Community Collaborations
Clay and word collaborations are a major part of my practice. From co-founding the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival at the Emily Dickinson Museum to leading Wild Clay walks and exploration sessions on the Tan Brook that runs through the UMass Amherst campus, I love the ideas that come from working with others and seeing how our different approaches lead to unexpected creations.
First iteration of 49 in Great Falls Silo. 49 is a destructive ceramic musical exploration offered over 21 performances and installation during the year (2025-26) that I turn the age my father was when he died. 49 allows me to come face-to-face with my own physical body in this year through dance, performance and physical harvesting and creation with clay.
First iteration of 49 in Great Falls Silo. 49 is a destructive ceramic musical exploration offered over 21 performances and installation during the year (2025-26) that I turn the age my father was when he died. 49 allows me to come face-to-face with my own physical body in this year through dance, performance and physical harvesting and creation with clay.
My father in archival slide displayed at second iteration of 49 during the Easthampton City Arts Invitational at Old Town Hall in Easthampton, MA. 49 is a destructive ceramic musical exploration offered over 21 performances and installation during the year (2025-26) that I turn the age my father was when he died. 49 allows me to come face-to-face with my own physical body in this year through dance, performance and physical harvesting and creation with clay.
Second iteration of 49 during the Easthampton City Arts Invitational at Old Town Hall in Easthampton, MA. 49 is a destructive ceramic musical exploration offered over 21 performances and installation during the year (2025-26) that I turn the age my father was when he died. 49 allows me to come face-to-face with my own physical body in this year through dance, performance and physical harvesting and creation with clay. This aspect of the second iteration features a wall-sized print of an Ace of Hearts card upon which my mother wrote "I love you," and which my father carried in his wallet while serving in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. Below the print are four slide viewers and terracotta soundmakers with 32 terracotta cherry blossoms. This pays respect to my parents meeting under a cherry tree and dancing to Wild Thing. They were together 32 years after that night.
Driftwood, terracotta, rope and metal scallop net remnants of 49 first iteration, installed at second iteration during the Easthampton City Arts Invitational at Old Town Hall in Easthampton, MA. 49 is a destructive ceramic musical exploration offered over 21 performances and installation during the year (2025-26) that I turn the age my father was when he died. 49 allows me to come face-to-face with my own physical body in this year through dance, performance and physical harvesting and creation with clay.
Albarello medicine jars containing cherry blossoms from Emily Dickinson's garden at second iteration of 49 during the Easthampton City Arts Invitational at Old Town Hall in Easthampton, MA. 49 is a destructive ceramic musical exploration offered over 21 performances and installation during the year (2025-26) that I turn the age my father was when he died. 49 allows me to come face-to-face with my own physical body in this year through dance, performance and physical harvesting and creation with clay.
Third iteration of 49 in the Trustees of Reservations' Haskell Public Gardens in my hometown of New Bedford. 49 is a destructive ceramic musical exploration offered over 21 performances and installation during the year (2025-26) that I turn the age my father was when he died. 49 allows me to come face-to-face with my own physical body in this year through dance, performance and physical harvesting and creation with clay.
A ceramic bacalhau (salted codfish) that was used as a musical instrument during the third iteration of 49 in the Trustees of Reservations' Haskell Public Gardens in my hometown of New Bedford. 49 is a destructive ceramic musical exploration offered over 21 performances and installation during the year (2025-26) that I turn the age my father was when he died. 49 allows me to come face-to-face with my own physical body in this year through dance, performance and physical harvesting and creation with clay.
Wild Clay walk and claymaking session at Tan Brook in Amherst, MA. The walk was part of my Renaissance of the Earth Fellowship with the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies.
Wild Clay walk and claymaking session at Tan Brook in Amherst, MA. The walk was part of my Renaissance of the Earth Fellowship with the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies.
Wild Clay exploration with my UMass Amherst Art 142 course: we visited the most natural section of Tan Brook on campus, as it mostly runs through manmade channels under the campus aside from where it forms the campus pond. My students created new ways of engaging with Tan Brook by the brutalist-era Bromery Center for the Arts, which was built right over the brook.
Wild Clay and community architectural space exploration with my UMass Amherst Art 142 course: we visited the most natural section of Tan Brook on campus, as it mostly runs through manmade channels under the campus aside from where it forms the campus pond. My students created new ways of engaging with Tan Brook by the brutalist-era Bromery Center for the Arts, which was built right over the brook.
"Destruction is desirable" at Ren's Service Station (on the site of Emily Dickinson's demolished Amherst home).
Mindfulness at the Museum session at the University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMass Amherst.
Mindfulness at the Museum making session at the University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMass Amherst.
Mindfulness at the Museum session at the University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMass Amherst.
Mindfulness at the Museum session at the University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMass Amherst.
Michael Medeiros throwing one of the spiral meditation garden sculptures at the Haskell Public Gardens in New Bedford, MA.
Haskell Public Gardens Spiral Meditation Garden terracotta sculpture imprinted with leaves from the gardens and with bamboo chimes harvested on site.
Haskell Public Gardens Spiral Meditation Garden terracotta sculpture with bamboo chimes harvested on site.
Haskell Public Gardens Spiral Meditation Garden terracotta sculptures.
Community clay project creating tiles for the Haskell Public Gardens Spiral Meditation Garden, using leaves and flowers from the gardens. At the New Bedford Public Library.
Community clay project creating tiles for the Haskell Public Gardens Spiral Meditation Garden, using leaves and flowers from the gardens. At the New Bedford Public Library.
A Haskell Public Gardens volunteer with the Spiral Meditation Garden sculptures.
Mindfulness writing session in the Haskell Public Gardens' Spiral Meditation Garden.
Tiny Art 4 All Gallery exhibit on the Northampton Bike Trail. I created terracotta cauldrons and flowerpots with lines from Emily Dickinson's writings. Viewers were asked to write down one of their garden memories in exchange for one of the Dickinson ceramics.
Bicyclists stop to look at my Tiny Art 4 All Gallery exhibit on the Northampton Bike Trail.
A participant takes a cauldron after sharing a garden story as part of my Tiny Art 4 All Gallery exhibit on the Northampton Bike Trail.
Bicyclists ride to my Tiny Art 4 All Gallery exhibit on the Northampton Bike Trail.
From "We are Gardens Haunted by Each Other" exhibition at 50 Arrow Gallery in Easthampton, MA. The public was asked to share garden memories, which I preserved on terracotta flowerpots using traditional Portuguese smoke firing methods.
Story/Sound Arbor poetry reading and concert with Ide Thompson and Madden Aleia at A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery, in Northampton, MA.
Story/Sound Arbor poetry reading and concert with Jade Gaynor and Madden Aleia at A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery, in Northampton, MA.
Story/Sound Arbor window installtion at A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery, in Northampton, MA. An immersive experience of words, shared garden memory and improvised musical exploration.
Story/Sound Arbor ceramics storycircle at A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery, in Northampton, MA. An immersive experience of words, shared garden memory and improvised musical exploration.
Visitors to Story/Sound Arbor at Northampton's A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery were asked to share their garden memories to be preserved on ceramics to be made for future public installations.
Participants in the Poetry Listening Horn project each chose a horn, spent time listening to the world through it, then gave it to me and spoke a word through it directly into my ear. I used that word to create a poem, which became part of the series "This River of Time and Its Creatures."
The "listening" portion of the listening horn project. Each participant chose a horn and listened to the word through it. Then they handed the horn to me, and spoke a word through it which I then used to write a poem.
Poetry Listening Horn
Visitor to "Record of Existence" exhibition at Herter Gallery using the Poetry Listening Horns.
Visitor to "Record of Existence" at Herter Gallery using the Poetry Listening Horns.
Reading at the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA.
Poets Dorothea Lasky and Alex Dimitrov, the Astro Poets, for their reading in the Amherst College Bassett Planetarium as part of the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival.
Poetry writing workshop at the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA.
Dinner set for a community dinner as part of a reading by poet Mary Ruefle at UMass Amherst.
Creating the Ruefle plate set.
Visitors to an Emily Dickinson Museum reading.
I created an event, "Doughnuts and Death: A Baker's Dozen of Emily Dickinson's Most Depressing Poems," that introduced people to Dickinson family and Amherst history at Amherst's West Cemetery, where the poet is buried.
With poet Amy Dryansky during a radio interview for the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival.