Julien Woolley-Fisher

past fragments

past fragments explores the relationship between built structures, place, and desire. Formally, it acts as an architectural fragment, potentially referencing a window frame, an awning, or the point where a building façade meets cement. This work is an exploration of a nostalgic desire to return back to particular geographies and spaces using a bottle-dash surface treatment unique to Western Canada. Bottle-dash stucco uses standard stucco but embeds pieces of aggregate in the form of broken beer bottles. This material is no longer used; the histories and techniques have been lost. Through its materiality, this work gestures to the way I experience nostalgia as creating an attachment to place, citing a material I was intimately connected with as a young child, repeatedly cutting my hands on the exterior surface of the postwar-built home I was raised in.