Listening and Touching Trees

“Everything is in limbo,” said artist Bruce Odland. He was of course talking about the exhibition “Between Two Worlds,” which he and his partner Soli Pierce are designing and installing at KinoSaito, a former school recently transformed into an arts space.

Certainly, at the very least, he is referring to the installation that the pair will be showing beginning March 8 at an opening scheduled at 4 to 6pm in KinoSaito’s Verplank Gallery. The arts space is the dream of Mikiko Ino, who supports artists with studio and exhibition space administered by Megan Meadowlark. Odland and Pierce are known for their celebrations of the environment, which they call “Sound Forest.” They are also known as scavengers, hunting the shores of the Hudson River to find pieces of ash, cherry, pine, birch, and sometimes a whole trunk, which they lovingly sand and burnish, mostly by hand into sculptures.

Pierce and Odland began collaborating on what they call the “Sound Forest” three years ago. The concept is a marriage of sound, wood and light in various configurations. This is their third site-specific installation. Prior installations include the “Songs of Disappearance” at the Hammond Museum and “Memory Cave” for ArtsWestchester’s Vault Project, both in 2024.

Visitors are invited to explore this immersive sound installation, and it is both a listening and touching experience. In this metaphorical forest, the trees, like we humans, are suspended between worlds – between earth and the stars, the physical and the interpreted, the past and our possible futures. “Sound Forest” will remain on view through May 18.