Curated by Seattle-based artist Leah Nguyen, Conscious Collaboration with Spirit at SOIL unites artists from around the country whose art practice involves a "collaboration with spirit," as they call it. Nguyen tells me that for this show, she wanted to create a space where artists could be vocal about their work's relationship to their spirituality without judgment or skepticism. There is no shared way that any of the seven artists access their spiritual selves or other spiritual beings. When starting a painting, Nguyen asks her "spiritual collaborators" a series of complex yes/no questions using a matrix in order to guide her. Los Angeles–based painter Jean Nagai gets into meditative, half-waking states to create his giant, balmy, abstract compositions.
Sara Long sits out in nature for long periods of time, observing plants and stones communicating with each other. Both sculptor Emily Counts and painter Elizabeth Traina use inquiry-based processes—Counts with her higher self, and Traina with a spirit collective. While Nicholas Nyland senses when a work has a life of its own, Hayley Barker draws from her time as a witch, using both spells and prayer in her collaboration with spirit. by Jas Keimig