Conversations with the Material World premiered at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn and Sculpture Garden as a part of Sound Scene in June of 2022, and the work just had its West Coast debut at Yerba Buena Night in San Francisco. The work, curated by Catherine Monahon and created as a collaboration between five queer & non-binary artists, features four sculptures in wood, fiber, glass and clay with corresponding soundscapes, made to be touched and heard in tandem. The sculptures: a glass rope by Brooklyn-based glass artist Deborah Czeresko, a wooden arch by San Francisco-based furniture designer Dominique Tutwiler, a fiber scroll by Ohio-based fiber artist Selena Loomis and a clay spiral by Oakland-based artist Catherine Monahon. Each one sits on top of an art pedestal with two pairs of headphones and an mp3 player. You slip on the headphones with a friend or a stranger and press play, listening in on a soundscape narrated by Monahon and designed by Philly-based musician and composer Elizabeth de Lise. Each soundscape is part poem, part educational soundbyte, part guided meditation.

*Photos by Anthony Washington, Sound Scene 2022