Soli Pierce and Bruce Odland: Sound Forest / Between Worlds

Verplanck, NY (March 2025) Sound Forest/Between Worlds is an immersive installation by artist duo Soli Pierce and Bruce Odland consisting of interactive wooden sound sculptures and a meticulously orchestrated audio environment in which every element was constructed with the architecture and acoustics of KinoSaito’s 1500 square foot gallery in mind.

For this exhibition, Pierce and Odland have estranged the simplest of concepts – the act of walking through the woods. Inverted trees hover above the viewer, while carved sculptures and found driftwood roots reach upwards from the gallery floor below. These sculptures, however, are not only to be seen and heard, but to be explored with all the senses. Wooden concave forms reflect sound like a speaker while bark elements muffle. Leaves whisper, logs moan, and in one case the gentle caress of human touch is amplified to an attention-grabbing ominous creak.

For the artists, creation and one’s relationship with nature is a solemn and spiritual experience. Sound Forest / Between Worlds is an exercise in slowing down, reflecting, and listening to your environment and inner self.

This exhibition is accompanied by a robust selection of public programs organized by the artists including performances, film screenings, workshops, and wellness practices - all of which invite the participant to expand the ways in which they experience their surroundings.

- Megan Meadowlark

This project is made possible with the funds from Arts Alive, a regrant program of ArtsWestchester with support from the Office of the Governor, the New York State Legislature, and the New York State Council on the Arts. This large-scale interactive installation will engage fellow artists and musicians to present workshops, concerts, and other programs to the public to explore the relationship of human culture and nature, materiality, and sound. For programming information please visit https://www.kinosaito.org/bruce-odland-soli-pierce-sound-forest-between-worlds. In preparation of Sound Forest/Between Worlds, Bruce Odland and Soli Pierce were Winter 2025 Artists in Residence at KinoSaito.

The Artists
Soli Pierce’s first one-woman painting show in NYC was at Beaux Arts in 1983. A New York State Council of the Arts Grant in 1984 allowed her the freedom to pursue cutting-edge work in video, technology, photography, and assemblage. The grant led to an Off-Broadway theatre piece, a multi-screen installation called SUBWAYOUT, which explored the alienation and fast pace of modern life.

She gained international recognition for her digitized video collaborations with Lizanne Merrill, exhibited in Germany and reviewed by The New York Times and The Village Voice. In 1989, she accepted an adjunct professorship at NYU before shifting focus to Sherwood Forest Design, a three-decade decorative arts line featuring heirloom bowls and tableware in collections worldwide, including at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. While building this successful venture, she continued working with encaustics and transforming natural objects, exhibiting her Portal and Ghost Forest series in Venice and London.

In 2021, nature guided her once again. The isolation of Covid-19 nurtured her deeply and offered her time to plant new creative seeds. A new series in collaboration with Bruce Odland entitled The Sound Forest—a fusion of her past and present via portals made with wood, encaustics, beeswax, moss, and sound—calls upon all the senses and simultaneously sounds the alarm, expressing a last, desperate hope, and a call for action.

Bruce Odland thinks with his ears. His work provokes one to reconsider the predominantly visual culture. His first public sound installation commenced in 1977 with Sun Song. Clouds of reverberant sound spread over a public festival in Denver, channeled from the Clock Tower. Since then, he continues working to remind our culture of the importance of sonic resonance and harmonic beauty in public space. He often draws upon the fractal music of nature and has transformed vast industrial soundscapes of cities into harmonic music.

Odland is founder of The TANK Center for Sonic Arts in Rangely, Colorado. He offers separate lectures and workshops for universities where participants are expected to stretch underused auditory muscles, expand their reach and potential, and think with their ears.

Odland collaborates with teams in film, dance, museum installation, and theater. His work includes The Wooster Group, Peter Sellars, JoAnne Akalaitis, Wallace Shawn, Andre Gregory, Peter Erskine, Tony Oursler, Dan Graham, Robert Woodruff, Bill Morrison, Stacey Steers, Ron Miles, and many more talents that may be named here.

Recently he co-directed a permanent outdoor sound installation with Laurie Anderson for the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland.

ArtsWestchester
ArtsWestchester supports thousands of arts events, arts organizations and individual artists each year bringing the joy of the arts to visitors and residents of Westchester County. ArtsWestchester’s White Plains historic building is a multi-use resource for artists, cultural groups and the community. Art exhibits and intimate music and dance performances are presented to the public in its two-story gallery throughout the year.

KinoSaito
KinoSaito is a nonprofit art center founded in 2018 and dedicated to the creation of abstract art. We are committed to nurturing art experimentation across all mediums and perpetuating the legacy of our founding muse and Japanese-American artist, Kikuo Saito (1939-2016). The center opened in 2021 upon renovation of its St. Patrick’s Catholic School located in Verplanck, NY. Since opening our doors, we have served an intergenerational audience of 3,500+ annually.

For more details or to RSVP, please visit https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/2025-spring-opening-reception. For any inquiries, contact KinoSaito’s Gallery Director, Megan Meadowlark, at megan@kinosaito.org or 914-293-7468.
XXX

KinoSaito Programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.