As artists, we share a meaningful connection in the ways we approach and absorb the world around us. Our individual responses to our unique experiences of the world forge powerfully distinct bodies of work. What we make, hints at our experiences and cultivates our shared values of cherishing, honoring, and caring for the places we grow in and the land we move in.

Kate Collyer, Lorrie Fredette and I traveled in 2021 – internationally, nationally, or locally – from a one-month residency to a multi-day getaway to a brief vacation. We utilized the processes of observation, collection, and reflection while exploring each of our varying chosen environments. This is how the concept of Whispered Conversations started.

We sought to question our relationship to our “homes,” to honor the places that continue to hold us, and to remember the landscapes that showed us our human scale. We each mapped terrain by gathering items that encapsulated our memory of the journey. Each object becomes a memento, a talisman imbued with feelings, energy, and spirit. It also serves as a type of postcard, a token of place. Each artist responded to the micro terrain by creating a bundle of the objects that helped make sense of how the land was perceived and questioned our relationship to place. We agreed to walk a shared path: to have new eyes, to cultivate a steady slowness, to gather and call forward more than the usual. We allowed the places we “think we know” to wear us until we each could offer these reliquaries as a journaled response.

These sets of objects represent places and more importantly, specific moments. Whispered Conversations’ objective is to tug at the indexical traces of each object. The artist who originally gathered the object is the sole repository of the lived experience. However, as we transitioned to the making phase, we each responded to the bundles prepared by the other wayfarers in addition to our own assembled bundle. We did not attempt to articulate one another’s experiences but rather we moved toward the possibility of a deeper understanding of separate yet shared experiences.

The questions that guided us were:

What happens in the space between the human and the
place? Do we truly behold an environment, a landscape? What
are we capable of experiencing through someone else’s eyes?

Whispered Conversations is an individual and collective expedition. It is a practice of observing and making. This is our call and response.

We're pleased to share our first exhibition as a collective at Stand4 Gallery in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. The show opens Friday, November 11, 2022 with an in person reception from 7-9 p.m. Click here for directions and gallery hours. The exhibition runs through Saturday, January 14, 2023. We will host a Roundtable discussion on Saturday, January 7, 2023.