Feeling stressed? Suffering from pandemic anxiety? Need a staycation? “Breathe with Me” offers a special respite.

Inspired by dadirri, the Aboriginal practice of deep listening, “Breathe With Me,” an installation at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, invites visitors to slow down, attune to nature, and connect with the salubrious qualities well known to Indigenous people and now embraced by Western medicine.

A collaboration between Kluge-Ruhe and the UVA art department and Contemplative Sciences Center, the show pairs outdoor sculptures by students of William Bennett with reflective prompts composed by students in Jayme Siet’s Mindfulness and Nature course. Conceived during the height of the pandemic as a means to provide safe outdoor programming, the project is the brainchild of Kluge-Ruhe Education and Program Manager Lauren Maupin.

“We knew that providing the UVA sculpture community with an extensive outdoor space to dream bigger with their sculptures would result in something unique and engaging,” says Maupin. The inclusion of the mindfulness/deep listening aspect dovetails neatly with the museum’s collection.

The project also aligns with the COVID-19 policies instituted by UVA for 2020-21 that required all in-person sculpture classes to meet outside. Bennett points out that working outside also has particular resonance for this generation of students who “are passionate and concerned about the fate of the earth. This venture gave them the opportunity to work with the earth as material and to have the beautiful landscape of the Kluge-Ruhe museum as the context of their work.”

The installation includes 13 site-specific sculptures positioned along a mown path in the museum’s backyard. The prompts, accessed by QR codes using Smartphones, are designed to guide viewers through a mindful engagement with nature.

Walking amongst the sculptures one is dazzled by the aspiration and obvious thought, care, and sweat equity that went into the works. “I believe that there is a strength and power that beginning art students bring to the table,” says Bennett. “Experienced commentators mentioned the ambitious plans of the young sculptors, who were unafraid and didn’t know what they could not do, so they did it.”

Isabella Whitfield’s “Together Forever/Forever Together” features two parallel sets of stairs cut into the earth heading downwards in opposite directions. Even without the title, the piece suggests entrances to two graves. Descending into them is a little creepy and one gets a sense of entering into another subterranean realm. The perfect earthen steps are remarkable feats of craftsmanship. Piled behind the piece, dirt removed to form the holes speaks to the temporary absence of that volume and suggests that at some point it will be poured back into the holes. Surrounding the installation, six wood stanchions support a rope and also small pieces of wood engraved with poems by Maggie Weaver that ponder the shared fate of nature and humans.

Two works, Addison Keatts’ “Ascension” and Sharon Chong’s “Me, Myself and You,” introduce the sense of smell with a heady perfume that emanates from the cedar used in their work. Keatts binds together scraggly branches to form a teepee shape. The viewer is invited to step inside the shelter and gaze out at the mountains and up at the sky through a perfect oculus. The piece was inspired by Keatts’ quest for a sense of home. Building it also gave her an outlet for the sadness and anger she felt about the death of a friend.

Consisting of wooden planks sunk into the ground, “Me, Myself and You” forms a double spiral of 8-foot-high planks. Walking on the path between the planks is intended to be a contemplative experience—closed off from the outside world, one becomes more focused on the immediate surroundings. In the spaces between the planks one can see visitors walking on the other path within the shared solitude.

Calista Rieken’s “Symbiosis” is a meditation on the interconnectedness of nature. Her figures of a deer and wolf mother and her two pups are faced with a veneer of bark, suggesting they are one with and reliant upon not only the trees—a couple of the figures emerge directly out of the tree trunks—but each other.

Continuing the animal theme, UVA sculpture teaching and studio assistant Ed Miller’s “Earthen Bison” references the history of that great creature whose pre-18th century range extended as far east as Virginia. Constructed of earth, chicken wire, and straw, the animal has a head made of fired red clay. Positioning yourself with the mountains behind the sculpture, you can envision those long-gone animals in the landscape.

Bennett’s “Omphalos/Oculus Looking in Seeing Out” features three dome-like structures: the dome of earth formed by the dirt removed to create the path; the concrete dome, a nod to Jefferson; and the stainless steel dome, which Bennett describes as “A curious observatory building where a participant looks in to the see the stars within the earth rather than looking out to see the heavens above.”

Bennett points out that art by students rarely sees the light of day. “This was a chance for my students to make work that would have an audience, completing the gift exchange that is at the core of our art-making tradition.” “Breathe with Me” is indeed a welcome gift to a Charlottesville community emerging from the isolation of a pandemic.

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