In the winter of 2015-16, I collaborated from afar with Sam Corfman, a poet based in Pittsburgh. It became a call and response over 600 miles between my home in Madison, Wisconsin and his home in Pennsylvania. As friends who had not seen each other for three years, we decided to collaborate as a form of communication. We wanted to see how our practices could bring us and our communities together. Sam crafted the words into poetry, and then I crafted the words in ceramic sculpture. Using my hands and clay, I was able to give Sam's poetry a physical and spatial presence.
In March 2016, we organized a poetry reading with the ceramic word installation at the Central Public Library in Madison, Wisconsin. Sam traveled to Madison to read his work with the sculptures. The written work became layered with the experience of spoken and sculpted words. A second poetry reading and installation of the ceramic words took place in Pittsburgh at Classic Lines bookshop in May 2016.
