Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees: Falling into Language: A Travelogue

G A L L E RY G U I D E Falling into Language: A Travelogue, BCA Center installation view, 2021

OVERVIEW “Eve yearns to return to a primordial state when the misunderstandings caused by words no longer stand between her and the rest of creation. So she unnames all the animals, from the sea otters to the bees.

When she’s done, she marvels on how they feel ‘far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier.”

- Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees, citing the Ursula K. Le Guin short story “She Unnames Them”*

In Falling into Language: A Travelogue, Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees creates a mythical travelogue exploring a shared cosmic ancestry that connects us beyond the constraints of spoken and written language. TwoTrees’ immersive installation of paintings, soundscapes, and video feature contemporary vocables (a sequence of sounds and syllables without literal meaning) created in collaboration with musicians from Vermont, India and Japan. TwoTrees describes Falling into Language: A Travelogue as a visual manifestation of her experience engaging with ceremonial vocables that are deeply rooted in the oral tradition of her mixed Native American and African heritage.

Beginning her exploration through automatic writing, drawings, paintings and then sound, TwoTrees discovered a new, creative route to an unseen language – ultimately finding herself falling into a language that defied differentiation or separation. Combining score and imagery to create an immersive environment of visual vocables, Falling into Language: A Travelogue reveals the power of voice and imagery to reconnect us to an interdependent and vibrant world.

- Heather Ferrell, Curator and Director of Exhibitions

* The New Yorker, 21 January 1985

BIOGRAPHY

Falling into Language: A Travelogue, BCA Center installation view, 2021

Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees is an artist and guide who uses various mediums, including performance, installation, sculpture, and sound, to foster further connections between humans, Nature, and sacred life. Her work eschews material identification, instead inviting a collaboration of species, cultures, and beliefs, further educating viewers on their own relationship with the natural world. TwoTrees’ practice has evolved through the guidance of indigenous elders, whose knowledge she has utilized to build a vibrant visual and auditory language, which she shares across the world through classes, exhibitions, and mediations. She is a past recipient of the Lila Wallace International Artist Award and her work has been exhibited in the US, Europe and New Zealand. TwoTrees is currently an Artist in Residence in the Masters of Leadership for Sustainability Program at the University of Vermont.

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CHECKLIST Moving counter-clockwise as you enter the gallery

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1. Excavator’s collection from the Travelogue Archives

a) Map Fragment with possible legend-Ancestor Journey 7CXX.03 b) Map Fragment with notation in unknown script -Ancestor Journey 4C.3 c) Map Fragment – Ancestor Journey 5C.77

Acrylic ink and collage on mixed papers, 30 x 36 x 3" $1,200 2. From the Travelogue Archives Ancestor Journey 1C.32

a) Navigational Pattern Fragment Supercluster VC 1794 b) Navigational Pattern Fragment Supercluster GC 1932 c) Navigational Pattern Fragment Supercluster CC 1929

Acrylic ink on mixed papers, 43 x 31 x 3" FS/INS Value: $1,200 3. Falling Into Language, 2021 single-channel video and soundscape (17:55 min) NFS 4. From the Travelogue Archives - Interpreter Notations

a) Unknown script with commentary in unknown script and English

b) Unknown script with pictograph (Apis mellifera)

c) Layered commentary in two unknown scripts Acrylic ink and collage on mixed papers, 32 x 26 x 2.5" FS/INS Value: $1,200 5. From the Travelogue Archives Compilation of excavator notations from Ancestor Journeys 3CC.45, 4CXX.5 and 7C.1 Acrylic ink and collage on mulberry papers, 42 x 27 x 3" $1,800

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6. Excavator’s collection from the Travelogue Archives Ancestor Journey 5C.77

a) Fossilized life form “seeds”

b) Fragment of life form fossil

c) Fragment of life form “hatching” pictograph

d) Probable life form “sketch” by excavator Acrylic ink, gel medium, bee pollen, and collage on mixed papers, 32 x 40 x 2" $1,200 7. Excavator’s collection from the Travelogue Archives Ancestor Journey 2C.87

a) Fragment – preserved flora (Begonia x corallina) including

commentary in two unknown scripts

b) Fragment – possible map with notation and added commentary

in unknown scripts Ancestor Journey 4C.65

c) Fragment – possible map with notation in unknown script Acrylic ink and collage on mixed papers, 28 x 28 x 2.5" $1,200 8. From the Travelogue Archives Supercluster view Acrylic ink on handmade paper with linen stitching, 30 x 24 x 2.5" $1,800

RELATED PROGRAMMING

Virtual Vocables Workshop: Add Your Voice with Heidi Ann Wilson and Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees Thursday, June 24, 2021, 7:30pm Register at burlingtoncityarts.org/events

Add your voice to the next iteration of Falling Into Language’s soundscape, a film and art installation by Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees. Participants are guided to make their own vocables in response to the film’s soundscape, and will have the opportunity to submit their audio recording for use in the final iteration of the film’s soundscape. Song leader Heidi Ann Wilson, one of the musicians the artist collaborated with to create Falling Into Language’s original soundscape, and Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees will lead the workshop.

Virtual Artist Talk: Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees Thursday, July 22, 2021, 11am Register at burlingtoncityarts.org/events

Vermont-based contemporary artist Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees discusses her current solo exhibition, Falling Into Language: A Travelogue, an immersive installation created in collaboration with musicians from Vermont, India and Japan. The artist describes the evolution of her project; collaboration with musicians; and ongoing series of vocable workshops inviting viewers to add their voice to the installation’s soundscape.

Virtual Vocables Workshop: Add Your Voice with Shruthi Veena Vishnawanth and Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees Saturday, September 4, 2021, 11am Register at burlingtoncityarts.org/events

Singer, educator, and composer, Shruthi Veena Vishnawanth, one of the musicians the artist collaborated with to create Falling Into Language’s original soundscape, and Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees will lead a second workshop organized by UVM’s Crossroad’s Leadership Lab. Add Your Voice workshop series is co-presented with UVM’s Crossroads Leadership Lab.

The Artist recognizes the following musicians for their collaboration in the creation of Falling into Language: A Travelogue: Gideon Crevoshay Yuji Nakagawa, Shruthi Veena Vishnawanth Heidi Ann Wilson

BCA Exhibitions are funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Vermont Arts Council.

Burlington City Arts is supported in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts through the New England Arts Resilience Fund, part of the United States Regional Arts Resilience Fund, an initiative of the U.S. Regional Arts Organizations and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with major funding from the federal CARES Act from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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