The newsprint book in this video, made for sesquicentennial celebrations at The Ohio State University, is part of an ongoing public art project, O N E E V E R Y O N E. Thick as an old phone book, its 1,200 pages are filled with images of people photographed behind a translucent membrane that renders in focus only those points where the body touches the material surface. Hidden, but revealed by touch, the resulting portraits hold a sense of privacy and intimacy not possible in a time when we are so aware of every point of contact, of every surface we touch, or are in exchange touched by. These figures, isolated and ethereal, are perhaps the alone together we are living in this moment.
I called jazz guitarist Bill Frisell to ask if he might consider making a house recording for a video of the book. Bill has performed at the Wexner Center many times, and his music always stirs a deeply felt place in me, a place I might now call HOPE. It was April; I was in Ohio, and Bill was in New York. Bill’s sound for the video is our collaboration, our form of touch across the physical distance between us.
The people pictured in the book are students, faculty, staff, and other members of the Ohio State community who offered to participate in the project. We staged the photography set-up in two main campus arteries, the Thompson Library and the Wexner Center for the Arts, who collaborated in support of my fall 2019 exhibition project when an object reaches for your hand.
A human impulse is to extend our hands outward, to know the world through the reciprocity of touching things. It’s become impossible to pass this book, made to celebrate the University’s Sesquicentennial, from hand to hand. Nonetheless, this video, which shares a turning of its pages, now affords a different form of celebration. Listening closely to Bill’s music, you will sometimes recognize the melody of OSU’s beloved Alma Mater “Carmen Ohio” and, perhaps, feel us standing arm in arm across our distances, to sing the bond that makes us The Ohio State University.

Special thanks to Phyllis Oyama, Michael Mercil, Katie Hall, Ken Aschliman, and Chuck Helm. To my studio: Kara Gut, Jessica Naples-Grilli, and Nick Larsen, along with graduate students Dareen Hussein and Nalani Stolz. The work is made possible by The Office of the President at The Ohio State University, the Thompson Library, and the Wexner Center for the Arts.