The Comfort House Project: stay as long as you like

A creation rooted in conversation, rendered in linocut printmaking, and designed to inspire comfort-seeking.

Since 2021, I have been interviewing people about comfort, and using these dialogues to inspire imaginary rooms in my artwork. Glimpses of these conversations can be read in the product description of each print. They all offer unique wisdom and hold space differently. Each room houses one or two protagonists, occasionally accompanied by their loved ones or pets. Beyond interior design, many of the rooms include an aspect of magical realism, something not-quite-possible.

To bring it all together (literally) the 11 individual prints tesselate into a house structure. Some spaces clearly flow from one to the other and they are connected in accesibility by an elevator straight through the middle. Only the attic must be accessed by a ladder in the room below it. Even though I designed each space with its inhabitant specifically in mind, I like to imagine them visiting each other, taking solace in different kinds of comfort, just like you can by looking at this artwork.

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Interview Questions:

  1. How do you seek comfort?
  2. Why do you need to seek comfort?
  3. Do you think you deserve comfort?

This is the core of the conversations that I had with each protagonist, and what inspired the rooms I created for them.

I'd love to know how you feel

Project Observations & Joyful Details

  • Both Will and Matthew intellectually believe they deserve comfort but have trouble feeling that truth in their emotional centres. Will's partner Harper-Hugo experiences the inverse.
  • Speaking with Sofia was like having a conversation with a peer who happened to be half my age. I've never experienced that phenomenon in that direction before!
  • Ironically, eight of the twelve interviewees in the comfort house talked bout how spending time outside was important to their comfort-seeking.
  • It became a bit obscure but there is an elevator running through the centre of the house. All of the rooms except Sofia's attic space are accessible :)
  • All the prints on green paper form the basement of the house. They are inhabited by my family memebers because they are my foundation.
  • Many of the titles were co-written by the protagonists.
There are more details in each product description! See them all here.
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this lovely perspective:

Coming upon this - with no back story, no previous knowledge of you and your beautiful work, especially within the visual tsunami of [The Artist Project] ... the expression "calm before the storm" came to mind first, but Comfort House is (was) more the eye of the hurricane, or that incredible moment of sudden stillness after a thunderclap, where you find yourself relaxing and unfolding, not even aware of how tense you'd been until you weren't.

-Eric Allen Montgomery

Yes, the assembled house is available to add to your collection.

I printed an edition of 25 of each of the room prints, and 10 each have been reserved to be assembled into finished houses. So the house actually exists in an edition of 10. One of the houses was purchased during Artist Project 2023, and another was shipped to New York shortly afterwards.

Logistically, it's more complicated than packing in a tube and sending to you through Canada Post :) I think it deserves a conversation!

Write me a letter?

Let's continue this conversation

My favourite part of this project was the realization that the beautiful prints I've made aren't the most important part of it. They help it reach more people, they remind the people who own them about comfort, and I love them and am proud of them. But the core of this project is the conversations I had with each protagonist AND the conversations I've had and will continue to have with people about their own comfort (and relationship to it).

On a related note, I love it when I explain it to people and they feel so seen that they cry. Sometimes you need to cry and I hope my work creates a safe space for that.

I want to continue talking about it, so if you host a podcast, or are looking for a guest speaker, or have some other way you'd like to connect, please:

send me an email