Smithereens is an on-going series of screen prints and drawings that examine what’s left after catastrophic events have passed. Lisa Neighbour is a cyclist and a runner and often notices the shards of glass and car-parts that are scattered everywhere – they are evidence of the frequent collisions that happen in the city. Neighbour has been collecting the pieces, drawing them, and then making prints about the damaged vehicles and their scattered parts.

During her YYreZidency, she is setting up a drawing generator consisting of a 4’X8′ white-board platform, a selection of found car-parts, and a supply of black dry-erase markers. Visitors to the gallery will be invited to use the car-parts and markers to create drawings that she will document and then erase. The surface of the platform will be projected onto the gallery wall, and then photographed. During and after the residency, Neighbour will incorporate the resulting imagery into her screen prints and drawings.

Neighbour’s goal is to develop a visual language that can examine traumatic experience in a way that she (and other people as well) will understand and perhaps benefit from. This process involves becoming conscious of, accepting, and then being at peace with the traumatic events that are part of human experience.