The "Consume" series begun as simply as an unexpected Two Person Exhibition (with Twyla Exner) at the Fifth Parallel Gallery (Regina, SK) during the latter parts of my Undergraduate Degree.  The installation was pre-large scale plastic bottle cap sculptures (with the exception of the first one which no has seen and has since been recycled into new works. The exhibition took form as a variety of the most common North American logos made from the assemblage of plastic bottle caps glued directly to the wall while more caps were scattered on the floor among "documentation images" of the locations to which the caps where collected.  On the feature wall, we situated the  common 1950's era image of a man holding a bottle and declaring, "Consume, is the whole world made of plastic or is it just me!" 

As I remember, the exhibition was lost on many of the not artist folk and seen as more of a advertisement then a mockery.  At that moment I realized that we have been so bombarded with these images of modern marketing that we tend to look right past the visual element of a work and see only the message which in turn has been engrained into our minds.  These techniques being used by companies and corporations are the same that we find in aspects of our everyday lives.  Repetition of form and concept.  It's simple, although the message may not be.  When you want to remember something, you use repetition.

Although I consider the exhibition to be a resounding failure on the political side... it did end up providing important stages of conceptual revelation in my practice and it certainly initiated a label that has, more or less, defined my earlier work.

The second formation of this work came at the end of my Graduate degree five years later as a personal request from then Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina, SK) curator Amanda Cachia for a three person exhibition titled, Abnormal Growth with Twyla Exner and Tricia Middleton.  Taking some of the elements from the previous installation (in large part the 1950's modernist man), the installation combined elements of both Twyla's interest (at the time) of chemical and biological formulas as well as my more materialistic concerns.  The end result portrayed out Modernist man sitting in one of his creations (the dump truck - out of sight out of mind mentality).  The truck is depositing a bunch of trash that has transformed into a low relief depiction of the chemical formula for High Density Poly-Ethylene which in turn is leaking onto the ground in a stylized "oil patch".