Back in January, I made a new 8-channel sound piece called Walking, Lost and Found and this summer I had the opportunity to debut the piece at a solo exhibition at Compound Yellow in Oak Park, Illinois. Laura Shaeffer, who runs Compound Yellow, commissioned two emerging textile artists to design and create seating for the space in response to my piece. I met on Zoom several times with Maia Rauh and Caroline Branch, where they shared with me the phrases and ideas that stuck with them from my sound piece, along with their thinking about how to responsively design seating for a richer experience of the work.

When we met in Chicago for the exhibition’s closing weekend, Maia and Caroline shared more with me about their process–about spending time together, in relationship, collecting rocks from a nearby river, about the difficulties of weaving the rocks into the piece on the loom, and about testing out different forms of seating as they developed what would be the finished piece.

The final version for the Compound Yellow exhibition is a bench filled with rocks, where visitors were invited to sit or lay down while listening to the sound piece. Caroline and Maia also wove two weighted creatures, stuffed animals of a sort that could be held or placed atop a person’s body. All of the elements respond to my writing about the backpack I wore on my walk last summer as it shifted from a heavy burden to a comforting weight.

I am grateful for the opportunity to exhibit Walking, Lost and Found for the first time and for the chance to work with some emerging artists. I am thrilled that Maia and Caroline now envision that this piece may lead them to design and create a whole new series of furniture and I can’t wait to see what they come up with.