The works in this exhibition grow from the artist’s response to encounters in the natural world. Everyday encounters such as gardening during the summer months and daily walking through the fields and river valleys that border and penetrate the city. Osborne is a close observer and inveterate collector but it is the observation that is paramount as much of the conceptual  work is done outside. She harvests grasses, branches, seed pods, abandoned bird’s nests and a variety of other objects. These materials are amasses in numerous quantities of single objects awaiting their transformation. In the studio she subjects the various materials to repetitive interventions such as dyeing, binding paper casting and components which are printed lithographically. These new elements become the building blocks for the construction of metaphorical installations. These sculptural installations bridge the artist’s memory of the native Australian landscape to her present-day collaboration with the flatlands of Alberta.                                         

Joan Stebbins, 1999
Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Alberta