Dear Reader,

Osage ephemeral artist Lydia Cheshewalla recently completed a residency at the Center for Humans & Nature. During her time on the land, Lydia made artworks that are on view through this Sunday, November 2nd at Brushwood Center in Riverwoods, Illinois. Details are available at this link for planning your visit to view the ephemeral, site-specific installation Before Dreams Are The Last Place We Find You. 

Lydia Cheshewalla is from Oklahoma, and she lives and works in motion throughout the Great Plains ecoregion. Through the creation of site-specific land art and ephemeral installations grounded in Indigenous land stewardship practices and kinship pedagogies, Lydia engages in multivocal conversations. Her practice is built on an ethos that views all beings as sacred, with their own agency, and with a right to complete their cycle of life and death. She works mainly with naturally shed material and seeds that are ready for collecting. At the end of installations, each being is returned to its original place in nature where it was gathered, closing the circle of creation.

Below, enjoy an excerpt from a conversation between Lydia and the Center for Humans & Nature’s Katherine Kassouf Cummings and Erin Williams. Humans & Nature Press Digital will release part two of this conversation when Lydia returns the beings from her artworks to the land at the Center for Humans & Nature.

Read the conversation here and view this week’s full newsletter here.

Love,
Center for Humans & Nature

Photo by Erin Williams.