Deer Lake by Michelle Sound

1. Michelle Sound has been making drums for more than 15 years. When working with cyanotype, she prefers using elk hide for its thickness and white colour, which makes it an ideal canvas for the blue hue to develop before it’s wrapped around the wooden drum frame.

2. In this camera-less photo process, she applies cyanotype solution and, once in the sun, the hide gradually gains pigment around any objects placed on it. It’s a gentle balance, as details will be lost if it is overdeveloped.

3. While time allows for the image to develop, the wind sometimes tampers with it. “You’ve just got to let it go and be surprised by the outcome every time,” Sound says, pointing to a flower that shifted mostly off this drum’s surface.

4. Sound typically works with traditional plants and medicines, but here she picked indigenous species and plants introduced through settlement—from the Century Gardens in Burnaby, established in 1967 as an ode to the British monarch—to reflect overlapping histories. “If I’m going to make a record of this place, that’s what it includes.”

5. The central flower represents a portal, referencing Squamish Chief Joe Capilano’s story of the Seal King and a hidden waterway in Deer Lake, as told to poet E. Pauline Johnson. The floral image links to another portal-like image on a sister drum, representing the other side of the portal.