Organized by Nathan Langston, “TELEPHONE works like the children’s game of the same name. A message is whispered from person to person and changes and evolves as it is passed from player to player. In our case, we pass a secret message from art form to art form, so a message could become poetry and then painting and then music and then film, throughout all possible forms of art.”

This game exhibition was the third iteration of TELEPHONE, consisting of 1,395 individual, interconnected and original works by artists from 930 cities in 65 countries. It can be found in its entirety at https://telephonegame.art.

I received a sonnet by Erin Covey-Smith to interpret and was drawn to its imagery of layers of plants, elements, generational trauma.

My work is defined by the use of layers in texture and the intentional use of very specific materials to show movement, light, space.

I created a framework from lilac branches, a plant that provided a safe hiding place for me as a child, secured with black wire resembling that found lying around on the farms where I grew up. The loose, sharp ends remain. A poppy husk lives inside the space inside the spaces, a reminder of the old ones and the burdens they genetically passed on.

This globe of woven wire and twigs shows not only the lines of coordinates and currents, but also emphasizes the negative, open spaces between them, inviting the winds, gaze, and possibility to pass through them.