Shawn Serfas grew up exploring the northern reaches of Saskatchewan’s lakes and river systems. His interests include contemporary painting, drawing and printmaking practices. His work echoes a reflection on relational abstraction, environmental aesthetics, the landscape as well as issues bordering abstraction and representation. Serfas is profoundly aware of human intervention on natural resources and of its devastating consequences. His series Inland and Portrait of a Mark appeared in the 2016 exhibition Inland curated by Stuart Reid at the Rodman Hall Art Centre, Brock University, St. Catharines. Richard Fausset was
affected by the passage of Hurricane Katrina over New Orleans, Louisiana and its surroundings in 2005. His piece of creative writing investigates how human life impacts nature in a bayou, and vice-versa. Serfas’ artworks and Fausset’s fictional narrative elicit a dialogue between north and south yet offer two distinct reflections on pollution and the insufficiently controlled use of the environment in North America.