Installation,Art & DesignOCT 28, 2019

I Worried

Inspired by the poem by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver, “I Worried” is a series of modified street signs that replace typical regulatory language with lines of Oliver’s poem about anxiety, vulnerability, and evolution.

Attaching electrodes to leaves and human skin, I recorded the music made by local plants, as well as by my body and the bodies of friends and family as we meditated on different states of being – worry, love, connection. This music was combined with nature recordings (wind, birds, water, frogs) to make original compositions. As viewers pass by, a solar-powered sound device vibrates the thin aluminum, and select signs act as speakers - ‘singing’ each unique song.

'I Worried' by Mary Oliver

"I worried a lot.

Will the garden grow,

will the rivers

flow in the right direction,

will the earth turn

as it was taught,

and if not how shall

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, can I do better?

I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up.