate a single one -- but I was successful in the end and left my own Guerrilla Heart in his wake.

Edward's Heart was created on August 8th 2010. It is located at the King Edward Hotel, in the East Village, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The process involved weaving gold curling ribbon through the expanded steel of the security doors located on the main entrance to the hotel. It took 12.5 hours to complete. Fully clad in men's jeans, steel toed work boots, safety vest and a hard hat, I was well camouflaged to work on a street laden with construction. The uniform made me 'invisible' -- as uniforms are intended to.

The entire Guerrilla Heart series arose out of a two year residency at an artist run window gallery in Calgary called Museo Poco (recently renamed the Sugar Cube). I spent this time working on the street directly outside of the gallery, recording the rhythm,  energy and movement of my surrounding urban environment.

Based on the classic neon open sign, this 8ft intervention was my most challenging installation to date. Back in the fall of 2012 I noticed a few young guys on the roof of the Deane House in Inglewood, Calgary. It was dusk and a little odd that they were up on the roof at that time. I thought that they might have been getting into some trouble but because I saw a few christmas lights dangling about I let that thought go and kept walking -- so did everyone else. This started the wheels turning and it wasn’t long after that I noticed the unused electrical sockets on the south side of City Hall. After plugging my phone in to see if the sockets were live it was all uphill from there as Open Heart gradually came into being.

This tumbleweed is approximately 6 x 5 ft and made from insulated copper wire and a gorgeous blue string I found along the side of the highway last spring. Thanks to my dad who helped out with the install on Father’s Day and continued to mow around it (yes, on the highway!) throughout the summer so that passersby could still see it. What a guy.

The Sugar Cube Heart was one of mourning. It was created upon of the tiny gallery's eviction based on their landlord's request for approval of the content of the gallery shows. The directors of Sugar Cube staunchly refused. The space was a small but vital institution in our community for the exhibition of independent, non-commercial, contemporary art.

I was invited to create a shrine for Sharon Stevens’ Event Equinox at Union Cemetary in September of 2012. Originally, she asked me to create a heart for the event but I refused. I did not want this solemn event to be a part of the guerrilla heart project. I chose to build a shrine dedicated to my Auntie Marion who was an important figure in my life and whom I lost around the age of 19. As I worked on building the idea for the shrine, I realized it would not be complete without the heart symbol, so I surprised Sharon at installation by fulfilling her wish with a full on Heart Shrine.

One of the major challenges I was faced with on Highway 2 was the wind. With wind speeds that can gust up to 70 km/hr, the Highway 2 project was beginning to feel a little daunting. Rather than fight with such a powerful element, I chose to play with the wind instead. Thus arose the Secret Heart.

Spurred on by my good friend Lisa Brawn, I decided that I could not pass up the chance to make a statement, however small, about the state of the political situation in our home province of Alberta. When perfectly intelligent people are cornered into choosing between conservative and ultra conservative, something needs to be said for the higher mind. So I hit the highway heading south in my parent’s trusty ford focus and deftly implanted my Premiere Heart Series amidst the blitz of provincial party propaganda. The rest is history.

In the spring of 2011, I was working a small part time job at Bow Valley Chiropractic. It is located on the +15 level of Bow Valley Square in downtown Calgary. The Square was undergoing some major renovations that just would not come to an end. It was a pretty depressing environment to be stuck in for any length of time. I decided to take matters into my own hands and with a few rolls of customized packing stickers, the Bow Valley Heart became my first indoor guerrilla installation.

In response to Calgary writer Romana Prokopiw and her own work involving Nose Hill Park, this heart was completed September 2nd 2010. This collaborative work called upon the help of four Calgary artists including Lisa Brawn, Doug Haslam, Janet Turner and Romana herself. The Nose Hill Heart found its form in a valley of calf length grasses and was almost 60 feet in length.

The Cross House Heart was my first real guerrilla piece. I could not resist the perfectly lush hedgerow at this heritage site. Unfortunately, my inexperience left the heart feeling a little unfinished and tentative.