P002 → Nightlights & Arrived, 2025
Nightlights 1 & 2, 2025
Oil pastel on paper
14”x11”
Arrived, 2025
Seastones
Sizes variable
Watching ship lights at night and beachcombing have always been important rituals as they grew up on the coast.
Smith chose a modernist-style boat side lamp and an early telegraph key to reframe narratives of museum objects through artmaking as the opening feature artist in the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site’s “Art as Storytelling” exhibit. The exhibit was part of Cannery REcollections, an exhibition centering community perspectives in curation.
In “Nightlights 1 & 2” (2025) and “Arrived” (2025), Iver Smith reflects on abstracted forms of communication used by seafaring people and their communities.
“Nightlights 1 & 2” concentrates on marine use of coloured lights to denote boat positioning and motion—side lights are green or blue for starboard, red for port, while a white lamp is used for the stern and/or masthead.
“Arrived” explores the use of telegraphy to deliver messages across land and water. In this piece, sine waves are carved into sea stones. The sine waves reflect those generated by the use of a telegraph key. Each letter (or “dits” and “dahs” in Morse code) is carved across a few rocks, comparing the pulses of sine waves to skipping stones across water.
To learn more about the exhibition visit The Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site’s website here.
Photos of work coming soon.