When children approach artwork created by adults, they are expected to look, not touch. But what if they were encouraged to play with and even transform what they saw? What if they didn’t realize that some of the material they were engaging with was intended as “art?”

"When approaching a new work these past couple of years, I always ask myself, 'Is this prescriptive or introspective?' I prefer the latter." – Umico Niwa

"One of the reasons I previously enjoyed incorporating crickets in my practice is that I cannot predict, let alone comprehend, how they will interact with my sculptures, which brings me such joy. A collaboration like this and also here with Corin, the kids, and the fire, allows me the gift of getting to perceive aspects of my reality (my artworks) through dozens of divergent lenses" – Umico Niwa

"I wanted the sculptures I made here to feel like tools in a workshop. That they could be a site for their [the kids] investigations. In my own work, I use[dirt] as a binder, but here we are collaborating with the material in specific relation to the site of the work. Using the material and ground in which the children will be playing. The form of the work came from the spirit of the project.... I want to see what I can learn with the kids' interactions being grounded in Richmond..... I want to see what kinds of rules the kids make around these sculptures and what games they might have invented in relation to the objects...I hope the table [sculpture] might hold space as a stool, as something to stand on, something to sit on and look over the crater, something to pile mud on and make another sculpture." – Brandon Ndife in advance of The Crater

"I also create holes in my work. The negative space holds so much potential for me. Holes and bottoms of things have the purpose of being filled back up. I think back to my encounter with a hole was digging worms out of the ground. For example, in grad school, I was trying to hang something heavy, and I accidentally put a hole in the wall. What I found was that the hole was like a sleeve and that it actually turned deep into the floor. I had a small cast sculpture, and I secretly dropped it there. Like a wish in a well, I then sealed it back up." – Brandon Ndife.

"I think [the sculptures] offer multiple possibilities to be other things. They were tricycles before. [In this context] they're at that stage where they can become anything else. They can be taken apart and the parts recycled to be other things. The kids can use them as tricycles, but they can also become insects. All those possibilities are there. I think the way that they look, their heaviness, how they are built, the materials they are built with, and also because I think they might be alien as tricycles for the kids.....[These sculptures and the site] brings these materials, the tricycles, into a larger way of thinking about everything else that the kids are going to interact with. So it connects them to.... how they're going to interact with them as bodies interacting.... I think talking about bodies, there is embodiment, which is a crucial element of play, that you have your whole body in the thing. You're not elsewhere in play. You are right here with these materials. Your whole body is fully immersed. So I think with them being part of an ensemble, the fountains and pumps, I think [the sculptures] connects everyone who is [at] play.... And the bodies are interacting with them. So it's one full ensemble.... Bodies and materials and environment and everything. So I think that's crucial for part of the meaning-making process that this entails........." – from an interview with Lemu about The Fountain before it happened.

"One way that was at the back of my mind, that this terrain is bringing forward, is frustration, which I think is integral to play. You're always frustrated with either the objects and the environment you're working with. I think it's going to be interesting to see how frustration is negotiated here.....Play is at the heart of how I regard my work. There's a lot of humor. There's a lot of chance. There's a lot of failure and frustration. I might have a specific idea when interacting with my materials, and my materials take me into other realms. So that kind of open-endedness is the same that I see in play, that I see that my work is connected to the work of children. I regard my work as serious play, in that sense." – Massa Lemu

Umico Niwa is a peripatetic artist. Niwa was the contributing artist for Small Fires (May 2024). She contributed a provocation for the event with an installation consisting of burnt tarps, carbonized seed pods (and other vegetal matter), bread dough, bears made of tin cans, and arrangements in two fire pits. The carbonizing technique uses a Japanese folk craft process, "Hanazumi". Small Fires happened on the cusp of a major cicada hatch.

Brandon Ndife is a New York-based artist. Ndife was the contributing artist for The Crater (November 2023) into which he inserted a set of transfigured sculptures made from found furniture in Richmond. Ndife was interested in how an open and spontaneous engagement with these objects might become portals to consider social systems.

Massa Lemu is a Malawian visual artist, writer and professor. Lemu was the contributing artist for The Fountain (August 2023) where he created a set of sculptures which exist as modified vintage tricycles from an extant Richmond, VA elementary school. The tricycles were modified to act as fountains themselves, with the ability to have water pumped through them. Lemu was interested in the way that these objects might engage with and/or generate experiences including those of metamorphosis, embodiment, and frustration.

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