When we experience a sensation, there is a fleeting interval before perception, when attention remains with the experience itself. Stephanie Barlow describes this gap as the space where wonder occurs, and where she invites us to remain in Caught Between the Tongue and the Taste.
Through slow acts of collecting and connecting—walking, foraging, observing, welding, weaving, and concocting—Barlow extends this moment of suspension by changing the conditions under which we encounter everyday objects, affording the manufactured and organic, valued and discarded, the same democracy of attention. Informed by her experience as a fabricator, Barlow brings the often-unseen labor of artistic production into proximity with the work continually unfolding within ecological systems.
Rooted in her curiosity about geology and plant ecology, Barlow’s practice shares science’s impulse toward observation and inquiry, while play frees her from the need to arrive at an answer. Caught Between the Tongue and the Taste extends this openness to the viewer, creating a space in which the ordinary can be encountered before it settles into explanation. By lingering there, Barlow invites us to practice a quality of attention in which wonder is found not in extraordinary things, but in ordinary things encountered with extraordinary attention.
Curated by M. Pofahl, Gallery Director at Herron School of Art + Design.