What has that been like to enact in Wassaic Creek, in particular?

It's been very cold.

[Laughs] I imagine.

There’ve been lots of 40-degree days. And being early spring, the ground as a whole is still very cold. So the body of water feels barely above freezing, and having to actually put your whole self under the water is pretty physically demanding. Honestly, a lot of times I need to be done working on that project because my hands stop working — I can't grip things anymore.

I have definitely tried to embrace that as a part of the process. You think twice about whether or not something needs fiddling when it means plunging your entire arm into frigid water. I suppose this has resulted in more considered choices and a clearer vision of what is important in some cases.

And while working in the creek, I’ve encountered many people in the community out on walks or fishing by the water who have been very curious about what I’m up to when I’m working — which I can totally understand. I look like I’m dressed to be fishing, but don’t have a pole, have a lot of sound equipment, and am busy installing almost invisible wires in the water. Once I explain my process, and maybe even let them listen to a live result where gravity’s influence on water is producing a sound composition, people usually look back around at the environment and remark something like, “Oh you should try over there. I wonder what that would sound like?” In a sense, they are paying attention to specific qualities in the landscape that otherwise might not be understood in quite the same way. I enjoy that, by providing a unique way to engage with the environment, the work has somehow elevated fairly ordinary actions, albeit essential ones, in the landscape for these people.

The space has its own character, too. It has steep natural embankments and feels very isolated from human activity. Under shadow much of the day, the water appears icy black and the glowing greens of spring supply interesting reflected light. These qualities have certainly found their way into the work.

Let’s talk about the Current Casting project a little more. I still cannot conceive of how they take shape as a form. What material is it again?

It’s beeswax.

Beeswax, okay. I didn’t know that that was a property of beeswax — that it just solidified like that in water.

Well, it's the cooling process, right? So it starts really hot, and then the super cold water as the wax is poured in returns it to a solid — like water turns to ice or like ice turns back to water. It's a beautiful material that is able to fluctuate states. I think that's why I originally started experimenting with it. I like the idea that the paintings end up tracking the physical wax itself, as it’s melted and reformed over time in response to these actions in the landscape.

In that vein, can you say more about how you think of the interplay between sculpture, painting, and music in your process?

The interplay is a really important thing, even just in terms of productivity.

I think about memories of working on cars with my father. I grew up in the north: salt, snow — everything rusts, right? So we'd be fixing something or changing a part, and there would be a number of bolts that you'd have to undo — but a lot of them would be just rusted on and you'd have to really work to loosen them. I’d spend all morning trying to get one bolt unstuck, but my father, having more experience, would just move on to the next bolt, and then move on to the next one, and then move on to the next one — and then come back, hit it with heat or with a penetrating oil, and eventually knock them all loose. Because in that break from using certain muscles to try to get that one bolt, you refresh yourself by moving on to the second one or the third one.

And that’s something I’ve realized over time is really helpful in my studio production. To take that same analogy of moving from bolt to bolt, moving from painting to sculpture to sound allows me to refresh myself or reduce fatigue in a way that allows me to be a lot more productive and be a lot more fully engaged with each activity. They all share, as we talked about before, a conceptual thread — but physically, the operations are very different. So it allows you to keep moving in a really nice way, and then they feed each other. Something that happens sculpturally can prompt a painting, a painting idea can then prompt a sound intervention — so on and so forth. Discoveries in one process inspire rethinking another.