Fogo Island Arts’ international residency program provides opportunities for artists from a wide range of disciplines to live and work on Fogo Island. The residencies enable artists, curators, and writers to think, create, and connect, promoting discovery across perspectives and disciplines. The geographic specificity as an island off an island in the North Atlantic is a foundational platform for engagement around issues of sustainability, ecology, economy, and belonging.
Before the end of her residency with Fogo Island Arts (FIA), artist Maria Simmons met with Kitty Scott, Director of Fogo Island Arts, for a conversation on her work and time on Fogo Island.
This was Simmons’ second residency with FIA; she first came to the island in the summer of 2025, as part of the Labrador Current Foodways residency, and returned in the spring of 2026.
Kitty Scott: What made you want to come to Fogo Island? What was your motivation in applying for a residency here?
Maria Simmons: I really wanted to come specifically to Fogo Island, because of the landscape. I was here briefly on a Canada Council–funded research trip with a collaborator of mine from Norway, Ingrid Bjornaali. We were doing a research trip across Newfoundland, and that was the first time I’d ever been in the province. One of our research stops was Fogo Island, partly because I’d been researching Newfoundland bogs. There was geological data pointing to Fogo Island specifically, so I knew it was going to be boggy, and that there was this intersection of art and landscape. We took a trip during torrential rainstorms in late October. We hiked out to the Red Weather Station and stopped along the way to gather some footage. It was a short two-day trip that planted a little seed of interest to come back and get more of a lay of the land. I knew it would be the perfect place for my research.
Scott: What makes it the perfect place for your research?
Simmons: My research is always ecological, and for the last several years it’s been specifically focused on peatlands and bogs, which are relatively difficult to access in Canada where most bogs near southern, metropolitan areas have been drained and turned into farmland, so you have to go quite far north. For me, as someone who’s often doing fieldwork solo, Fogo Island is a dream, because there are no large predators. Most of the time doing fieldwork in Northern Ontario or Quebec, I have to be so aware of my surroundings and it stops me from fully entering the environment. Fogo Island feels like about 50% bog, maybe more, whereas almost anywhere else, you might hike a good distance to find one bog to work with. Here, there’s a wealth of bog, so you can compare and contrast. It’s also unusual to have people coexist with bogs so closely — because the island consists of so much bog, almost everyone here interacts with it in some way, so bogs aren’t only ecological features, they’re cultural too.
Scott: How did the first residency come about — when did you apply, and how long were you here?
Simmons: I applied roughly in late 2024 and came out for one month, in August 2025. It was berry season, and that’s really the culture of bogs here — berry season is why people go to the bogs. You experience the whole abundance the bog has to offer. Every time I’d go to the studio, I’d gather handfuls of berries on the way. That’s the part of the bog that lures you in without any other motivation. My own artistic practice lures me there too, but as a human, you get lured in by the berries.
Scott: How did you enjoy working from the Bridge Studio?
Simmons: Because of the nature of the work, my time was split between the kitchen, Fogo Island Inn where I met with Executive Chef Timothy Charles, and the bog. The studio functioned more as a contemplation space, somewhere to process what I learned in the field or in the kitchen. When you’re in the bog, as much as I try to absorb the sensory experience, it’s a very buggy place and Bridge Studio is a haven from that. You’re still on the bog, but not as intertwined with its metabolic cycle, which involves being constantly bitten by bugs
Scott: How was working with Fogo Island Inn’s culinary team?
Simmons: I was blown away by how open the Chef and his team were to anything I proposed. He’s an excellent collaborator. It’s easier to collaborate when people bring their own specialties and expertise, and his knowledge is complementary to mine. He has a huge imagination for the potential of things, which is exciting, and makes him very easy to work with. Executive Sous Chef Sophie Hall is wonderful too — she and Tim were the two main people I worked with. Tim is the big, dreamy imagination; Sophie is more boots-on-the-ground, “how are we actually going to get this done” operations. The two of them, paired with me as an artist, made a nice triangle of collaboration.
Scott: What did you learn from that first residency?
Simmons: It really felt like a first chapter, which is why it made so much sense to come back. Tim and I talked about bog butter, but it wasn’t something that could be completed in just one month, so I decided to stay open to whatever I found out from the island. That, for example, is how I ended up learning about “plant beer.” Nobody had a concrete answer for what it actually was, but there were stories floating around from maybe 50 years ago about a kombucha-like fermentation method using molasses and foraged ingredients. I tried to recreate a version of it, and my residency culminated in an event where we served it. Conceptually, it felt like tracing a ghost story — some people said it never existed — so the mythical, maybe-real, maybe-not quality of the plant beer became the theme: a night about ghosting and hosting. Sophie, Tim, and I worked out a menu inspired by recipes of people who’d passed on from the island, but whose recipes remained: foraged elements relating to death and rebirth, ephemeral cooking, and smoking methods.
Scott: Your focus though is bog butter. What is this?
Simmons: Bog butter is something humans have been doing/making for over 2,000 years. It is found primarily in Scotland and Ireland — caches of butter buried in a bog and preserved by the bog’s environment: very high acid, low oxygen, and high tannins that stop spoilage bacteria from forming. Bog butter buried 2,000 years ago is technically still edible today. We don’t actually know why it was done; there’s no written history and seemingly no surviving oral history about it, so it’s something of a mystery. The theory I like is that it was an offering to the gods and the underworld, since bogs were viewed as sacred spaces, portals between the overworld and underworld.
Scott: Tell me about burying bog butter when on your first residency. Did you meet collaborators?
Simmons: Chef Tim and I talked about it at the beginning, as he didn’t know anything about it. Through talking with him, I ended up adjusting some of the butters with different inclusions to change their flavour when they were unearthed. I gathered some ingredients from the kitchen beforehand, and I also worked with Marc-Olivier Brouillette at Fogo Island Workshops, who made five boxes for me.
Scott: You also wrap the butter in moss and material from the bog — is that something you already knew, or something you learned here?
Simmons: It’s to do with preserving the butter. Sphagnum mosses create the bulk of the bog and the specific conditions that make it a bog; they transform the environment around them to be very acidic, through some combination of acid release and a more complex ion exchange. Wrapping the butter in the mosses and putting it in the boxes lets the bog water do that work — it’s structural to the whole preservation process, almost like a little bed.
Scott: You buried five altogether — can you talk about where each one went?
Simmons: Each butter was buried in a bog corresponding to one of the studio spaces. Fogo Island is so boggy that there’s usually a bog close to each studio. The exception is Squish Studio, on the cliffside, so that one was buried a bit farther out on Turpin’s Trail, at the closest bog I could find in Tilting. I originally planned to bury four, but was given five boxes in case something went wrong, so I buried two at Bridge Studio as a bit of extra “butter insurance.” I try to disturb the bog as little as possible while doing it. Bogs only grow one to three millimetres of peat a year, so even an arm’s length is already about a thousand years of history in the bog.
Scott: When you left last year, what was the feeling?
Simmons: Very bittersweet. At the time I didn’t even know I’d be back. You leave your butters in the bog with no plan set, and it felt unfinished, though I was happy the burial was done. It was an ordeal, since I buried them in an absolute torrential rainstorm — it felt like I was in a fight with the gods of Fogo Island. But I think that’s sometimes the way it is, not that it’s ever really a battle between man and nature, but you do have to earn the environment’s respect.
Scott: What was it like coming back — landing on the island again, this time in May and June, rather than August?
Simmons: Everything was very different from what I’d left. Strangely, in an environment you’d think wouldn’t change much, since it’s mostly evergreens, grass, rock, and water. Coming from a background more used to forests in Ontario and Quebec that change so much with the seasons, I didn’t expect Fogo Island to look and feel this different, but it did — the rocks were the same, but everything else felt different when I went to find my butters again.
Scott: Was looking for the bog butters something you wanted to do immediately?
Simmons: One of the first things — I found one of them within the week. I’d been thinking about the bog butters constantly while they were buried, even doing coursework for my PhD in Montreal, a very different environment. I don’t mark the ground, and this time I wasn’t able to document the burial spots on video the way I normally do — usually I take a 360° video of where I’m standing with the butter underneath, so I can trace it back later. Because of the torrential rainstorm, all I had was my memory.
Scott: What was the first one you dug up, and can you describe it?
Simmons: The first was at Bridge Studio. The landscape looked completely different because of the recent snowmelt. There was still snow, and the area I’d previously identified by certain plants, grasses, and slightly raised mounds was now covered in ice water. I used a small dead tree, preserved and standing in the bog, to trace my approximate location, right in the middle of this ice pool. I’d been gone for nine months; it felt like I’d asked the bog to hold these things for me, and now, in the rain, I had to cope with the elements. I got down on my hands and knees since there was no way to stand in it — too watery — and slowly worked my way across, feeling for root systems to avoid disturbing them. Moving around that early in the season really activates everything metabolically under the surface; bubbles kept coming up, warming the water, so after about ten minutes the water wasn’t icy anymore. But I couldn’t find the butter. I probed the area for about half an hour, confused, since the boxes have sharp corners and flat sides that should be easy to feel. Then finally, after all that, the box just came up to just above the surface — it hadn’t been there a moment before. Somehow my body interacting with the bog, activating those bubbles, must have brought it up from the deep. I opened it and smelled the bog water. It smells delicious right when you first unearth it, never better than that first moment.
Scott: You orchestrated with Tim and Sophie, the Bog Butter Solstice event. I was amazed by the care that went into the presentation of the food. Can you describe it?
Simmons: It was held on a cold and cloudy solstice as a celebration and culmination of the durational bog research. Tim and Sophie put together a menu that highlighted the butter. Being able to taste it with such an open group of people is what makes bog butter meaningful to me — having people literally eat the bog, and take part in it. It feels a bit ritualistic; taste is part of it, and it’s quite funky, but for me it’s more about eating the bog itself, taking in a palate that isn’t necessarily human-centred — strange flavours, more methane- and moss-based, things we wouldn’t normally include in our diets. Opening yourself up to it decentres your experience as a human. Having it in a setting like the Shed at Fogo Island Inn, looking out to the ocean, made it all the more beautiful.
Scott: Does an event like that feel like giving something back — to the experience, the community, or sharing knowledge? Is there a methodology at play?
Simmons: These events make the project meaningful. There were a good number of local people attending, and it opened up a larger conversation about what bogs mean to people living here versus my own perspective. It’s giving back to the community, but also to the bog itself, by fostering that relationship between people and place. There’s a lot of talk here about the sea and the rock, but less about the bog, even though it’s central. Having an event that acknowledges the bog on Fogo Island felt important; it’s a give and take — I’m giving back, but I’m also receiving. Everyone at that event was giving and receiving.
Scott: You collected stories from the community while you were here. Were there any conversations that surprised you?
Simmons: Roland Wells, from the Shorefast Board, had so many interesting stories about bogs. It’s interesting how differently people learn to navigate these environments and what stories get told, whether scary or welcoming. There’s also a relationship between bogs and death: Roland’s grandfather, near the end of his life, said he could hear the call of the bog — that was his sign that he was going. It sounds almost calming compared to the more common stories of tragic deaths at sea; hearing the call of the bog feels more like an understanding between yourself and nature.
Scott: Was there anything you learned that was transformational for your thinking?
Simmons: One thing I learned this time about bogs is so particular to Fogo Island, I’ve never seen it anywhere else, and I’m still processing what it means. Most definitions of a bog say it’s fed only by rainwater, with no flow in or out, a singular thing. But on Fogo Island, the bogs feed other bogs. It’s more relational — bogs in the same complex flowing into each other, sometimes even into a lake, with fish that can pass through the bog to get somewhere else. It’s much more complicated than I thought. Bogs already defy binary classification — not quite land, not quite water — but what I knew a bog to be is even different from what a bog can actually exist as.
Scott: And what did you learn about Fogo Island?
Simmons: There’s so much to say about this place, but one thing that stands out is the resourcefulness of people. There’s a pragmatism to living on Fogo Island, dealing with the elements constantly, but also a real respect for nature and the bog. I expected more misunderstanding of the bog than I found — people here genuinely understand it’s important, even though it’s inconvenient in obvious ways: hard to build on, hard to walk through, all the flies. I thought I’d meet more resistance than I did. People learn to work with the rock; things are up on stilts. The same carries through with the bogs: there are spots where people go ATVing and tear through a section for fun, and part of me winces, but they choose specific spots rather than tearing up the whole island. There’s a respect for the bog; people tread lightly.
Find out more about Maria Simmons here: Maria Simmons, and Fogo Island Arts’ residency program: Residencies – Fogo Island Arts
