Do you have everything you need?

Arts Council Wood Buffalo Residency,
June-July, 2026

Tablescape from final showcase titled “Do you have everything you need?” at the Kirschner Gallery, Fort McMurray.

I arrived at Arts Council Wood Buffalo with two tubs of gear (one for screen printing, one for linocut), a pile of paper, and a question.

Michelle Foran, Programs Coordinator and furniture making artist, met me with a big hug, muscling my supplies in and soon asking me her own question: “Do you have everything you need?” It become a repeated and welcoming line, and ultimately the title to my showcase.

I started out on my space, configuring each of a sketching space, a paper-tearing table, a darkroom, and general installation-layout area. Then, I set out to meet people. In a busy northern community socializing week, there was a St-Jean-Baptiste day picnic, multicultural night, and Métisfest. I attended them all. Community, food, and food security are regularly on my mind, so this all tracked nicely. I started out asking the question I arrived with: “Given that you’re a newcomer here, what foods do you miss from home?” . . . and when this started to feel presumptive, invasive, I shifted to “What is your comfort food?”

I was looking to find what might attract people to one another, or have them feeling cozy feelings of food shared.

Comfort foods menu list screen printed on paper. Photo by Renee Hefferan, 2026.

Dot-drop bowls folded from paper, origami-style.

Did I have everything I needed? Several people asked me the same. I wonder if it comes from arriving in a new place, knowing that you don’t have everything you need. . . and also believing that it will work itself out. I believe that it does just that, through community and shared tables.

The finished tablescape including hanging cylinder of screen printed portraits of people who welcomed me to the region, asking, “Do you have everything you need?”

Being in the biggest tar sands extraction area of the continent, and knowing that this is both the reason for many people staying in or relocating to the region and that it is a finite resource, I also couldn’t help but think about our society’s general (over)consumption. As in, “Don’t you have everything you need yet?”

The bowls on the table are linocut printed and folded, origami-style. The design is a dot-and-drop repetition. The dot being a spot, a mark, a place on a map; the drop representing the oil that brought most of us here, a tear drop in memory of where we’re from.

Last, I organized the table “cloth” with a sequence of menu, blank, and treescape tiles. Driving into Fort McMurray from the south, trees lining the Hangingstone River and other waterways include the standing dead from 2016’s massive wildfire and regrowth ten years later roughly halfway up the dead.

Hangingstone River Treescape linocut printed on washi and held by Lori and Michelle in front of the Athabasca River, nistowoyou, Fort McMurray. Photo by Renee Hefferan, 2026.

It was an exploratory time of welcome, discovery, shared space, and camaraderie. I’m grateful to Arts Council Wood Buffalo for the generous opportunity; Michelle, Emma, TJ, Diane, Jerome, and Liana for your support; and Graciela, Bill, Dawn, Jackie, and Jamal for your welcomes and easy friendship.

Crowd at Kirschner Gallery showcase, July 17, 2026.

Listening to Michelle’s introduction at artist showcase, Kirschner Gallery, Fort McMurray.