Tecumseh Elementary

In this project students explored abstraction, imaginative transformation, and perspective, asking questions such as: what can you see when you look at a cloud, a puddle, or a stain in a shirt? And what happens when you shift your point of view?

Students worked together to drape sculptural forms using white fabric and objects in the classroom. We photographed each of these forms from a perspective of their choosing. Using their imagination, they transformed a black and white photograph of their form into an image. Using fabric scraps, recycled paper, and found objects, students built a world around their image, contextualizing their unique perspective on their form. 

My practice is centered in the body. In this project, I mainly drew inspiration from dance improvisation and olfactory arts, both of which are ephemeral and leave no visible traces. A movement disappears after it is being enacted. A smell is invisible and evaporates over time. While they can’t be grasped, both can have the boldest and most lasting impact and create living traces in the body, such as memories and emotions. 

A trace can be a mark, a line, a trail, a map, an outline. It can also be a sign of something that has happened and is no longer visible. Through this residency, students were guided through a series of embodied activities exploring the concept of living traces through movement, scent, and mark making. 

To begin, students drew traces with their moving bodies. They traced visible and invisible lines in space with different body parts, drew maps of each other’s movements, and recorded their movement patterns through drawing while dancing. Next, students looked for invisible traces through smell, creating scent catchers and describing various aromatic materials through expressive drawings and writings. Later on, students went on a scent walk, exploring the scentcape of their school and nearby park, and capturing their aromatic impressions through scent map making. Through touch and scent, students created blind drawings of fragrant materials on turmeric painted paper, at first invisible, but later revealed through the application of a basic solution. Lastly, students interviewed each other about their unique relationship to scent, leading to the creation of a series of scent portraits (smellfies) made with blended hydrosols preserved in glass bottles. We ended our time together by sharing reflections over a cup of aromatic turmeric tea. Throughout this project, students were invited to tune in with their bodies, cultivating a sense of presentness, playfulness and sensory awareness.  

This is a multisensory exhibition. Over six sessions, students worked with recycled paper as material of their work. Through touching, tearing, soaking, and shaping, they came to know the material slowly. Recycled paper shifted in their hands—sometimes soft, sometimes resistant—revealing its textures and rhythms over time. Making became a way of staying with the material, noticing how it moves and responds. Ideas of renewal emerged through this ongoing process, shaped by time, care, and ongoing engagement.

Each session focused on a sensory, embodied project. Students worked with dried flowers and plant materials, embedding them into paper pulp and observing what unfolded over time. As the paper dried over a week, colors slowly bled from the petals and leaves, staining the surface unexpectedly. These gradual transformations often surprised them, revealing how the material continues to act and change beyond the moment of making. They also created meaningful papers using herbs and spices, bringing in personal and cultural references. They created a poetic paper together by selecting and cutting words from found language drawn from existing texts on environment, art, and imagination, including excerpts from the work of Jenny Holzer. They rearranged these fragments into poetic statements that carried their hopes for nature and the world, gently connecting ideas of care, attention, and social justice.

We invite you to look closely, to engage your senses, and to notice the traces of personal histories held within these surfaces. In the slow work of making by hand, these artworks open space for reflection, connection, and the quiet unfolding of dreams.